
You Won’t Survive a Merger with AI - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/76/language/you-wont-survive-a-merger-with-ai
======
foxyv
The I that is me doesn't survive a nights sleep. Every night my brain does a
re-shuffle of my personality and memories creating a new incremental version.
Same goes for head injuries and reading a book. I'm still the me from before,
just more so, and not. I have a vague feeling of continuity but it's almost
non-existent. I am so different from myself ten years ago as to be a distinct
person.

I have an intuition that any direct brain interface with an outside neural
network would require small incremental changes similar to what we experience
when we sleep. Then again I also have the feeling that early adopters of this
tech will be lucky to get away with their minds intact.

Maybe in later versions it will be like turning on a switch and it's just
there. Like opening your eyes or waking up from a dream. But I doubt that will
happen in the next century.

~~~
musicale
This sort of meditation fills me with existential dread, namely the idea that
every moment you are annihilated and replaced by a new person with most of
your old memories, and nobody even notices.

And when "I" wake up I'm like, wait why do I have all of these bills to pay,
and why is everything in such a mess? Clearly nobody asked me about any of
that.

Sorry, future "me" \- if you had kept me around and not insisted on replacing
me wholesale, I might have been able to help you out, but given that you're
getting rid of me and taking all of my stuff I think I have no reason to help
you in any way.

~~~
foxyv
I come to terms with this by realizing that the alternative is true horror.
Can you imagine eternal stagnancy as a disembodied human soul? Never
experiencing anything new, endless bliss or pain would be indistinguishable or
result in withdrawal and self-annihilation. At least if my body dies, it will
still change over time and become something else.

I think of a soul as the wave of my life passing through time. It will
continue after I die, the ideas and things I create will propagate through
time like the wind of a butterfly's wings touching the souls and lives of
those around me. It could create a hurricane, or dissipate into meaningless
tiny changes. Eventually though chaos mixes the souls of everyone into
entropy.

------
no1youknowz
I firmly believe that the brain is a form of quantum computing. I also believe
that moving the consciousness from a 90yo close to death to a cloned body
containing a newly grown brain or then later on a silicon based one will be
possible in the future.

The best TV show that encapsulated this was Travellers[0]. A damn good show
which was cancelled just when things were getting interesting.

I would say it's possible by entangling the particles from the source brain to
the recipient one. Once completed the original source is destroyed, so it's
effectively a move and not a copy.

There's also the 6th day movie [1]. Imagine being able to spin up multiple
copies of yourself and 100x your own output? I believe that will also be
possible in the future. Probably outlawed due to lots of ethical reasons.
But... I'd like to think why not? Me[1] lives on earth. Me[2] lives in Mars,
Me[3] lives on a moon in the asteroid belt. Me[4] is currently navigating out
of the solar system. Since all the brains are entangled. I'd know everything
in an instant.

How do deal with that is another story. Unless I'm AI at that point, which
means the collective are all just a bunch of VMs anyway :P

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99LZwZmSoNo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99LZwZmSoNo)
[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VP44dGIi9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VP44dGIi9c)

~~~
Engineering-MD
Can you expand on your entanglement idea? I’m not sure how it would work. You
could enable particles without connecting neural systems functionally
(although I’m not sure we can show qualia/consciousness is actually located).

The issue of course is that due to the nature of subjective experience it
cannot be empirically tested.

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NotSammyHagar
I found the 'worm' of time and space view in the article that is not preserved
by recreation to be irritating and naive. Go to sleep on a plane and you are
effectively transported to a new place 'disconnected' from where you were. It
doesn't cause confusion or entirely new beings to come into existence that
would be confusing to the "old you".

Whether these kind of people like this pretty distinguished author likes it or
not, there will be scanning, uploads, and eventually entire worlds where
people live.

The world of Reamde and "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" look like the extremely
obvious and likely future world. These heavy philosophical pieces are also
extremely unpersuasive. They come across like something from a bizarre
academic world that is disconnected from what is likely in reality. And I'm an
academic (but in cs, not this stuff).

------
jakedata
I'd notice the difference, said Arthur.

No you wouldn't, said Frankie mouse, you'd be programmed not to.

------
mikelyons
Identifying with the self is the source of all suffering, attachment to the
illusion of being a person. So wouldn't this be a technological nirvana? Edit:
Especially given that selfishness is the root of all evil.

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nullc
Post changed the article title.

Fortunately for justice, the guilty poster won't survive contact with my
complaint: they'll be perpetually changed by it to a new and different person.

------
darsnack
I’ll leave this here: [https://t.co/jA1kz8QMvt](https://t.co/jA1kz8QMvt)

~~~
NotSammyHagar
The ideas in that article suffer from the same lack of creativity that a lot
of these philosopher written pieces also suffer from (including the main
article here). Someone will program the ai, the robot, to want to survive, to
want to destroy competitors. It's frankly incredibly irritating to read things
like like that sci am article you give, because there's some bizarre belief
that only how "things evolve" will govern them. Well I got news for all people
that support this naive view - people will program, adapt and alter the ai's
to act like they would desire, at least as a starting point. Whether it's some
drone that kills people autonomously, or a future potential ai, someone will
have influence over it's beliefs and point it in a direction that they desire.

~~~
darsnack
That’s the entire point of the article. The AI itself will not develop a need
to harm. Users/creators of the AI will program that into it. But AI by itself
even with creators of the best intentions has real problems that affect
society today. And talking about a hypothetical future has distracted the
public narrative from the real problems with AI that we need to solve now.

