guy recently linked this essay, its old, but i don't think its significantly wrong (despite gpt evangelists) also read weizenbaum, libs, for the other side of the coin
this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Yeah, pretty much. I think people are stuck in this idea that we'd somehow take a picture of the mind all at once and there'd be a loss of continuity and then you're not the same person, but like, we've already got the intelligence making machine, why not just swap the parts out with maths one at a time until it's all maths? Why would that be a problem? I sincerely think that a lot of people who object to this either aren't really thinking of the concept beyond what's presented in pop sci-fi or are still stuck on the idea of an incorporeal mind separate from material reality.
I think the issue for some people might be that parts does not equal a whole, or to paraphrase, "a brain is more than the sum of its parts". A person upon hearing the concept of brain uploading might ask "is this upload really me, or would the digital brain be an AI copy mimicking me?" Something could get lost in the translation, but that's why I mentioned the Ship of Theseus. As far as some people are concerned, something is lost, BUT they would have trouble identifying what that something is (EDIT: other than actual organic gray matter). To the brain itself, it will think of itself as being the original, such that nothing was lost.
Yeah, it's the illusion of self and continuity of consciousness thing. People assume that any upload would be necessarily destructive and that there'd be a loss of continuity. No one ever seems to think "well, wait, why couldn't I be awake for the whole operation in a way that preserves subjective continuity?"
In the ship of theseus, brain being replaced cell by cell concept you don't get your head chopped off and imaged, you're very gradually shifting what hardware your mind is running on. The lights never go out, there's never a drastic, shocking moment of change, you never wake up in a jar.