We have recently investigated the current and prospective situation of what in general is called brain uploading (or mind uploading, or whole brain emulation). It involves transferring an entire mind (or shall we say the contents of a brain) to a computer, thus allowing the brain to live forever, albeit in another ‘body’. The explosive development of digital technology, accompanied by the growth of biotechnology, is not foreign to this newly found lifeline on eternity, and what seemed (and still mostly does) a science-fiction a while ago, has crept up into the science world and has interested digital technology scientists and businessmen, neuro-scientists, philosophers as well as astrophysicists and cosmologists.
It looks like a daunting task, especially if we take the direct model approach of building a digital version of the brain connection. Our brain has some 86 billion neurons, each of which is connected in multiple different ways to other neurons.
To this end,a number of organizations have carried out some preliminary work, such as working to map the brain, or develop computer-brain interfaces, or build digital models of rodents’ brains. Not to mention Elon Musk’s Neuralink. But a Russian scientist and entrepreneur, D.I. Dubrovsky, is going beyond all that and investing on Cybernetic Immortality. As he writes,
the main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality.
We have not investigated these approaches further, but we believe they will one day produce results, as we surmise that some form of memory upload is coherent with Pataphysics, which operates in the realm of imaginary solutions. We believe that before humanity reaches the level of immortality mentioned above, the use of digital twins underpinned by Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable a rudimentary memory upload before the end of this decade.
A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world physical product, system, or process, which performs similarly to the real item it is ‘twining’. These systems are used during product development cycle and lend themselves to be used in simulation, integration, and testing. The digital twin is not the product, but it behaves like one in its environment. It provides the expected outputs in lieu of the real product, which is being developed.
Our premise is that we can transfer memories of living individuals (souvenirs, specific decisions, opinions, ...) to a digital twin. Then we would run a parallel AI system that collects data on a daily basis in real time about what the person does, decisions that he/she makes, opinions that she/he has. Through Machine Learning Algorithms, AI will develop intelligence about the mind of the person making those decisions. Over time the machine will be able to predict the response or the decision the person will make when faced with the situation. Once this level is reached, the twin can reproduce the same interaction as the real person. Consequently, if/when the person passes away, the digital twin could replace the person (albeit at a sub-optimum level) in daily interactions, such as greeting family members, responding with words of advice, etc...
Albeit still very rudimentary, this approach will provide a certain level of afterlife, mostly destined at giving comfort to the deceased person’s families and close friends. As a last step, the entire ‘memory’ can be uploaded into an Emotional Robot (many models of which are coming to the market) which then can move around.
In closing, we raise two potential philosophical issues/questions about such a development:
- How would the digital twin feel when it finds out the ‘real’ brain has passed away?
- How would the person’s entourage feel about the presence of the twin of the departed?
March 3, 2023, Cambridge,
Berta Seintan, PhD & Charlene Wardin, PhD