The question of the ultimate goal is a good one. I don’t find arguments of value based on utilitarian values to be very convincing. In contrast I prefer enlightened self interest (other people are important because I like them and feel safe in a world where they are valued). So for me, some form of immortality is much more important than my capabilities (or something else’s in the case of AI) in that state.
In addition, the efficiency gains of being able to ‘step through’ a simulation of a system and the ability to perform repeatable automated experiments on such a system, convey enormous benefits (arguably this capability is what is driving our increasing productivity) so being able to simulate the brain may well lead to exponential improvements in our understanding of psychology and conciousness.
In terms of performance concerns, there is the potential for a step change in the economics of high performance computing, while you may only be willing to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a computer to play games with, you may well take out a (lifetime?) mortgage to ensure you don’t die. In terms of social consequences one could imagine that the world economy would switch from supporting biology to supporting technology (it would be interesting to calculate the relative economic cost of supporting a simulated person rather than a biological one).
Recent work with brain machine interfaces also points towards the enormous flexibility of the mind to adapt to new inputs and outputs. With the improved debugging capability of simulation, mental enhancement becomes substantially more feasible. As our understanding of such interactions improve, a virtual environment could be created which convincingly provides the illusion of a world of limitless abundance.
And then there is the possibility of replication, storing a person in a willing state and reseting them to that state after they complete a task. This leads to the enormous social consequence of convincingly disproving notions such as the soul, free will etc. and creating a world where lives would lose their value in the same way that pirated software does. Such an event has the potential to change our entire culture, perhaps more than any other event, at least equivalent to the reduction in the influence of religion as a result of evolutionary theory and other scientific developments.
The question of the ultimate goal is a good one. I don’t find arguments of value based on utilitarian values to be very convincing. In contrast I prefer enlightened self interest (other people are important because I like them and feel safe in a world where they are valued). So for me, some form of immortality is much more important than my capabilities (or something else’s in the case of AI) in that state.
In addition, the efficiency gains of being able to ‘step through’ a simulation of a system and the ability to perform repeatable automated experiments on such a system, convey enormous benefits (arguably this capability is what is driving our increasing productivity) so being able to simulate the brain may well lead to exponential improvements in our understanding of psychology and conciousness.
In terms of performance concerns, there is the potential for a step change in the economics of high performance computing, while you may only be willing to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a computer to play games with, you may well take out a (lifetime?) mortgage to ensure you don’t die. In terms of social consequences one could imagine that the world economy would switch from supporting biology to supporting technology (it would be interesting to calculate the relative economic cost of supporting a simulated person rather than a biological one).
Recent work with brain machine interfaces also points towards the enormous flexibility of the mind to adapt to new inputs and outputs. With the improved debugging capability of simulation, mental enhancement becomes substantially more feasible. As our understanding of such interactions improve, a virtual environment could be created which convincingly provides the illusion of a world of limitless abundance.
And then there is the possibility of replication, storing a person in a willing state and reseting them to that state after they complete a task. This leads to the enormous social consequence of convincingly disproving notions such as the soul, free will etc. and creating a world where lives would lose their value in the same way that pirated software does. Such an event has the potential to change our entire culture, perhaps more than any other event, at least equivalent to the reduction in the influence of religion as a result of evolutionary theory and other scientific developments.