Science fiction movies have made us believe that almost anything is possible, and every year as technology progresses things that sounded impossible start to sound a lot more probable. The latest idea to be seemingly within reach is to upload your human mind into a computer, transforming you into a digital conscience. The science behind it is called neurotechnology, and although it may sound like just a variation of Artificial Intelligence but with a bit more flare, the process is a bit more nuanced than that.
Preserving who we are and being a part of the future is not a new idea, after all, we are all familiar with cryogenics, but this has always been about preserving “us” as we are, not just the essence of who we are housed in a computer.
Still, while this sounds like a fun idea and it is technically within the realm of possibilities, it is unlikely that it will happen any time soon. Dobromir Rahnev, Associate Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology explains that “Just because a concept seems terribly, unimaginably difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” But that “As a brain scientist who studies perception, I fully expect mind uploading to one day be a reality. But as of today, we’re nowhere close.”
The human brain is one of the most complex structures we have access to in the universe. It works in mysterious ways, performs miraculous recoveries and rewires itself after trauma in incomprehensible ways. Recreating that in code would be almost impossible today, although it gets easier with every advance in tech.
How would uploading the human mind work
Well, first things first is to understand that if we replicated the structure of the human mind in a computer, we would also need to give the computer the same stimuli that the brain needs to function and do so properly. We would still need ways to access simulated sight, sound, touch, smell, and all the tiny body signals like hunger, pain, and sleep cycles. To not have this would be equal to permanent sensory deprivation, which we have proven time and time again is a very effective form of torture if you want to render someone insane.
The virtual environment would need to feel real and even tiny glitches could mess with your mind. This concept has already been explored in plenty of TV shows and movies and it is just as true of we want to extrapolate it to real life. The problem is that the tech is just not there. We do not have the necessary computing power and that capturing the brain’s structure is a mammoth task that we are not ready to undertake.
The brain holds about 86 billion neurons, all smaller than a pinhead, and trillions of connections all of which would need to be traced and replicated, otherwise it would not be the human brain. Then we would need to find a way to replicate how each neuron behaves, as they change constantly and adapt to new environments and stimuli.
Some think we could shortcut the whole process if we just understood how the brain actually does its thinking, others believe that the key will be to slowly replace neurons with artificial ones, until your entire brain is synthetic. This could technically be easier, but right now replacing one neuron is impossible, let alone billions.
That said, technology is snowballing fast and both Artificial Intelligence and computing power are improving every year. And with billionaires throwing money at anything that hints at immortality, mind uploading probably won’t lack funding. Many billionaires appear glad to part with lots of their money for a shot at living forever. As Rahnev concludes “I would be shocked if mind uploading works in the next 100 years. But it might happen in 200 – which means the first person to live forever could be born in your lifetime.”