I would be very surprised if uploading was easier than AI
Do you mean “easier than AGI”? Why? With enough computing power, the hardest thing to do would probably be to supply the sensory inputs and do something useful with the motor outputs. With destructive uploading you don’t even need nanotech. It doesn’t seem like it requires any incredible new insights into the brain or intelligence in general.
Uploading is likely to require a lot of basic science, though not the depth of insight required for AGI. That same science will also make AGI much easier while most progress towards AGI contributes less though not nothing to uploading.
With all the science done there is still a HUGE engineering project. Engineering is done in near mode but very easy to talk about in far mode. People hand-wave the details and assume that it’s a matter of throwing money at a problem, but large technically demanding engineering projects fail or are greatly delayed all the time even if they have money and large novel projects have a great deal of difficulty attracting large amounts of funding.
GOFAI is like trying to fly by flapping giant bird wings with your arms. Magical thinking.
Evolutionary approaches to AI are like platinum jet-packs. Simple, easy to make, inordinately expensive and stupidly hard to control.
Uploading is like building a bird from scratch. It would Definitely work really well if people could just get all the bugs out, but it’s a big, complicated, insanely expensive, and judging by history there will be lots of bugs.
Neuromorphic AI is like trying to build a bird while looking for insights and then building an airplane when you understand how birds work.
FAI is like trying to build a floating magnetic airship. It sounds casually like something that is significantly more likely to be possible than not but we have very little idea in practice how its done, nothing in nature to imitate, and no promise that the necessary high-level insights required to pull it off are humanly achievable. OTOH, since we haven’t looked very hard as a species, we also have no good reason to think they aren’t so it basically falls to your priors.
I think the primary point overlooked when thinking about uploads is that there are milestones along the way that will greatly increase funding and overall motivation. I’m confident that if a rough mouse brain could be uploaded then the response from governments and the private sector would be tremendous. There are plenty of smart people and organizations in the world that would understand the potential of human uploads once basic feasibility had been demonstrated. The engineering project would still be daunting, of course, but the economic incentive would plainly be seen as the greatest in history.
Sorry, but with today’s industry and government sectors I don’t buy it. Not for uploads, not for aging. This awareness already happened with MNT, but it didn’t have the effect in question.
Successfully uploading a mouse brain—and possibly also the radical extension of the lifespan of a mouse—would seem to me like it’d get as much media attention as Dolly the Sheep did. Has there been some MNT demonstration that would’ve gotten an equivalent amount of publicity?
Though judging from the reaction to Dolly, the reaction might be an anti-uploading backlash just as well as a positive one.
There’s awareness of MNT, but feasibility of the more extreme possibilities hasn’t been demonstrated adequately for heavy investment. The roadmap from mouse brain to human brain is also much, much clearer than the roadmap from here to full fledged MNT.
It doesn’t seem like it requires any incredible new insights into the brain or intelligence in general.
I think that’s why Vassar is betting on AGI: it requires insight, but the rest of the necessary technology is already here. Uploading requires an engineering project involving advances in cryobiology, ultramicrotomes, scanning electron microscopes, and computer processors. There’s no need for new insight, but the required technology advances are significant.
Do you mean “easier than AGI”? Why? With enough computing power, the hardest thing to do would probably be to supply the sensory inputs and do something useful with the motor outputs. With destructive uploading you don’t even need nanotech. It doesn’t seem like it requires any incredible new insights into the brain or intelligence in general.
Uploading is likely to require a lot of basic science, though not the depth of insight required for AGI. That same science will also make AGI much easier while most progress towards AGI contributes less though not nothing to uploading.
With all the science done there is still a HUGE engineering project. Engineering is done in near mode but very easy to talk about in far mode. People hand-wave the details and assume that it’s a matter of throwing money at a problem, but large technically demanding engineering projects fail or are greatly delayed all the time even if they have money and large novel projects have a great deal of difficulty attracting large amounts of funding.
GOFAI is like trying to fly by flapping giant bird wings with your arms. Magical thinking.
Evolutionary approaches to AI are like platinum jet-packs. Simple, easy to make, inordinately expensive and stupidly hard to control.
Uploading is like building a bird from scratch. It would Definitely work really well if people could just get all the bugs out, but it’s a big, complicated, insanely expensive, and judging by history there will be lots of bugs.
Neuromorphic AI is like trying to build a bird while looking for insights and then building an airplane when you understand how birds work.
FAI is like trying to build a floating magnetic airship. It sounds casually like something that is significantly more likely to be possible than not but we have very little idea in practice how its done, nothing in nature to imitate, and no promise that the necessary high-level insights required to pull it off are humanly achievable. OTOH, since we haven’t looked very hard as a species, we also have no good reason to think they aren’t so it basically falls to your priors.
I think the primary point overlooked when thinking about uploads is that there are milestones along the way that will greatly increase funding and overall motivation. I’m confident that if a rough mouse brain could be uploaded then the response from governments and the private sector would be tremendous. There are plenty of smart people and organizations in the world that would understand the potential of human uploads once basic feasibility had been demonstrated. The engineering project would still be daunting, of course, but the economic incentive would plainly be seen as the greatest in history.
Sorry, but with today’s industry and government sectors I don’t buy it. Not for uploads, not for aging. This awareness already happened with MNT, but it didn’t have the effect in question.
Successfully uploading a mouse brain—and possibly also the radical extension of the lifespan of a mouse—would seem to me like it’d get as much media attention as Dolly the Sheep did. Has there been some MNT demonstration that would’ve gotten an equivalent amount of publicity?
Though judging from the reaction to Dolly, the reaction might be an anti-uploading backlash just as well as a positive one.
MNT == molecular nanotechnology?
Ayup.
There’s awareness of MNT, but feasibility of the more extreme possibilities hasn’t been demonstrated adequately for heavy investment. The roadmap from mouse brain to human brain is also much, much clearer than the roadmap from here to full fledged MNT.
If you want to learn more about WBE and the challenges ahead, this is probably the best place to start:
Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap by Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg
I think that’s why Vassar is betting on AGI: it requires insight, but the rest of the necessary technology is already here. Uploading requires an engineering project involving advances in cryobiology, ultramicrotomes, scanning electron microscopes, and computer processors. There’s no need for new insight, but the required technology advances are significant.