Comments

1
Meh. I'll be long dead by then. I don't give a shit.
2
Ray Kurzweil has been preaching the gospel of the singularity for a looooong time. While this might be true, I'd find it more believable if the claim came from most anyone else.
3
I wish I was here to see the SCOTUS rule on law enforcement downloading your mind when you are arrested.
4
I like Kurzweil's synthesizers, why has he been so damned annoying for the last 10-20 years? Has he always been this obnoxious and I just wasn't paying attention?
5
Doomed for an eternity of LOLcats and "bet you can't name a dwarf without a Y in his name" memes. Or basically, what you do surfing at work now....
6
Why do some people think this is a good thing? It is as if the nerds of the world, so uncomfortable being human, are now trying to engineer their way out of humanity and drag the rest of us with them.
7
Great news! Now I'm off to work in my flying car!
8
Seems more likely that we'll use biological technology to replace failing organs--maybe our whole bodies--with tissue cloned from our own cells.

If you thought that transferring your files to a Windows 7 computer was painful, just imagine uploading your brain to a Microsoft cloud server. You'll lose your goddamned mind.
9
Hm, assuming this doesn't just become an option for the insanely wealthy - in which case, who WANTS to hang out for eternity with the likes of Paris Hilton, Sam Walton's great-grandchildren and the Saudi Royal Family? - I'd give it a bash, but only on the condition that they then stuff my virtual consciousness into a deep-space probe and shoot me off towards the nearest habitable exoplanet. Might take 20,000 years to get there, but it would still be worth it.
10
Kurzweil has been saying this for 20+ years now. No idea why Google hired him, he's a kook.
11
This is based on an oversimplified understanding of how the human brain works, how it stories memories, and how we use it to think. It's not a hard drive or a computer, as helpful as an analogy those might seem.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/20…
12
What @7 said.

Aren't we supposed to be living in Moon colonies by now too?
13
I was going to say, while it may be possible to upload memories it seems like we're a long way off from becoming digitally immortal unless computers will be able to process personality and emotion. Which I doubt.
14
so you upload your mind then you change it rendering the upload useless, so you upload the changed mind to correct everything then you change it again rendering the information doubtful. Seems like there is really no point to doing this.
Do most people think their experiences are interesting and need to be preserved. Letting go is probably one of the most important experienced a person should learn. If you cant and expect to live as long as you can or preserve your self in some way for as long as you can seems like some form of addiction to life. There is a time where you should not be afraid to let go and teach others that their time will also come by letting them experience your letting go.
Preserving things and living beyond a reasonable time is based in fear of dying, a culture perpetuated by people that have seem to emotionally not understand that letting go is ok.
Preserving grandpas memories might be the worst thing you ever did once you realize he was hiding a massive terrible secret that should have been resolved when he was actually alive. But if, in the future his memories are placed in a computer that actually has a conscience then you are always faced with the dilemma of letting him die.
Just let go.
15
I don't believe it. There's more to the mind/body than they think, and we won't figure it out in merely 30 years. Let alone "uploading" consciousness to "computers". Feh! Yeah, why did Google hire Kurzweil? Odd choice.
16
please excuse my spelling and grammar in above post, I was rushing.
17
As someone working in brain research, I sincerely doubt there is a chance in heck of this happening before 2045.

But that doesn't mean we aren't improving the science, and making great strides.

It's like fusion - always 20 years in the future.
18
Oh look, it is the 3,406th professional field that Will in Seattle is employed and an expert in.
19
@6 @14

I can say why I would love this and have a pretty strong fear of dying.

In a nutshell, we don't know.

Because we don't have anywhere near enough knowledge in the realm of consciousness we can't come close to disproving even the most ridiculous concepts of an afterlife. Because spiritual pursuits depend on unverifiable experience you would have to say that you trust the same method of experience that con artists and stage magicians manipulate with great regularity.

In a situation like that the only option that definitely will not lead to being tossed in a lake of fire(because remember, if there is a right way to deal with the afterlife we can't know what it is with any degree of certainty) or our consciousness going poof is to not die.
20
HUMAN MINDS WILL NEVER BE INSTANTIATED IN AN ARTIFICIAL SYSTEM. AT LEAST NOT GIVEN OUR CURRENT AND FORSEEABLE TECHNOLOGY AND ITS REQUIREMENT THAT "THOUGHT" BE REDUCED TO PARSIBLE, INTERCHANGEABLE, STATIC BITS OF "INFORMATION" TO BE "PROCESSED" AND "STORED" IN WAYS PRE-ORDAINED BY HUMANS. NOT TO MENTION THE INTRACTIBILITY OF MODELING/INSTANTIATING DESIRE, MOOD, DRIVE, PASSION, BELIEF, MOTIVATION, INTUITION, ETC. KURZWEIL IS AN ABSURD, YET HIGHLY INTELLIGENT (INTELLIGENCE ONLY GETS YOU SO FAR) FOSSIL.

MORE LIKELY WE WILL HARNESS THE POWER OF GENETIC MACHINERY TO "GROW" ORGANS, PARTS, FLESH, ETC. (WILL VEGETARIANS/VEGANS START EATING ARTIFICALLY GROWN STEAKS THAT INVOLVE NO ANIMAL SUFFERING?) HOWEVER, GIVEN MY PENCHANT FOR DYSTOPIC MUSINGS, I BELIEVE, GIVEN THE HUMAN TRACK RECORD, THAT ANY SUCH TECHNOLOGY WILL BE ALL ABOUT CULTIVATING PORN STAR DONOR CELLS AND GROWING ARTIFICIAL GENITALIA, BREASTS AND FLESHY ORIFICES - THAT'S WHAT AMERICANS WANT!! THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY'S AT!!
21
@1, spoken like a true conservative. "It doesn't impact me directly so fuck it! Go ahead and destroy the whole world for all I care I won't have to suffer. Fuck you all!"
...
40 years later "Oh, shit, I'm still alive and this effects me. Stop! No! Just don't let me suffer."
22
No, dipshit, I really won't be here in 30 or 40 years. Probably a lot less than that. And I really don't give a shit. You should try it sometime. It's very liberating.
23
#18: Well, Kurzwiel isn't a brain specialist either, and that doesn't stop him from making bold proclamations that nearly all experts reject.
24
The technological singularity is baldly misidentified here! It refers to the point when our technology is self improving beyond the point where human intervention is meaningful. Whether or not we can upload our brains into a "neural net" is irrelevant, our ability to create strong AI is what will cause the singularity.
25
@10: Because plenty of Google's uppers are myopic kooks.
26
There are a lot of unanswered questions...

We will be lawfully be able to? Or will this only be allowed for the elites?

What will happen to regular humans? Will uploaded minds be virus free?

Will an uploaded mind be able to control it's human master or vice versa?

Will uploaded minds become the top of the foodchain?

What happens if we upload a different species brain to these uploading capabilities and give them human knowledge?

Please wait...

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