麻豆传媒

BACK in the 20th century, 鈥渢he future鈥� meant flying cars and food pills. Now, the future is all about brain uploads.

The idea is that, one day, we will be able to convert all our memories and thoughts into hyper-advanced software programs. Once the human brain can run on a computer 鈥� or maybe even on a giant robot 鈥� we will evade death forever. Sounds cooler than a flying car, right? Wrong. If they ever exist, uploads will be hell.

Fantasies about uploaded brains are nothing new. William Gibson wrote about them some 35 years ago in his cyberpunk classic Neuromancer, in which people could upload themselves into cyberspace; and almost a century ago, back in 1923, E. V. Odle published a novel called

In recent decades, however, scientists and philosophers have also started to take a serious interest in the idea of digital versions of brains. Massive research undertakings like the Project aim to 鈥渟imulate鈥� the human brain in software. And Future of Humanity Institute and his colleagues explore how future societies should deal ethically with uploaded minds.

There are plenty of medical applications for a brain simulation. Doctors could use it to model diseases or to test therapies. Neurologists could probe it to understand how thought emerges from cellular activity.

This isn鈥檛 what people like Google鈥檚 director of engineering Ray Kurzweil want, though. As he has said in multiple places, .

Let鈥檚 take Kurzweil seriously and assume that eventually a person 鈥� let鈥檚 call him Boris 鈥� will scan his own brain and convert it to the format suitable for running in approved devices.

Now Boris鈥檚 brain can live forever inside some kind of virtual world like Minecraft, which looks and feels to him like reality. That means his entire universe is dependent on people or companies who run or manage servers, such as Amazon Web Services, to survive.

鈥淯ploading your brain sounds cooler than a flying car, right? Wrong. If they ever exist, uploads will be hell鈥�

Boris is going to be subjected to software updates that could alter his perceptions, and he might not be able to remember his favourite movie unless he pays a licensing fee.

That isn鈥檛 the only possible pitfall. Somebody could duplicate Boris and make two armies of Borises fight each other for supremacy. Or, as Iain M. Banks suggested in his 2010 novel Surface Detail, a nasty political regime might create a virtual hell full of devils who torture Boris鈥檚 brain for his sins.

Many other things could also happen if Boris鈥檚 brain got stuck inside a robot. He could be reprogrammed as a street cleaner, forced to mop Liverpool鈥檚 gutters for weeks without respite, or turned into assembly line arms for a factory that builds Tesla cars.

After all that, is Boris really himself anymore? There is a Borisesque piece of software that might 鈥渓ive鈥� for a long time, but is it really a continuation of Boris the person or a completely different entity that has some of Boris鈥檚 ideas and memories? And what kind of rights does Boris鈥檚 uploaded brain have? He might become the property of whoever owns the server that runs him.

Becoming an upload won鈥檛 allow Boris to live forever. Instead, Boris will die with his body, and a copy of Boris鈥檚 brain will be stored on a piece of technology. That technology will subject virtual Boris to all the same problems that befall our mobile devices 鈥� except instead of awkward autocorrect incidents happening in text messages, the equivalent will happen inside Boris鈥檚 mind.

Oh and, of course, technology decays and dies, so immortality isn鈥檛 guaranteed. So why would anyone want to be uploaded?

I think it is because uploading still offers hope that we might end the worst forms of human suffering. In his 2017 novel Walkaway, Cory Doctorow describes a future in which a vicious war rages between the haves and have-nots. But when a group of underground scientists creates the first brain upload, there is a chance that the war will finally end because death is no longer a threat.

Uploads are also a solution to war in The Clockwork Man. In that story, men have been uploaded to the clockwork reality because they kept trying to destroy the real world with endless combat.

Uploads may offer a dream of peace, but they also threaten us with a future in which our minds can be manipulated as easily as a Facebook algorithm. Like the flying car, the brain upload is a nifty idea that will cause far more problems than it solves.