[extropy-chat] Warwick: Could future computer viruses infecth umans?

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Tue Nov 16 19:38:16 UTC 2004


--- nsjacobus at yahoo.com wrote:
> Certainly. Again, it would depend totally on how the
> interface works. 
> If the interface has the ability to "interpret"
> biological data and 
> then to dynamically generate an appropriate code
> version of the 
> bio-data, then one could imagine that a biological
> virus could be 
> interpreted/compiled into some bizarre message/code
> etc on the computer 
> side thus resulting in a virus.

Pardon me, but that is complete and utter ignorance.

A neural interface interprets *ELECTRICAL*, not
*BIOLOGICAL*, data: neural impulses and signals on
circuits.  It translates thoughts, not proteins.
True, neurotransmitters do convey part of the neural
impulses, and computer signals can be transmitted
electronically - but, again, it's pure information.  A
virus may be primarily "information" encoded in DNA or
RNA, but it also contains a mechanism to infect - in
computer terms, an executable portion, however minimal
in proportion to the information that may be.  The
nature of this executable portion is inherently
different between biological and comptuer viruses -
which is why the one can not translate into the other,
even if an infected person's brain is linked to a
computer.

Alternately, think about this: why are Linux machines
utterly safe from Windows viruses?  Different OSes;
a Linux machine has nothing that can even run a
Windows virus, unless the Linux machine has set up
specific emulation.  The difference between either OS
and the human body's "OS" is far greater still.  In
this context, a neural interface is the equivalent of
an IM client: it can transmit and receive information,
but that by itself does not inherently expose one OS
to viruses that can run on the other, even if said
viruses get transmitted over the connection.  To make
them compatible would require either radically
redesigning the human body to be like the computers
we have invented, or vice versa - neither of which is
likely to happen before we have the ability to upload
minds onto computers.  (An uploaded mind running on a
computer is a different story, but that's not what
we're talking about here.)

Now, if there was an "emulator" - some device to
auto-construct biological things based on input
commands - and this was in any way controllable
through the neural interface...one could possibly do
that, but that's not the same as the neural interface
itself nor is it an inevitable, or even likely,
consequence, because that's just asking for trouble.
It'd be kind of like making military control systems
directly accessible, and thus theoretically hackable,
from the public Internet.  Note that the US military
explicitly forbids doing that with its own systems for
this reason.

Hollywood may accept baseless technobabble as reality,
but this list tries to focus on actual science, which
really does define some things as impossible no matter
how plot-convenient they might be.  (Which makes it
more interesting than most Hollywood productions, IMO,
since one can not just wave one's hands to make all
problems go away.)



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