Technology of the Body and Mind

Eventually, we’re gonna have the tech to augment the body. Maybe cure paralysis, blindness, and all sorts of physical illnesses and conditions. But this could also apply to the mind. You could possibly use tech to rectify mental illnesses, but it poses some questions. What happens when they malfunction? Can they be hacked? Some of our modern technology that resides inside the body can be hacked to kill people already. Pacemakers that run on Bluetooth, to be specific. So, I ask you this: would you be willing to accept the risks to augment your body and mind? Why or why not?

>>68879 Arguably smartphones are already augmented with the body. It's like people have offloaded a ton of basic cognitive brain processes onto those things and can no longer function without them. Stuff like pacemakers have been around for years and there neurological implants out there for everything from deafness to autism. Personally, I think the mind/body dichotomy is in a state of breakdown and has been for a while now, although it lingers on in our culture like a zombie for some reason. That break down is the big change this new tech will inevitably bring. It will definitely create an even more powerful form of corporate totalitarianism than exists now so we need to find new weapons. >would you be willing to accept the risks to augment your body and mind? Why or why not? I'm so paranoid I have trouble even eating out and I won't answer phone calls or read emails, so I'm definitely not letting someone put stuff inside me unless I know what it is, how it works and how secure it is.

>>68880 >so I'm definitely not letting someone put stuff inside me unless I know what it is, how it works and how secure it is. This, have the devices be open source and auditable/actively audited from the hardware all the way up and then I might think about it. Otherwise it's a hell no for me.

>>68880 >Arguably smartphones are already augmented with the body. It's like people have offloaded a ton of basic cognitive brain processes onto those things and can no longer function without them. Stuff like pacemakers have been around for years and there neurological implants out there for everything from deafness to autism. Personally, I think the mind/body dichotomy is in a state of breakdown and has been for a while now I think about this constantly. There was this one interesting Q&A session with Donald Knuth from 10 years ago or so where someone asked the question: Do you think we will ever create an actual artificial intelligence One capable of self awareness and able to increase its own intelligence exponentially His response: I think if that ever happens, we won't know it People are going to start to think like computers. And there'll be more combinations and relationships between people and computers up to the point where finally when people are left out of the equation it'll be unnoticeable.

>>68885 That's paraphrasing by the way not an exact quote

>>68880 The dichotomy between the body and the mind is an illusion anyway. Ironically it actually makes the singularity more likely because people then are thinking in terms that allow for separation from the body. I'm not saying it's impossible, but consider this. I think the first "Artificial" intelligence would actually be a human that slowly ship-of-Theseus themselves to become completely in silica lifeform while having complete continuity of consciousness (I'll sidestep the debate on conciseness for this thougt experiment). You might argue that it's not really an AI, but then what if you make a complete copy of them, maybe even tweak some parameters to make them a distinct person. An "Echo" let's say. We'll probably have such echoes of many prominent figures, people will start using all of the historic records and DNA to make Echoes of people that died. Kinda reminds me of the Mega Man X lore, because I think it's mentioned that DNA sequences are part of their personality coding together with the normal binary. It's not that AI is mowing towards us, we may be moving towards AI. What do you think?, Would an Echo be considered an AI? What if you grow a nervous system using stemcells and then incorporate it into a synthetic body? Is that an AI? I could go on but I'll wait for a response to direct my ramblings a little.

>>68890 First and foremost: the brain, the location of our consciousness, is made up of lots and lots of electric impulses that create our personality, our memory, and everything about us. I would think that if the intelligence is made of neurons, it would be creating organic life. If it was purely mechanical, made of metal, it would be artificial life. An organic being inside a mechanical shell would still be non-artifical, I believe. Think of it like wearing a suit of armor; it doesn’t really change what you are inside, it’s just a method of moving and accomplishing tasks. It becomes more muddy if one alters their brain, bringing up the question of if they’re more machine or man. I think if you make a physical, organic body for a dead person, a clone, if you will, it wouldn’t be the same person, but it would be an artificial, organic lifeform.

>>68892 Not really sure I agree. I'm a biologist by trade so defining what is alive and what kind of life it is is my speciality. First of all brain is a electrochemical in it's workings but it does have some mechanical elements too. An artificial intelligence made in silica with neuronal networks would be mostly electric, but you could easily introduce chemical components because that can help with some processes that can be emulated without chemical reactions but much less efficiently. Second is that although all life that we know of right now is DNA and cell based (viruses being an exception) it is not strictly so. If you can make a nano machine equivalent of a LUCA (Last known common ancestor for all living things) and let it evolve in the environment without human control we can just make a new philogenetic tree (something like nanozoa) and study them

>>68894 So would you say an AI wouldn't be an Echo but rather the illusion of an Echo? Kind of like how there are organisms that look highly similar but are genetically very different?

>>68908 Well that depends If they would have the DNA of the original person used to model their phenotype then no. If there's no DNA to recover then yes, sure. Mimicry is usually used in nature for protection. One of the species is poisonous or dangerous in other ways so the one that copies tries to coast on the instinct telling predators (mostly birds) to stay away.

>>68909 Oh yeah I think I get what you mean now. What you're describing almost seems necessary. Not a biologist but I feel like the brain and how people think is not a simple and formal process. I feel like our existing AI models are kind of crude approximations and I sometimes wonder if AI research underestimates the needed complexity. If the standard for an Intelligence is a human... some people might argue that any AI without some sort of electrochemical component is not a true AI. Or maybe at least.... that kind of hybrid is the most intuitive way to build one, rather than emulating the biology of a brain in software.

>>68911 Artificial life form without a body would certainly be impossible in my understanding. Artificial intelligence in the other hand... Why not, there are concepts like Solaris (the whole planet is a living thinking thing) It would certainly help with the whole alliment thing. Yes AI doesn't need human limitations and emotions, but I feel it would be curious to try, so having an ability would be something that both parties can benefit from immensely

>>68879 >would you be willing to accept the risks to augment your body and mind? First off, why? I personally don't have any reasons to put some metals and wires inside me, since I'm already very healthy. Even someone who isn't as healthy can make use of natural and organic methods to have a better, stronger body and mind. And that's not even considering the potential digital security risks that come with those silly gadgets. >Pacemakers that run on Bluetooth That has to be the most stupid tech I've ever seen. You could easily make something like a USB port for local communication with the device, but now you have to worry about the security of whatever device you're connecting that thing to. Your body is entirely self-contained. If something goes wrong with it, you will know, and you have plenty of ways to make it more "secure" from outside threats. If your hacky brainchip gets hacked, the hacker will probably be smart enough to prevent you from communicating with it via (((bluetooth))) or some other f#ggy sh#t, and you will be completely left in the dark. Do you really wanna risk not knowing what's happening inside you? Or to not know who or what you are? And to be honest, even if you have schematics, source code, everything regarding the tech you have inside you, you still have to ask yourself if your really, REALLY need it. They can be used as very useful last resorts (pacemakers, hearing aids, brain implants for people with severe neurological complications...), sure, but the transhumanist cyberpunk reddit people just want to mod their bodies because it's cool, not because they need, which is a terrible way to make those kinds of decisions.

>>68918 >Your body is entirely self-contained. If something goes wrong with it, you will know, and you have plenty of ways to make it more "secure" from outside threats. Not really, this statement makes a lot of assumptions regarding the environment that the body inhabits. It may generall6be so if you live on Earth with access to fresh food and water, and even then there are hundreds of ways to infiltrate your body or remotely impact it.

>>68879 There is just no point in this unless you can somehow make it all on your own. Othereise your body is inevitably going to be controlled by someone else. Think about how fuarrrking invasive a simple iphone is, do you really want that inside of you?