2050 predictions.... Downloadable Brain.. Computers with human intelligance!!

[IceRaptor]

London, England -- By the middle of the 21st century it will be possible to download your brain to a supercomputer, according to a leading thinker on the future.

Ian Pearson, head of British Telecom's futurology unit, told the UK's Observer newspaper that the rapid advances in computing power would make cyber-immortality a reality within 50 years.

Pearson said the launch last week of Sony's PlayStation 3, a machine 35 times more powerful than the model it replaced, was a sign of things to come.

"The new PlayStation is one percent as powerful as the human brain," Pearson told the Observer. "It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain."

Pearson said that brain-downloading technology would initially be the preserve of the rich, but would become more available over subsequent decades.

"If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine," he said.

"We are very serious about it. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT."

Pearson also predicted that it would be possible to build a fully conscious computer with superhuman levels of intelligence as early as 2020.

IBM's BlueGene computer can already perform 70.72 trillion calculations a second and Pearson said the next computing goal was to replicate consciousness.

"We're already looking at how you might structure a computer that could become conscious. Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that's what we're trying to design in computer."

Pearson said that computer consciousness would make feasible a whole new sphere of emotional machines, such as airplanes that are afraid of crashing.

By 2020 Pearson also predicted the creation of a "virtual world" of immersive computer-generated environments in which we will spend increasing amounts of time, socializing and doing business.

He said: "When technology gives you a life-size 3D image and the links to your nervous system allow you to shake hands, it's like being in the other person's office. It's impossible to believe that won't be the normal way of communicating."

But Pearson admitted that the consequences of advancing technologies needed to be considered carefully.

"You need a complete global debate," he said. "Whether we should be building machines as smart as people is a really big one."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/23/brain.download/

So what do you think about this...

My personal View is that its going a bit too far and that its morally wrong.... Playing God is not easy...
There will be an infinate number of problems with downloable brains...
What is the film The Matrix will become a reality....

If i could i'd run into the labs where these "SuperComputers" are being developed and blow them all up now
I hope i'm long dead before things come to this...

[calgar]

mmm....... cool!

although, computer viruses will become a much more serious threat!! :lol:

[Yan]

Ahem. Claiming that a playstation 3 is one percent as powerful as a human brain is IMHO ricicolus - the whole point of the human brain is to be ever changing and ever learning - purely physically that is. A computer is fixed from a hardware perspective, so the comparison is totally off.
The power of the brain has little to do with its number of calculations per second and more to do with association and randomness. It might however be true that too mutch exposure to a PS3 might dissolve your brain to such a degree that a comparison is possible

I am not saying we will never come that far, nor that the timeframe he specifies is unreasonable, just that it will take a complete different approach to technology if we are ever to get there.



BTW all the rumours circulating about me actually being an escaped prototype playstation 4 are totally not true. But please don´t tell sony I´m here

[GrahamGarside]

I've gotta say this is wishful nonesense. I'll eat my brain never mind my hat on this one if it comes to be. Not that I don't think there we ever be a computer capable of performing as many calculations as the human brain, but the programming of the thought process is not gonna happen for a long time, I doubt humans will even program it, I'd expect the only way to do so would be by some artificial form of random mutating programming.

And the whole downloading our mind into it, even if you could replicate the exact same layout of the brain, every thought feeling and memory, that wouldn't be a transfer, it would be a copy, and it may well think it's you, but that opens a whole can o' worms on the whole subject of awareness and soul etc..

And why would an airplane need to be afraid of crashing? surely leaving emotion out of it and just making sure it's programming won't crash would be best? A computer doesn't need to enjoy adding 1+1 to do so, it just will

[dsio]

I would like to point out that this particular man, is from British Telecom, and his qualifications probably extend little further than burger flipping.

[Pitch]

Hmm. Human Patch V1.1.

[benighted]

It sounds kind of like "Ghost in the Shell" where humans have cyberbrains and you can't tell some androids from humans. BUt it would be nice to have a cybernetic maid... or mistress.

[dsio]

lol, spyware in my brain!

wonder if you can still blame internet explorer for it?

[GrahamGarside]

Head of futurology. So his job is basically to say 'In 10/20/50 years time this is what we will be using' I'd hate to see the look on his face if he was wrong, can't be much job security in that line of work aye, he's up the creek without a paddle if in 50 years he's wrong, I'd be going thorugh the job papers now if I were him.

[Gizmo]

20 years ago, people were predicting that computers would be able to understand and respond to human voice commands on a conversational level. That still isn't here, and it is only fairly recently that we've figured out that the whole premise on which current voice recognition technology is built is completely wrong.

I fully expect that we will discover that building a machine capable of reproducing human thought will be far, FAR more complicated that simply being able to perform trillions of calculations per second.

[IceRaptor]

An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, was launched on Monday.

The “Blue Brain” project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM’s Blue Gene design.

The hope is that the virtual brain will help shed light on some aspects of human cognition, such as perception, memory and perhaps even consciousness.

It will be the first time humans will be able to observe the electrical code our brains use to represent the world, and to do so in real time, says Henry Markram, director of Brain and Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytecnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

It may also help in understanding how certain malfunctions of the brain’s “microcircuits” could cause psychiatric disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and depression, he says.

Until now this sort of undertaking would not be possible because the processing power and the scientific knowledge of how the brain is wired simply was not there, says Charles Peck, IBM’s lead researcher on the project.

“But there has been a convergence of the biological data and the computational resources,” he says. Efforts to map the brain’s circuits and the development of the Blue Gene supercomputer, which has a peak processing power of at least 22.8 teraflops, now make this possible.

Mapping the brain
For over a decade Markram and his colleagues have been building a database of the neural architecture of the neocortex, the largest and most complex part of mammalian brains.

Using pioneering techniques, they have studied precisely how individual neurons behave electrically and built up a set of rules for how different types of neurons connect to one another.

Very thin slices of mouse brain were kept alive under a microscope and probed electrically before being stained to reveal the synaptic, or nerve, connections. “We have the largest database in the world of single neurons that have been recorded and stained,” says Markram.

Neocortical columns
Using this database the initial phase of Blue Brain will model the electrical structure of neocortical columns - neural circuits that are repeated throughout the brain.

“These are the network units of the brain,” says Markram. Measuring just 0.5 millimetres by 2 mm, these units contain between 10 and 70,000 neurons, depending upon the species.

Once this is complete, the behaviour of columns can be mapped and modelled before moving into the second phase of the project.

Two new models will be built, one a molecular model of the neurons involved. The other will clone the behavioural model of columns thousands of times to produce a complete neocortex, and eventually the rest of the brain.

The end product, which will take at least a decade to achieve, can then be stimulated and observed to see how different parts of the brain behave. For example, visual information can be inputted to the visual cortex, while Blue Brain’s response is observed

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7470

intersting but.... i doubt it'll be ready in a decade...

[Daniel ~]

So whenl will I be able to UPLOAD a brain...was that a stupid question... then you understand why I just had to ask! ":O}

[Daniel ~]

Why would we want to?

Humans have no problem using each other like machines. Seems a lot cheaper just to buy some kids for whatever job you have in mind. Even if you HAD to educate them, much cheaper to manage and much fewer copy write problems in their development.

Besides humans are re-cycle-able even if they aren't environmentally friendly. Really, sometimes the old simple solutions are best...

[GrahamGarside]

I could see the benefits of making a copy (I don't accept you can transfer) for instance a person like einstien or meatloaf only come along once in a while, and we can enslave their thoughts for lifetimes to come.
But there will be more practicle ways of establishing imortality than putting yourself in box (the irony)

[Daniel ~]

Oh yeah, name one. Such is the vanity of man! LOL

[GrahamGarside]

a vapochill body suit!

[Daniel ~]

You'd be lucky to last the life of this planet! ":O}