If you could download your brain to a computer, should that have the same rights as a human being?

Would it be ethical to make artificial people, should you be able to make a copy, should a copy be classed as your twin?

All comments welcome.

Interesting point.

I'm not sure they'll ever manage it - I'm semi-professionally involved in AI and I don't believe that we are anywhere near a stage of technology that would allow the complexities of the human mind to be recorded in such a form that could then be loaded back with the same personality intact.

However, ethically, if we COULD do it I think we would be in to soem very strange territory. At one level we're talking about immortality of a fashion, and there would be the eschatological question of whether the soul (if it exists) has also been duplicated.

If we could make artificial people then there would also be the issue of who has the intellectual property rights on the 'mind' that is downloaded; after a few hours it would no longer be the same as the mind that originated it. If teh original committed a crime, was copied, then died but teh copy remembered and benefited from the crime, could teh copy be prosecuted?

This is a good and weird question - thansk for sharing!

Joe

If I could then upload it into a look-alike android that I could send to the office instead of me then I'm all for it!

Great point about the prosecution for crimes committed. It would be like the son paying for the sins of the father!

I would suggest that the ability to do this would constitute the crossing of the threshold of evolution to the next stage of humanity - perhaps "post-humanity"?

What about getting hacked, makes a whole new point of catching a virus!!!!

It would be the first step towards a universal consciousness, Gaia as it’s sometimes known.

Or we'd be shagged.

B

Originally posted by peter_19_73
What about getting hacked, makes a whole new point of catching a virus!!!! You're thinking Ghost in the Shell and the Standalone Complex ;)

Would this be a suitable means for the disabled or ill/terminally ill to leave behind pain and dispair. Does either option show more dignity or does one appeal more than the other. Which option would you take and why? There are no wrong answers!

Originally posted by peter_19_73
If you could download your brain to a computer, should that have the same rights as a human being?

Would it be ethical to make artificial people, should you be able to make a copy, should a copy be classed as your twin?

All comments welcome.

Wow! This has made me think! (Scary prospect at the best of times).
Surely you would need to invent an entire new set of rights. For example the right to free movement might become the right to use available bandwidth to travel between computers.

Also if you duplicated yourself there is no way that copy would be your twin (a sibling born of your mother). And if you did duplicate yourself would you not be behaving more like a virus than a human???

I would worry that if I downloaded my brain to a computer I would get the message:
You are currently using 3% of available disc space

How embarrassing!

If you could download yourself either just before or just after death would that constitute death.

Would you be living in heaven.

Would the programmer become god. Could god be man. Should man be god!

Cyber heaven, is it all it's cracked up to be!!!

Remember the Lucy Liu-bot in Futurama ?

Celebs complain now that they have no privacy what will it be like if we could download them into our own homes ?

If we could who do it you think would be the top downloads ?

I'm guessing Kylie, Brad Pitt, Jordan, George Clooney etc.

Personally, I'd just download the England Rugby team.