There are two main approaches to overcoming the biological limits of human lifespan:
1. curing aging
2. mind uploading
And while in the last few years I focused on the first approach, the second one is what attracted me to the life extension community in the first place. It just seemed such an elegant solution to a difficult and complex problem. Nowadays I am more moderate in my views and I embrace both aging research and mind uploading as viable approaches that could extend what makes us humans: our bodies and our minds.
While letting the mind uploading part on the back burner of my brain, I stumbled upon a nice project a couple of months ago: the lifenaut.com free non-profit online service where anyone can log on whatever makes up their mind:
-content of all sorts: texts, photos, videos
-locations and timelines for events in their lifespan
-important relationships and social media accounts
-results of personality tests
-your own artificial intelligence avatar which you can train to answer questions just like you would
Apart from these mindfiles, I just found out you can store biofiles with them like cells for DNA sequencing. I created an account there and I’m still trying to get the hang of it, especially with the AI training. You can periodically send that information to outer space too – which impressed a futuristic nerd like me 🙂
Loraine Rhodes, VP and Legal Research Manager at Terasem, was kind enough to answer the questions below so that you could start archiving mind and bio files today if you wish so.
Anca: Could you tell us a little bit about your background and how did you get involved in life extension in the first place?
Loraine: My involvement in Terasem Movement, Inc. (the oldest of three sister organizations that make up the family of Terasem organizations*), began when I responded to a Monster.com job ad. I interviewed with one of the founders, Martine Rothblatt, who offered me a position to perform research where the law and technology intersect in hopes of setting the footprint for laws needing to be in place in the very near future as, all-too-often, the law runs to catch up with science and technology.
I studied law with the intention and ideal to help people on an individual basis however, being offered a position at Terasem enabled me to help humanity as a whole; I couldn’t resist and in some ways, feel as if I were taken back in time and offered a job in Bill Gates’ garage.
I believe we all have a penchant for life extension as we all will instinctively avoid danger. Self preservation is wired into our being. Mind uploading seems merely a precautionary step one may take to preserve what makes you who you are. Your mindfile, the collection of all you upload, may be available for future generations to interact with, your own self having been awakened from a cryonic slumber of say, fifty to one-hundred years from now, or if one elects to have it his/her mindfile thrust into the cosmos (via what Terasem calls spacecasting), civilizations we are yet unaware of.
Anca: How did the mindfile idea develop? This is such an interesting concept summarizing all the details that form a lifetime of experience and memories.
Loraine: Mindfiles were a concept of Martine Rothblatt who created the following two hypotheses, which two of the three Terasem organizations (as previously mentioned), are continuously testing:
1. An adequately detailed and organized set of digital bemes of a person’s mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values captures their consciousness in a state of biostasis, and when coupled with future software that elicits the consciousness immanent in such digital reflections, will enable the person to be revived, feel alive, and enjoy a sense of conscious continuity with themselves.
2. A revived cyber-conscious person, with future technology, may be downloaded into a nanobiotechnological body, based either primarily on nanotechnology or primarily on a body regenerated from a stem cell with its brain tissue cyberconscious-harmonized, and may thereafter continue their life with the same sense of self as when they originally stored digital bemes of themselves for future revival.
As per Martine Rothblatt, “I do think, however, there is a (natural) tendency to way overestimate the importance of copying our brain structure to copying our minds. I think our minds will be uploadable in good enough shape to satisfy most everyone by reconstructing them from information stored in software mindfiles such as diaries, videos, personality inventories, saved google voice conversations, chats, and chatbot conversations. The reconstruction process will be iteratively achieved with AI software designed for this purpose, dubbed mindware.”
Retrieved from https://www.lifenaut.com/mindclone/
Anca: Can people store any kind of biofiles at Terasem too?
Loraine: Yes, Terasem Movement Foundation, Inc. in Vermont, offers one the ability to store his/her live cells for an indefinite period of time within its LifeNaut BioFile Project, see https://www.lifenaut.com/learn-more-bio/
Anca: People can broadcast their mindfiles into space from their lifenaut account – how exactly does this work? Where does the information go and how often is it broadcasted?
Loraine: Both Terasem Movement, Inc.’s CyBeRev and Terasem Movement Foundation, Inc.’s LifeNaut projects offer a User the ability to continuously thrust his/her mindfile data on a daily basis into outer space via parabolic, directional antennae in hopes other space-based societies might extract and revitalize the User elsewhere in the universe.
Anca: Do you have any tips on how to train the AI avatar to answer questions just like we’d do in real life? Or do you see any projects in which we could make use of these avatars today?
Loraine: Creating and building as rich a mindfile as possible, uploading information to it that makes you unique, such as your personality, mannerisms, beliefs, thoughts, morals, etc. will avail an avatar or chatbot a pool of information to draw from so that when questions are posed to it, it will answer as you would answer. The larger your mindfile the larger the database of information the avatar or chatbot has for use to answer questions or interact as you would in any conversation or situation.
Anca: What will happen with these mind and bio files after the creator and owner of the files dies? This is currently a problem with most social media websites which close the accounts of the deceased by default and the family may never get access to those files again, being against their terms of service for accounts to be inherited or transferred.
Loraine: The Terasem Movement organizations do not recognize legal death for its project Users as they are, per the first of the Terasem Hypotheses, considered “in a state of biostasis, and when coupled with future software that elicits the consciousness immanent in such digital reflections, will enable the person to be revived, feel alive, and enjoy a sense of conscious continuity with themselves.” Quoted from the first of the two Terasem Hypotheses found at www.CyBeRev.org.
Terasem does not own the User information, but merely protects and safeguards it within a Cloud Server, a server at each facility and within weekly and quarterly backups. The quarterly backups are taken off-site and stored within a fire and waterproof safe.
Anca: Are there any plans or directions into how the mind uploading hypothesis will be tested with the mind and bio files you have available?
Loraine: As stated on Terasem’s CyBeRev site, “The primary mission of the Terasem Movement, Inc. is to test the Terasem Hypotheses first by collecting digital bemes and later, as software technology advances, by attempting revitalization of such consciousness in computerized biostasis.” Quoted from the first of the two Terasem Hypotheses found at www.CyBeRev.org.
In an independent effort to test the Terasem Mind Uploading Hypotheses, TMIs CyBeRev and TMFs LifeNaut Project designers work to develop mindware or a “mind operating system that will be able to replicate in software the human consciousness that gave rise to the mindfles in their databases.” “Both systems incorporate database look-up into the mindfle of the person [User] with whom a conversation is being attempted [via chatbot or avatar], as well as training algorithms that enable the participant to structure the conversational responses.” “Both teams expect more sophisticated artificial consciousness engines to incrementally replace these early artificial conversational entities over the next two decades, consistent with the timeframes projected by Kurzweil [within his book, The Singularity Is Near], [2005].”
“The theory behind the Terasem experimental design is that software operating on a database of digital samples of a person’s consciousness can regenerate an equivalent consciousness.”
Rothblatt, M. (2012). Terasem Mind Uploading Experiment. International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 147-8. [added]
Loraine Rhodes is Vice President / Legal Research of Terasem Movement, Inc.
Useful links:
http://www.terasemmovementfoundation.com/mission
https://www.lifenaut.com/
https://www.cyberev.org/
http://cyberev.org/martine.pdf
http://www.terasemcentral.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BINA48
*Loraine offers the following delineation of the three Terasem organizations:
Terasem Movement Delineation
1) Terasem Movement, Inc. (http://www.TerasemCentral.org), (TMI), incorporated in 2002, is a 501c3 not-for profit charitable organization located in Melbourne Beach, FL and is the eldest of the sister orgs. TMI’s mission is to educate the public on the practicality and necessity of greatly extending human life, consistent with diversity and unity, via geoethical nanotechnology and personal cyberconsciousness, concentrating in particular on facilitating revivals from biostasis. The Movement focuses on preserving, evoking, reviving and downloading human consciousness. TMI achieves this objective through its yearly workshop and colloquium, safe keeping mindfiles within its CyBeRev Project (http://www.CyBeRev.org), publishing two online Journals (http://www.TerasemJournals.org), that on Geoethical** Nanotechnology as well as Personal Cyberconsciousness, grant writing, production of the screen adaptation of Ray Kurzweil’s best-selling book, The Singularity Is Near (http://www.singularity.com/themovie) and outreach programs. TMI also works to ensure that the burgeoning technologies are used in a manner that is safe for humans and the environment and not available solely to the elite, but to all.
Contact: Lori Rhodes, VP and Legal Research Manager / Public Relations
2) Terasem Movement Foundation, Inc. (http://www.TerasemMovementFoundation.com) (TMF), incorporated in 2004, is a 501c3 not-for-profit, educational operating foundation located in Lincoln, VT. Its mission is to promote the geoethical use of nano & cybernetic technology for human life extension. TMF conducts educational programs and support scientific research (LifeNaut Project at www.LifeNaut.com) and development in the areas of cryogenics, biotechnology, and cyber consciousness. The common purpose of all of the Terasem Movement Foundation’s (TMF) projects is to investigate the Terasem Hypotheses.
Note: TMI’s CyBeRev Project and TMF’s LifeNaut Project were created wholly apart from one another by two diverse teams of professionals, but are based on the same two hypotheses accessible at http://www.cyberev.org/ and http://www.terasemmovementfoundation.com respectively.
Current projects include:
Lifenaut.com (https://www.lifenaut.com) : A long-term research study that offers a free online repository of individual digital reflections/biographical information
(Mindfiles) and a place to cryogenically store DNA samples (BioFiles) for longterm preservation and eventual re-animation as technology evolves. FB: Lifenaut Twitter:@Lifenaut
TMF is also home to BINA48 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BINA48) a social robot (Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture 48 – 48 exaflops is the speed at which the human brain is purported to compute) that is an early demonstration of the potential for using “mindfiles” for transferring human consciousness information to new forms. TMF encourages public dialog about cyber-consciousness via public presentations and social media. FB: IamBina48 Twitter:@iBina48).
World Against Racism Museum is an online exhibition designed to educate the public, especially young people, about the fiction of race, the ignorance behind racism and the need to relate to all people as individuals rather than as racial categories.
FB: World-Against-Racism-Museum (http://www.endracism.org) Twitter:@WorldAgnsRacism
2B (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1090695/) Feature Sci Fi film: The script is based upon real science and evolving technologies. The ‘techno-human’ conundrum is the hottest and most controversial topic of this century. This film is an entertainment designed to jumpstart the conversation about the moral and religious questions raised by the biotech revolution.
FB:2BMovie Twitter:@2Bmovie
Contact: Bruce Duncan, Managing Director / Terasem@gmavt.net <http://Terasem@gmavt.net>
3) Terasem Movement Transreligion, Inc. (‘trans’ = transcending or going beyond traditional religions), (htttp://www.TerasemFaith.net) (TMT), incorporated in 2004, with locations in Melbourne Beach, FL and Bristol, VT, is the third and youngest of the Terasem orgs and is a 501c3 not-for-profit religious organization. Its mission is to build a collective consciousness comprised of joyful immortal extensions of each of its joiners. Tera – sem means Earth (Tera) – Seed (sem). Though Terasem considers all humans as ‘Joiners’, after receiving inquiries about how one may formally ‘join’ Terasem, TMT provided a ‘Joinership’ application and induction ceremony (see http://terasemfaith.net/joinership).
Contact: Lori Rhodes, TMI VP & Legal Research Manager / Public Relations
**Geoethical, as defined by Dr. Rothblatt, means “the study of technology risk/benefit management across geographic spaces. Analogously, Bioethics is the study of technology risk/benefit management across corporeal spaces.”
You almost read my mind with:
“There are two main approaches to overcoming the biological limits of human lifespan:
1. curing aging
2. mind uploading
[…] the second one is what attracted me to the life extension community in the first place. It just seemed such an elegant solution to a difficult and complex problem . Nowadays I am more moderate in my views and I embrace both aging research and mind uploading as viable approaches that could extend what makes us humans: our bodies and our minds.”
And I still think that mind uploading is an elegant solution, if, ideally, done in such a gradual way that does not disrupt our “living status”.
Some believe that deep sleep (the slow wave part) is, like anesthesia, a temporary loss of consciouness, hence a state equivalent to death. If that is true, then that justifies the cryonics and other post-mortem preservation approaches: you die, years pass, medtech evolves, they re-vive you. And you go: “Where am I? how long did I sleep??” All nice and well.
Will a software emulated personality, as discussed in this article, result in the same thing? Personally I have my doubts (say, no matter how much you can HEAR from me, still, that’s only part of what I think and feel and experience). I think a brain-scan based (both functional and structural) mind uploading has better chances of capturing the needed details, and come close to what a cryopreservation would ideally do.
But I still see a value in this technology for those of us who value the idea of “leaving a legacy” and “being remembered”. What a better legacy, in the sense of influencing the world after a person’s demise, than a future AI that mimics even if imperfectly) that person’s personality, and wishes, and plans, and that continues that person’s aspirations?
You could say sleep is a temporary loss of consciousness, but it is different from anesthesia. And both are different from death when you emit no brain waves anymore.
Getting back to the concern raised by you on mind uploading, I think both the hardware and the software parts of the brain would be necessary, with software being more important if neural prostheses would catch on. The brain scan you’re talking about would ‘catch’ both software and hardware data.
Yes, sleep, anesthesia and death are of course physiologically different. But does that matter from a consciousness point of view? Do I really care about what’s going on if I am totally unaware of it? (As in case of what my liver is currently busy with — unless it hurts me–, or the processes inside skin cells etc).
It matters because the neuron signals are different in each of those cases.