cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14869314
"I want to live forever in AI"
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Even if it were possible to scan the contents of your brain and reproduce them in a digital form, there's no reason that scan would be anything more than bits of data on the digital system. You could have a database of your brain... but it wouldn't be conscious.
No one has any idea how to replicate the activity of the brain. As far as I know there aren't any practical proposals in this area. All we have are vague theories about what might be going on, and a limited grasp of neurochemistry. It will be a very long time before reproducing the functions of a conscious mind is anything more than fantasy.
Counterpoint, from a complex systems perspective:
We don't fully know or are able toodel the details of neurochemistry, but we know some essential features which we can model, action potentials in spiking neuron models for example.
It's likely that the details don't actually matter much. Take traffic jams as an example. There is lots of details going on, driver psychology, the physical mechanics of the car etc. but you only need a handful of very rough parameters to reproduce traffic jams in a computer.
That's the thing with "emergent" phenomena, they are less complicated than the sum of their parts, which means you can achieve the same dynamics using other parts.
I heard a hypothesis that the first human made consciousness will be an AI algorithm designed to monitor and coordinate other AI algorithms which makes a lot of sense to me.
Our consciousness is just the monitoring system of all our bodies subsystems. It is most certainly an emergent phenomenon of the interaction and management of different functions competing or coordinating for resources within the body.
To me it seems very likely that the first human made consciousness will not be designed to be conscious. It also seems likely that we won't be aware of the first consciousnesses because we won't be looking for it. Consciousness won't be the goal of the development that makes it possible.