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A startup just copied an entire biological brain neuron by neuron put it inside a computer and it woke up and started walking and eating. Nobody programmed it to do that. No AI involved.

Eon Systems mission is not to build artificial intelligence It is to copy real biological brains and run them inside computers

But here's the problem nobody talks about. Every attempt before this either had a brain with no body or a body controlled by AI training nobody had ever connected a real biological brain to a real simulated body and just let it run A brain without a body is useless A body without a real brain is just a robot

Here's where it gets insane, Eon took a fruit fly sliced its brain into 7000 sections under an electron microscope mapped every single one of its 125000 neurons and 50 million synapses copied that wiring into a computer attached it to a simulated body and turned it on No training No programming No machine learning

The digital fly walked It groomed itself It foraged for food purely from its own biological wiring with 95% accuracy

But the craziest part Eon is now going after the mouse brain 70 million neurons 560 times more complex After that humans

This is not artificial intelligence This is a real mind running inside a machine The fly was just the proof of concept

> A startup just copied an entire biological brain neuron by neuron put it inside a computer and it woke up and started walking and eating. Nobody programmed it to do that. No AI involved. > Eon Systems mission is not to build artificial intelligence It is to copy real biological brains and run them inside computers > But here's the problem nobody talks about. Every attempt before this either had a brain with no body or a body controlled by AI training nobody had ever connected a real biological brain to a real simulated body and just let it run A brain without a body is useless A body without a real brain is just a robot > Here's where it gets insane, Eon took a fruit fly sliced its brain into 7000 sections under an electron microscope mapped every single one of its 125000 neurons and 50 million synapses copied that wiring into a computer attached it to a simulated body and turned it on No training No programming No machine learning > The digital fly walked It groomed itself It foraged for food purely from its own biological wiring with 95% accuracy > But the craziest part Eon is now going after the mouse brain 70 million neurons 560 times more complex After that humans This is not artificial intelligence This is a real mind running inside a machine The fly was just the proof of concept
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[–] • 0 pt (edited )

Something would wake up. It wouldn't be me though.

Consciousness is an event. A chain of reactions across billions of neurons. The reactions stop, I stop. Because that is what I actually am; the reactions, not the matter nor the energy. Those are only the substrate.

You could copy the map of my neurons and start a new event that acted an awful lot like me, but it would be separate event with a rather hard discontinuity.

An engineering professor named Bart Kosko recognized this a long time ago and his solution was to replace one neuron at a time. That way the event that is you never actually stops but immortality is achieved at the end of the metamorphosis to 100% cybernetic neurons.

I think his essay was called "chipping away at your brain".

Other people still reject this and say it's a cute way of ignoring a robot slowly killing you by eating your brain.

I'm undecided. I still don't understand the nature of subjective experience well enough to say.

I'm 100% confident that straight copy would not be me though.

[–] • 0 pt

Bart Kosko is wrong though, as your neurons and their interconnections are evolving and changing all the time. It would end up as a mess.

I'm 100% confident that straight copy would not be me though.

It wouldn't be you, but for that copy, it would feel exactly like it is you.

[–] • 0 pt

Bart Kosko is wrong though, as your neurons and their interconnections are evolving and changing all the time. It would end up as a mess

With any near term technology, yes probably.

It wouldn't be you, but for that copy, it would feel exactly like it is you

Yeah.

We're kind of assuming digital simulations do have a subjective experience and aren't just philosophical zombies (en.wikipedia.org).

But if it can feel, it would feel like me. I just don't have much interest in conjuring up an entity like that though. I admit to having great interest in my personal immortality though.

Do you want there to be a digital ghost of you to persist after the real you dies?

I guess there could be some reasons for it. Like if you're working on a project that takes thousands of years to complete like terraforming Mars or something. Or if you want a mechanical ghost to look after your great great grand children.

[–] • 1 pt

I want none of these. When I die I will either go to heaven or go back to the same state I was before I was conceived and born. I will only know for sure the day it happens.