Re: Anders Sandberg argues that brain scanning techniques using a straightforward technology (slicing and electron microscopy) combined with Moore’s law will allow us to do WBE on a fairly predictable timescale.
Well, that is not unreasonable—though it is not yet exactly crystal clear which brain features we would need to copy in order to produce something that would boot up. However, that is not a good argument for uploads coming first. Any such an argument would necessarily compare upload and non-upload paths. Straightforward synthetic intelligence based on engineering principles seems likely to require much less demanding hardware, much less in the way of brain scanning technology—and much less in the way of understanding what’s going on.
The history of technology does not seem to favour the idea of AI via brain scanning to me. A car is not a synthetic horse. Calculators are not electronic abacuses. Solar panels are not technological trees. Big Blue was not made of simulated neurons.
It’s not clear that we will ever bother with uploads—once we have AI. It will probably seem like a large and expensive engineering project with dubious benefits.
Re: Anders Sandberg argues that brain scanning techniques using a straightforward technology (slicing and electron microscopy) combined with Moore’s law will allow us to do WBE on a fairly predictable timescale.
Well, that is not unreasonable—though it is not yet exactly crystal clear which brain features we would need to copy in order to produce something that would boot up. However, that is not a good argument for uploads coming first. Any such an argument would necessarily compare upload and non-upload paths. Straightforward synthetic intelligence based on engineering principles seems likely to require much less demanding hardware, much less in the way of brain scanning technology—and much less in the way of understanding what’s going on.
The history of technology does not seem to favour the idea of AI via brain scanning to me. A car is not a synthetic horse. Calculators are not electronic abacuses. Solar panels are not technological trees. Big Blue was not made of simulated neurons.
It’s not clear that we will ever bother with uploads—once we have AI. It will probably seem like a large and expensive engineering project with dubious benefits.