Educating artificial minds
Educating artificial minds posted in Equipment, Cybertech and Weapons forum comment posted by Orc Hi all, and Derek in particular,
Recent computer game example of mind uploading and what could go wrong.
See: I Am Future Cozy Apocalypse Survival available on Steam (no I don't work for the developers, I don't get kick backs, etc.).
Basically the Survivor wakes up in a future Earth where he (or she) is the only human left, heck, probably the only mammal. The only other animals around are various fish and other assorted seafood, earth worms (bait and possible processing into bio-mass that your Survivor can then laboriously eat), and some nasty sea gulls (who I suspect are stealing my earthworms behind my back, and possibly had something to do with the Apocalypse).
Anyway, all the people in the game (so far) except the Survivor is an Upload, mostly into fridge or juke box sized machines. UNICORP apparently compensated the family of an upload generously. There are human-shaped androids around, or rather there were but it is unclear as to whether they were uploads. All the androids I've encountered so far are non-functional, or have been hanging on by the last electron to deliver a message to their master (the Survivor).
The uploading process is apparently lethal to the human (or at least that is impression I've gotten so far) and was strongly supported by the Idea that 'Digital Immortality' was the next stage in Evolution. Until the villains of the game pitched up: the electrocites 'eat' electricity, which kind of makes uploads their food. So much for immortality.
Augmenting human minds that then make the transition to digital as the brain cells start to age is an idea I've seen (read) before. Might be Banks, might be Asher, might be someone else entirely. One story that is definitely Banks is about a individual stuck half a planet away from the nearest rescue. He hops in a suit of power armor and starts walking. Except the armor is not good for a half -planet trip and it is forced to slowly consume the human body, to keep him alive.
Eventually the armor is uploading chunks of the wearer over its own memory, just to make sure that the human 'survives'. In the Banks-verse if your data survives then you effectively survive.
I also recall reading an anthology of SF probably from the 70s, basically on uploads or back-ups, effectively time travelling via the tapes that one's mind and related software were copied onto (it was the 70s and tapes were still the only game in town for computer storage, I would HATE to think how many metric tons loads of tape would actually be needed to take a snap shot of the human mind). One story involves a back-up individual bumping into another version of himself. Another was about the backups being used effectively as entertainment, they were restored to physical but very mechanical bodies and socialized with the 'modern' crowd, who found all their ancient manners and memories to be rather amusing and extremely quaint.
There does seem to be a consensus or some kind of gut feeling in more than a few SF writers that uploads or copies of actual human minds are needed to make a real Mind. I don't know if that is just a biological prejudice or ... something else. There are very few examples of programmed or trained Minds that don't end up going crazy or deciding that humanity needs to go away (what was Skynet in the Terminator series? Programmed or trained?).
Anyway, way too much babbling sorry.
Regards
Orc
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