Text | Yan Xuan
Source | Intelligent Relativity (ID: aixdlun)
Human beings have an obsession with immortality. From the ancient emperors indulging in alchemy, to the development of AI, genetic engineering, frozen human bodies and other technologies in modern society, it seems to show people's desire for immortality.
How can human beings achieve immortality? In addition to the genetic cloning scheme provided by modern technology, the American Martina also proposed the idea of "mind cloning"-based on the digital traces (thought files) that people leave in computers and the Internet, including chat records, photos and videos, and other data, and generates a human consciousness similar to that of the human brain through the same function of the human brain "thinking software", which is the cloned mind.
That is to say, through the transplantation of thinking, people can live forever. Recently, one company has ventured into this field, and the American start-up technology company NECTOME has tried to "upload the brain" through surgery to permanently save ideas digitally. So far, 25 people have booked the service with a deposit of $10,000.
There is no doubt that if memories can be uploaded and thoughts can be transplanted, this will have a very profound impact on human society. When the plot of the Memory Master is mapped to real life, how should we view the technology?
The terminator of cerebral dementia
The use of mind transplantation will benefit all patients with advanced and chronic diseases, the stripping of mind and body means that people's consciousness retention time will be extended, and the dead will also have the cost of waiting for medical progress, which is similar to the frozen human body, except that the beneficiaries of mind transplantation can continue to interact with society after the body is not self-dominated. Therefore, this technology is particularly significant for patients with cerebral dementia.
Alzheimer's disease robs many elderly people of their normal intelligence, but it does not damage the body of the elderly. If such patients are able to separate their thoughts onto a computer, they can maintain self-awareness during treatment.
It's a bit like an artificial heart that separates the work of a patient's heart, which will sustain the patient until a new heart donor is found. Eventually, Alzheimer's patients can re-transmit their thoughts to the brain that has been cured. Even though the body is still being treated, the patient can continue to interact with the family.
It is not only People with Alzheimer's who benefit, but also children with intellectual disabilities. In China, the number of newborns with intellectual disabilities is about 1.1 million per year, and the "marginal mentally retarded" population between intellectual disability and normal (generally based on IQ below 70 as a confirmation criterion) is even larger, about tens of millions.
In general, there are 4 causes of intellectual disability. That is, genetic factors, genetic mutations such as congenital metabolic abnormalities belong to this category; prenatal damage, including intrauterine infection, hypoxia, etc.; birth injuries during childbirth, including asphyxia, intracranial hemorrhage, premature babies, etc.; and finally, postnatal diseases, including meningitis, encephalitis, head trauma, cerebrovascular accidents, etc.
For irreversible brain injuries, there is currently no good treatment in the medical field. It seems like a good choice to strip the patient's consciousness and then use regenerative medicine to recover from brain damage and use gene editing to re-edit genes in the body.
Thinking about space tourism
Elon Musk, CEO and chief technology officer of Spacex Space Exploration Technologies, has said, "History can be divided into two paths. The first is that we will be confined to Earth forever until we face some extinction event. The other is to become a space species, a multi-planetary species. I think the second path is a more exciting future. ”
More than half a century has passed since humans first flew into space, but only a very small number of people have entered space so far. At present, if individuals want to go to space, they must pay a high $20 million (about 137 million yuan), which is difficult for ordinary people to bear.
At present, some companies are working hard to develop space travel projects, so that many ordinary people can realize the dream of traveling in space. However, sending people to space still faces the influence of multiple factors, such as gravity, the oxygen that people rely on for survival, eating and excretion in space, and how to return.
In fact, we don't have to be so troublesome, if the mind can be transplanted, we can completely change the "posture" to go into space and let our consciousness go up first.
It's easier to carry a chip carrying some kind of information into space than to take people into space. NASA's probe InSight will land on the martian ground in November 2018, while 2429807 name has also been brought into space. Bringing these names to Mars is a silicon wafer of only 0.8 square centimeters, which is formed into rows of letters through a beam of electrons.
Where is God assisting
Last month, scientists in Guangzhou discovered the code of cell fate, which can make cells "rejuvenate", let cells return from the adult somatic cell state to the pluripotent stem cell state that can be directed differentiation, and provide a "seed" cell source for regenerative medicine.
The advantage of regenerative medicine is that by improving the regenerative microenvironment, patients use their own regenerative repair ability to guide regeneration, and the regenerated tissue is part of the human body itself. Just this year, Ms. Fang, a 34-year-old patient with premature ovarian failure, gave birth to a healthy baby boy at Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital. This is the world's first case of a stem cell composite collagen scaffold for the treatment of premature ovarian failure in a clinical study of infants.
The development of regenerative medicine has given the medical basis for thought transplantation. In the future, with the continuous advancement of regenerative medicine technology, as long as the right microenvironment is built, human tissue may be regenerated – which also means that people with thought transplants can get a healthy brain.
And artificial intelligence is also indispensable in this field. How is human tissue regenerated? Scientists are always looking for incisions in the bodies of different creatures. For example, planarians. Planarians are tiny insects that have an unimaginable regenerative ability, and when they are cut off, they can re-grow a complete body. This ability makes them a popular research subject in regenerative medicine.
But the sheer volume of data is tiring for scientists. Inspired by the theory of evolution, scientists at Tufts University in the United States have developed an AI system that helps to fully excavate the vast amount of experimental data of developmental biology and build a complete model to explain this phenomenon.
Recently, scientists have begun to use artificial intelligence to observe the behavior of hydra. The hydra is a tiny animal associated with jellyfish and corals. In the past, researchers studied the animal's nervous system to find out which parts of its brain drive its behavior, and now, researchers are using AI to track all of those behaviors.
The team used an AI algorithm to automatically annotate the hydra's behavior, including all swings, pivots, stretches, and bends. They learned that regardless of environmental conditions, such as light, temperature, or the amount of food nearby, these species are actually involved in only six basic behaviors.
In the end, the researchers found that even if the surrounding environment changes are more complex, the hydra can continue to work as usual. With this in mind, if we can discover how the hydra's nervous system is connected to behavior, we may be able to subject the brain stripped of consciousness to a better extreme therapeutic environment. These include refrigeration technology, electricity stimulation and more.
Barriers to mind transplantation
It is undeniable that the transplantation of thinking will inevitably involve ethical issues. In the existing medical field, human trials on BCI (brain-computer interface) include informed consent, benefits, risk analysis, etc., but there is no appropriate code of ethics and laws to regulate the problems after the widespread application of BCI in the future.
The transplantation of thinking will also face questions such as security, privacy, "mind reading", "memory manipulation", etc., especially in the process of implantation of thinking, whether consciousness can maintain its integrity is also a question to be considered. In the movie "Memory Master", the protagonist caused a series of storms because of the implantation of wrong memories.
What is even more frightening is that in order to maintain the integrity of thinking and memory, such a consciousness stripping operation, the brain seems to have to remain alive, and once stripped away, is the body without consciousness still a real life? Stripping consciousness while alive seems more like a high-tech euthanasia.
NECTOME attempts to preserve human memory through surgery, which requires the brain to be injected with a deadly chemical while it survives. That is, the participants underwent surgery while they were alive, one neuroscientist commented, "It looks like this company is inducing them to commit suicide in order to store their brains." ”
In addition to ethical issues, there are also medical issues. Currently, there is not enough evidence that memory will be present in dead human tissue. Martina also throws out the question in the book "Virtual Man", is it possible for the mind to continue to exist after the death of the human body, so as to achieve the immortality of the mind?
Finally, the theory of intelligent relativity (aixdlun) also wants to say a philosophical question, is it really necessary to preserve our brains and minds? The ideas that are truly worthy of a hundred lifetimes will only appear in the washout of the torrent of history, Cao Xueqin's "defeat and prosperity, the death of the family is not a matter of relatives", Li Bai "I was born to be useful, and I will return after thousands of dollars are scattered", and these literary works are not the representations of their thoughts. If we can use technology to preserve ideas, how can we chew on the cultural heritage of our predecessors with relish. (Reprinted with permission)
This article is from: Intelligent Relativity