/sci/ - Science & Math

Alright, /sci/, I had a little thread last night (this morning) about life-simulations. After some discussion, I was able to pin-point the exact name of the topic I was trying to learn about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading

Now I'm sure we have all thought about this in some form or another (Matrix, amirite?), but the implications of such an experiment would be so significant, I can't believe it doesn't have more hype surrounding it. Especially with how close we are to successfully emulation a human brain.

Basically, this 'should' end the religious debate once and for all. Although it won't, it should. If you successfully copy a competent brain into a computer, and then 'run' the brain, it will have conscious, and thus, life. Now, I am sure someone can easily come up with a counter argument, but if you talked to one of these brains, and the brain was able to successfully talk back, and was able to learn and to even feel, than there is no difference between that and a biological brain. And then, if you really wanted to get into details, you could upload that brain into a some sort of robot and make a human from scratch. AND, and this here is an assumption, if we had the technology available, we could upload the brain into another 'blank' brain or just create the biological brain from scratch. Slap that in a body, and you have undeniable proof of life as well as a human made copy of somebody.

I find this absolutely fascinating, and apparently it is pretty close to becoming reality. What are your thoughts, /sci/?

>>4765972

>An artificial neural network described as being "as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain" was run on an IBM blue gene supercomputer by a University of Nevada research team in 2007. A simulated time of one second took ten seconds of computer time. The researchers said they had seen "biologically consistent" nerve impulses flowed through the virtual cortex. However, the simulation lacked the structures seen in real mice brains, and they intend to improve the accuracy of the neuron model

its already happening, pic related

>>2567681
op here, got a really good pic

What does /sci/ think about The Singularity? For those of you that have not been enlightened yet, The Singularity refers to the moment in the future that computer technology becomes more capable than human brains ourselves. At this point, computers will begin self-improving themselves at such a fast rate, that we, with our inferior human speed, won't be able to stop them. If the computer's logic is advanced enough, they may even be able to think "Hey, a robot world would be a lot better than a human world" and wipe us out.

Of course, there are precautions to be taken (such as Asimov's three laws of robotics), but The Singularity is an inevitable moment of humankind. This moment will change our lifestyles forever. For once and for the rest of the universe, humans are no longer the most advanced and forward-thinkers on the planet; we have created things that are far more capable than we will ever be. The future of technology after The Singularity will be unbelievable. Rather than us coming up with technologies ourselves, the computers will do it for us. They will be smarter and more capable of ANYTHING that we can only dream of doing.

I strongly believe that it will happen within our lifetimes, too. What's your take on this, /sci/?

>>1394408
>>1394401