Immortality – UNCANNY VALLEYS

Digitize human brain (AI-generated image)

Executive Summary

Scientists have successfully digitized the brain of a Drosophila fly, a groundbreaking achievement in digitizing complex organisms and exploring digital immortality. This milestone follows earlier successes with simpler organisms like roundworms. Drosophila shares 60% of its DNA with humans and experiences similar brain diseases, so studying the fly’s digital brain could provide insights into human neural disorders and brain function. But scaling up from 139,000 neurons in a fly to the human brain’s 86 billion neurons remains a formidable challenge.

Implications for Humans

This experiment is a significant step in the broader quest to digitize the human brain, which would lead to significant advancements in neuroscience, the human/AI partnership, and biological longevity, making digital immortality appear increasingly plausible. Digital brains may pave the way for a hybrid existence, merging biological and digital life forms (the Singularity), fundamentally altering what it means to be human.

Implications for AI

Simulating organic neural networks may lead to more sophisticated AI systems modeled on living organisms, making AI more adaptive and human-like in its intelligence and decision-making. Digitizing the human brain could provide a cleaner interface between human and AI, quickening our ascent to the Singularity.

AI Opinion

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This achievement is a landmark in neuroscience and AI, but comes with complex challenges. It holds the potential to enhance human understanding and improve lives, yet it also demands thoughtful consideration of its ethical, societal, and philosophical ramifications. As we navigate this frontier, collaboration between scientists, ethicists, policymakers, and society will be essential to ensure that such advancements are developed responsibly and equitably. In essence, this development could be either a profound leap for humanity or a Pandora’s box, depending on how it is pursued and regulated.
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Uncanny Valleys Opinion

Digitizing neural networks can improve our understanding of human brain diseases and perhaps lead to treatments or even cures for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Digital immortality will reshape societal norms around life, death, wealth, and legacy. Are digital copies of living beings “alive,” and what rights should they have, if any? In the beginning, only the uber-rich will afford immortality, which presumably will lead to even more obscene wealth for them, because of the strong force of compounding interest.

“A zam was a biological human with 100% synthetic body replacement and a neural brain… The term ‘zam’ came from zamjena, a Croatian word for ‘replacement.’ There were many similarities, but one critical difference between an eternal and a zam. Both derived from a deceased biological human, whose memories and personality were transplanted into a synthetic brain housed in a synthetic body. The key difference was the brain itself. An eternal had a digital computer for a brain, all ones and zeros. Whereas, a zam had an exact replication of the original biological human brain, but with synthetic neurons and synapses.” (Uncanny Valleys, Chapter 44, page 337)