<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:DengXian;
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:"\@DengXian";
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>I’ve had thoughts similar to yours. The brain is so flexible that it should be possible to connect artificial neurons to our existing neurons. The natural and artificial ones would begin communicating and their functions would coalesce. This may be a way of integrating new body parts such as a tail that would eventually develop its own unique sensations after the natural neurons integrate their functionality with the artificial ones.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0in'><b>From: </b><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat</a><br><b>Sent: </b>Thursday, December 16, 2021 7:20 PM<br><b>To: </b><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">ExI chat list</a><br><b>Cc: </b><a href="mailto:rafal.smigrodzki@gmail.com">Rafal Smigrodzki</a><br><b>Subject: </b>[ExI] The quick and easy path to uploading</p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>The identity thread has been a perennial recurrence on Exi for decades and it doesn't seem to make much progress. Recently, there were some developments in neuroscience and deep learning that might shed light on the subject of personal identity.</p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Obviously, our identity is not determined at the level of individual atoms and molecules, and any discussion at that level is just barking up the wrong tree. But, which is the lowest level of organization of the brain that encodes a person is still a valid question. For a long time I thought that the sum total of individual synapses, their strengths and the pattern of connections between neurons was the level relevant to encoding personhood. About 15 years ago or so, I changed my mind, and felt that the details of synaptic connections are not really important, as long as the neural network as a whole processes information in an equivalent fashion, as measured by inputs and outputs. I wrote here on the list that it would be OK for my upload to use a generic visual cortex rather than an exact copy of my own visual cortex scanned from my brain. I even ventured that I might be able to squeeze my person into a terabyte or so, with generic neural networks doing 99.99% of creating my subjective experience, and only 0.01% of the upload structure being determined by information from my brain scan.</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>This attitude to self has been recently bolstered by two developments:</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>The first new finding is that the pattern of synaptic connections in a human brain is more dynamic than previously believed. Every time you access a personal memory, the network creates new synapses and eliminates old ones, yet subjectively we have a feeling of remembering the same events. My earliest memories are from the time I was about 3 years old, and I have revisited them countless times. The patterns of synapses I use to encode those memories have probably changed multiple times but the subjective experience feels stable.</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>The second development comes from deep learning. It turns out it is possible to construct functionally equivalent copies of neural networks by training a new network on a sample of inputs and outputs of the original network. The copy will have a completely different pattern of connections but it will almost always produce the same outputs from the same inputs, if trained appropriately.</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>From these two developments I conclude that it should be much easier than previously expected to upload a person using a brain machine interface (BMI), without the need to scan the microstructure of the brain.</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>To upload you first need to create a high-level image of the long-range cortical and subcortical connections, perhaps using a high-resolution DTI scan. Then you need to use a Neuralink device to insert a bunch (million? hundred million?) electrodes into the white matter of the brain, probably also into the basal ganglia and record the neural traffic going in and out of every cortical column and basal ganglia neural cluster. No need to directly read the synapses, which are changing all the time anyway. Use the neural traffic to train millions of deep learning modules arranged in a larger structure based on the DTI image. Keep this running for some time (weeks? months? years?) until the deep learning does its job and is capable of running a functional copy of the mind in shadow mode. As the biological network starts shutting down due to aging, the digital copy keeps taking over more and more of the processing and gradually replaces the original, potentially keeping a puppet body going, and, of course, branching out into virtual realities.</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>I thought that uploading was a far prospect, requiring an insane number of doublings in computing power and an insanely laborious process of post-mortem brain scanning. Now I think that uploading may be a realistic option after only a few orders of magnitude of growth in BMI bandwidth. I might have as much as 20 - 30 years of function left in my current substrate, and in this time, Saint Elon willing, uploading could become commercially available. Of course I would be an early adopter.</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>Cryonics is still an important part of the reasonable person's preparations for the future but for people in their fifties it hopefully won't be ever needed.</p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal>Rafal</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>