 Brain downloads 'possible by 2050' [message #156019] |
Mon, 23 May 2005 15:06  |
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ViolentOrgy
Messages: 89
Registered: September 2004
Karma: 0
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London, England -- By the middle of the 21st century it will be possible to download your brain to a supercomputer, according to a leading thinker on the future.
Ian Pearson, head of British Telecom's futurology unit, told the UK's Observer newspaper that the rapid advances in computing power would make cyber-immortality a reality within 50 years.
Pearson said the launch last week of Sony's PlayStation 3, a machine 35 times more powerful than the model it replaced, was a sign of things to come.
"The new PlayStation is one percent as powerful as the human brain," Pearson told the Observer. "It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain."
Pearson said that brain-downloading technology would initially be the preserve of the rich, but would become more available over subsequent decades.
"If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine," he said.
"We are very serious about it. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT."
Pearson also predicted that it would be possible to build a fully conscious computer with superhuman levels of intelligence as early as 2020.
IBM's BlueGene computer can already perform 70.72 trillion calculations a second and Pearson said the next computing goal was to replicate consciousness.
"We're already looking at how you might structure a computer that could become conscious. Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that's what we're trying to design in computer."
Pearson said that computer consciousness would make feasible a whole new sphere of emotional machines, such as airplanes that are afraid of crashing.
By 2020 Pearson also predicted the creation of a "virtual world" of immersive computer-generated environments in which we will spend increasing amounts of time, socializing and doing business.
He said: "When technology gives you a life-size 3D image and the links to your nervous system allow you to shake hands, it's like being in the other person's office. It's impossible to believe that won't be the normal way of communicating."
But Pearson admitted that the consequences of advancing technologies needed to be considered carefully.
"You need a complete global debate," he said. "Whether we should be building machines as smart as people is a really big one."
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/23/brain.download/
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| Brain downloads 'possible by 2050' [message #156110] |
Tue, 24 May 2005 06:19  |
Kanezor
Messages: 855
Registered: February 2005
Location: Sugar Land, TX, USA
Karma: 0
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Colonel |
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| WinterFresh |
As for downloading your mind into a computer, it would be hard to download tissue into a computer. You can't take an image of a brain, you can't "read" it and upload it. It's extremely absurd.
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Theoretically, you don't need to. You only need to know the synaptic nodes' connections to each other, and the current values that they hold. You could then create a brain "emulator" and proceed where your brain left off. The precision required for such (both in space and in time, since your brain is ever-changing) would be damn-near impossible, though... at least, in any time soon.
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| Brain downloads 'possible by 2050' [message #156144] |
Tue, 24 May 2005 08:52 |
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Hydra
Messages: 827
Registered: September 2003
Location: Atlanta, GA
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Don't count on this happening any time soon.
For humans to be able to copy the brain, wouldn't we have to fully understand it, first? And how can a brain fully understand the complexity of another brain when the two are as complex as each other, or in some cases one more complex than the other?
We don't know nor probably ever will no jack about the brain; it's simply too complex for our own brains to comprehend.
Walter Keith Koester: September 22, 1962 - March 15, 2005
God be with you, Uncle Wally.
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