Dr. Marvin Minsky — A.I. Pioneer & Mind Theorist. Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT, Media Lab http://GF2045.com/speakers.
As soon as we understand how the human brain works, we should be able to make functional copies of our minds out of other materials. Given that everything is made of atoms, if you make a machine, in some sense it is made of the same kinds of materials as brains are made but organized either in very different ways or fundamentally the same ways.
Interestingly, if you are going to copy the organization of a particular human mind maybe you should make a dozen of them. There is no particular limit on how many copies to make and how the future society will treat them.
When will all these great things happen of overcoming death and making people more intelligent and turning ourselves into machines with replaceable parts so that suffering will disappear? Many great science fiction writers have written well about the future of human minds and what will happen if we eliminate death and people can live forever and we keep growing and so forth.
In my view, as we still do not know very much about how exactly the brain represents knowledge and does reasoning, it is very hard to predict how long it will take to do things like that. I however am fairly confident that, sooner or later, we will. Given that, in all likelihood, it does not require the breaking of any known rules of physics, and while it clearly represents a formidable science and engineering challenge, it is not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when” — it is a matter of time.
For more information about the GF2045 congress, please visit http://www.GF2045.com
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