"The future ain't what it used to be."

Ray Kurzweil, Google, and quantom computing: Where will tech head next?

Nika_W84

Timekeeper
Starter Topic:

Ray Kurzweil, futurist and inventor, is currently employed by Google. Google has been busy acquiring subsidiary companies that specialize in fields such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. It has also recently acquired the D wave. (Quantum computer) What will Google create with its newly purchased companies and advanced quantum computer with Kurzweil at the helm? Are you at all concerned with Ray's agenda for the future? Will we finally be able to reverse engineer the brain? Will that development lead to uploading of entire brain "data bases" onto a cloud like storage system, that can then be downloaded into a new organic host? If that is even possible, will the new "you" still be YOU?
 
Not to mention if your pet dies just go to the cloning center, and your pet's new, all over again. What if a child dies? Would the distraught parents be allowed to clone little Jimmy? What if all this development that the government will have full use of, turn into the movie, "1984" ?
 
The whole thing of human cloning is too slow. You have to bear the cost of creating a foetus and bringing up what is in effect a unique individual with it's own personality. After all an identical twin is a natural clone, from the same egg. Yet identical twins still develop different personalities.
I think 3d bioprinting will end up being a more spooky way of replicating an organic host to put an AI in..

The next step: 3D printing the human body - Telegraph
 
?? Has anybody else actually seen Surrogates? I seem to have watched a different film altogether.


I saw Surrogates. Cool flick. I've been wanting to watch it again with the wifey this time. Kind of a thriller. The setting was a dystopian future where the rich basically stayed at home lying down in an apparatus that allowed them to control a robot in the real world that more often than not looked like an airbrushed version of themselves or even someone else altogether, even of another gender. Action revolved around a plot behind the creator of the "surrogate" robots.
 
Starter Topic:

Ray Kurzweil, futurist and inventor, is currently employed by Google. Google has been busy acquiring subsidiary companies that specialize in fields such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics. It has also recently acquired the D wave. (Quantum computer) What will Google create with its newly purchased companies and advanced quantum computer with Kurzweil at the helm? Are you at all concerned with Ray's agenda for the future? Will we finally be able to reverse engineer the brain? Will that development lead to uploading of entire brain "data bases" onto a cloud like storage system, that can then be downloaded into a new organic host? If that is even possible, will the new "you" still be YOU?


Btw, one common criticism I've read about Kurzweil's futurist theories is that exponential change doesn't continue, but rather level's off. Seems that advances will not likely progress at the astronomical rate he proposes...
 
Starter Topic:
Will that development lead to uploading of entire brain "data bases" onto a cloud like storage system, that can then be downloaded into a new organic host? If that is even possible, will the new "you" still be YOU?

This may be a bit off topic (or maybe right on topic, who knows?) but I recently read an article regarding the Star Trek transporters. The gyst was the "send" unit deconstructs the passenger and catalogs the atomic makeup then transmits the data, not the passenger, to the "recieve" unit which essentially prints out a perfect copy. The "send" passenger is effectively killed in the process and a new "receive" version, memories intact, is created on the other end. The article was asking the question of teleporting as a viable means of transportation but also brought up the idea that moving the contents of your "mind" to another body in fact destroys whatever would be the "consciousness/soul/whathaveyou" and that the remaining bits are just data. Its kinda like listening to a CD of Kurt Cobain- you only hear an exact, digital replica of his voice but the original is long dead. You, as who you are now, ceases to exist and the new you has no idea it happened.

I personally think copying the ones-and-zeroes of the electronic bits that make up a brain doesnt change anything pertaining to the current consciousness occupying that brain. You can move enough data to convince the target shell it is the same person but I doubt it will not be a continuation of the original consciousness.
 
This may be a bit off topic (or maybe right on topic, who knows?) but I recently read an article regarding the Star Trek transporters. The gyst was the "send" unit deconstructs the passenger and catalogs the atomic makeup then transmits the data, not the passenger, to the "recieve" unit which essentially prints out a perfect copy. The "send" passenger is effectively killed in the process and a new "receive" version, memories intact, is created on the other end. The article was asking the question of teleporting as a viable means of transportation but also brought up the idea that moving the contents of your "mind" to another body in fact destroys whatever would be the "consciousness/soul/whathaveyou" and that the remaining bits are just data. Its kinda like listening to a CD of Kurt Cobain- you only hear an exact, digital replica of his voice but the original is long dead. You, as who you are now, ceases to exist and the new you has no idea it happened.

I personally think copying the ones-and-zeroes of the electronic bits that make up a brain doesnt change anything pertaining to the current consciousness occupying that brain. You can move enough data to convince the target shell it is the same person but I doubt it will not be a continuation of the original consciousness.

Perhaps the immortal soul itself is the consciousness. Only need a means of separating the soul from the body. So a compatible replicate body would be all that is needed to trans-locate. Usually death is a way to separate the soul from the body. Perhaps there is another less harmful way to accomplish that.
 
This may be a bit off topic (or maybe right on topic, who knows?) but I recently read an article regarding the Star Trek transporters. The gyst was the "send" unit deconstructs the passenger and catalogs the atomic makeup then transmits the data, not the passenger, to the "recieve" unit which essentially prints out a perfect copy.

That is the hook in the movie and novel "Timeline." Michael Crichton gets it correct. This is a quantum process and there is no such animal as a "perfect copy." In the story there's a limit to the number of times his time travelers can use the gadget because of cumulative reassembly transcription errors as a result of quantum uncertainty.

According to the "official" guides that writers use when writing Star Trek stories the object is reduced to a particle beam of some sort and physically moved through space and reassembled at another location. Sometimes that was to another transported unit but normally to a planet or a space in another ship, i.e. no receiver. They get it wrong and ignore the transcription error problem (though Dr. McCoy has his issues with the device).
 
I would think a "bit-for-bit" exact copy could be theoretically possible as we are able to perform this type of exact data replication on a very small scale today in computer science. Even so, it would really weird me out to think of dying and having my exact copy brought to life elsewhere. I think I would side with McCoy, even moreso. Aah, the question of the soul.
 
I would think a "bit-for-bit" exact copy could be theoretically possible as we are able to perform this type of exact data replication on a very small scale today in computer science. Even so, it would really weird me out to think of dying and having my exact copy brought to life elsewhere. I think I would side with McCoy, even moreso. Aah, the question of the soul.

Matter isn't computer bits. At the subatomic scale quantum effects begin to rule the domain.

You have to think about how you would go about looking at individual subatomic particles, particles that are in constant motion, and defining their exact location. The first problem is defining their exact location when? The second problem is
keeping track of their locations until then (then being when you want to do something to the particles). Knowing where it was isn't very helpful now. To do that you'd have to know its exact velocity and precise location. The problem is that the more precisely you measure one the less you know about the other. Knowing the exact location of a particle means you have no information about its location and instant later. This is quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is a statistics based form of physics. These aspects of quantum mechanics have no relationship to more accurate measuring devices. They are part and parcel to the fabric of reality.

Last, how do you actually look at a subatomic particle? You have to shine some "light" on it (some sort of electromagnetic radiation). But subatomic particles are tiny, so tiny in fact that their classical diameter is much, much less than the wavelength of visible or even ultraviolet light. In order to "see" them you have to light them with X-rays or even gamma rays. But that's akin to lighting them up with high velocity armor piercing tank rounds. You scatter the particles. Not a very precise measurement of their locations.
 
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