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Downloading The Mind
bluemug writes "The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's popular science radio show Quirks and Quarks aired a piece this weekend about Ray Kurzweil's ideas on downloading human minds to silicon. (The interview is available in MP3 or OGG.) Kurzweil figures we'll have strong AI by 2029 and be able to copy a human mind about a decade after that. Book your appointment now!"
...coming to a construct near you.
If glow-in-the-dark, striped track suits are good enough for The Dude, then they're good enough for me... and don't forget all the ultimate frisbee you can handle.
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Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
This is a really odd discussion. I'm surprised that no one here seems to have read any of Kurzweil's books. "The Age of Spiritual Machines" is a really fun airplane read. Even if not everything in it is entirely believable, he answers every single question raised here.
To give one example: he doesn't talk about downloading brains to real bodies, but to (believe it) swarms of nanobots that create a kind of virtual space in which artificial and "real" intelligences coexist. By the end of "Spritial Machines," the distinction becomes irrelevant.
The book makes heavy use of Moore's law, and in retrospect, written as it was at the height of the Tech Market Bubble, I guess the tone is one of rampant optimism and unlimited possiblities. But in any evemt, you can't diss this guy until you've read the book -- he has all the details worked out.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
This is also the argument against Star Trek transporters. You die each time you use one but a new person is created at the other end that thinks it's you. You don't know anything about this, of course, you've just been disintegrated!
Pssst....reality check time! Star Trek aint real-it's just a TV show and those are just actors.