Genome + connectome = you. Wait, who are you?

I have never cared for science fiction set in some distant future.  When my high school friend was reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories, I gave it a try and gave it up for good. When it is set that much into the future, it is as imaginary or as real as are the events in the Ramayana!

On the other hand, I love science fiction that makes me peek just a little bit out into the future. A future that can easily become the case in a few decades, if not a few years.  Almost always, these stories then provide a fictional background in order to explore the real issue--what it means to be human, and what if that sense of humanity is threatened by supremely intelligent computers.

A few weeks ago, it was one of those opening the curtains just a tad in order to peek into what might be a possibility.  I watched the movie Her.  The "her" is not a real person but the operating system that communicates via free language with the user. In its communication it is so human-like that the main guy begins to talk and relate to her as if she is his best friend.  Meanwhile, "she" keeps learning and improving herself--remember, this is exactly what artificial intelligence entails.  "She" becomes so human-like that he begins to have a relationship with her and refers to her as his girlfriend.



It is not that difficult to imagine such a man-machine interaction within a mere few more years.  After all, even now talk with plenty of machines.  When we call customer support, we bark so many words to, yes, a computer.  Some talk with Siri, which comes with iPhones.  Right now, they are a tad too dumb, but they are getting smarter by the day.

As we rush towards this artificial intelligence, it is not impossible to imagine that at some point those machines will be smarter than us. We will then find it to be advantageous to simply merge with the machine. Welcome to singularity!

At that point, it could become possible to transfer--upload--our memories into a machine.  And continue to live via the machine. And live forever.

Imagine a future in which your mind never dies. When your body begins to fail, a machine scans your brain in enough detail to capture its unique wiring. A computer system uses that data to simulate your brain. It won’t need to replicate every last detail. Like the phonograph, it will strip away the irrelevant physical structures, leaving only the essence of the patterns. And then there is a second you, with your memories, your emotions, your way of thinking and making decisions, translated onto computer hardware as easily as we copy a text file these days.
That second version of you could live in a simulated world and hardly know the difference. You could walk around a simulated city street, feel a cool breeze, eat at a café, talk to other simulated people, play games, watch movies, enjoy yourself. Pain and disease would be programmed out of existence. If you’re still interested in the world outside your simulated playground, you could Skype yourself into board meetings or family Christmas dinners.

If you think this is not possible, well, think again. How much of your memory already exists as bits and bytes?  Those photographs as your memory? The videos of your people?  Your thoughts?  We have been on this digital memory path for a while already.

The author of that above excerpt continues:

It is tempting to ignore these ideas as just another science-fiction trope, a nerd fantasy. But something about it won’t leave me alone. I am a neuroscientist. I study the brain. For nearly 30 years, I’ve studied how sensory information gets taken in and processed, how movements are controlled and, lately, how networks of neurons might compute the spooky property of awareness. I find myself asking, given what we know about the brain, whether we really could upload someone’s mind to a computer. And my best guess is: yes, almost certainly. That raises a host of further questions, not least: what will this technology do to us psychologically and culturally? Here, the answer seems just as emphatic, if necessarily murky in the details.
It will utterly transform humanity, probably in ways that are more disturbing than helpful. It will change us far more than the internet did, though perhaps in a similar direction. Even if the chances of all this coming to pass were slim, the implications are so dramatic that it would be wise to think them through seriously. But I’m not sure the chances are slim. In fact, the more I think about this possible future, the more it seems inevitable.

Murky in the details is one heck of an understatement when it comes to understanding what this technology will do to us psychologically and culturally. It is difficult to predict beyond Singularity.

Science being science, it marches on and there is no turning back.

 In 2005, two scientists, Olaf Sporns, professor of brain sciences at Indiana University, and Patric Hagmann, neuroscientist at the University of Lausanne, independently coined the term ‘connectome’ to refer to a map or wiring diagram of every neuronal connection in a brain. By analogy to the human genome, which contains all the information necessary to grow a human being, the human connectome in theory contains all the information necessary to wire up a functioning human brain. If the basic premise of neural network modelling is correct, then the essence of a human mind is contained in its pattern of connectivity. Your connectome, simulated in a computer, would recreate your conscious mind.

Yep, like your genome there could be your connectome. You can become a complete digital being.  A brave new world, indeed!

The essay is a wonderful read.  The examples he gives on the murkiness when it comes to psychology and culture will make you think a lot.  Here is one of those examples:

Then there are the issues that will arise if people deliberately run multiple copies of themselves at the same time, one in the real world and others in simulations. The nature of individuality, and individual responsibility, becomes rather fuzzy when you can literally meet yourself coming the other way. What, for instance, is the social expectation for married couples in a simulated afterlife? Do you stay together? Do some versions of you stay together and other versions separate?

All that is from the scientific world--the author "is a neuroscientist, novelist and composer. He is a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University."  Meanwhile, there was a related theme that I came across in the fictional world last night when reading the latest issue of the New Yorker.  T.C. Boyle's short story (sub. req.) is all about a father and his teenage daughter. His wife (her mother) had left them years prior and had moved in with a guy in Hong Kong.  The story is about the father, primarily, reliving the past via a gadget--something like a video game box.  The title of the story is The relive box.  The user--the father, for instance--can tell the box to go to a certain date and time in the past and then watch his own life as an observer.

Where are we headed, right?  All we know is there is no way but onward.  I want to hold on all those aspects of what it means to be human. I want to hold on tightly the humans who matter to me. In this real world, and not via some simulation as ones and zeros. Maybe the Luddites were not that wrong!

In any case, the fictional world is already ahead of us--by thinking of modern day Luddites in this context. Coming soon to a theater near you, straight from Hollywood: Transcendence.

Have a good weekend. Even if it is only with your operating system ;)