Whole Brain Emulation Workshop
Date: 26-17 May 2007
Speaker(s): John Fiala, Kenneth Hayworth, Todd Huffman, Randal Koene, Eugen Leitl, Bruce McCormick, Ralph Merkle, Peter Passaro, Robin Hanson, Rebecca Roache, Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Toby Ord
Venue: St Hilda’s College, Oxford
The Workshop aimed to sketch out a roadmap of technologies needed to implement whole brain emulation and to outline the main uncertainties in how it would function and proposed experiments to reduce these uncertainties.
Brain emulation, the possible future one-to-one modelling of the function of the human brain, is academically interesting and important for several reasons:
Philosophy
- Brain emulation would itself be a test of many ideas in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of identity, or provide a novel context for thinking about such ideas.
- It may represent a radical form of human enhancement different from other forms.
Research
- Brain emulation is the logical endpoint of computational neuroscience’s attempts to accurately model neurons and brain systems.
- Brain emulation would help understand the brain, both in the lead-up to successful emulation and afterwards by providing a perfect test bed for neuroscience experimentation and study.
- Neuromorphic engineering based on partial results would be useful in a number of applications such as pattern recognition, AI and brain-computer interfaces.
- As a research goal it might be a strong vision to stimulate computational neuroscience.
- As a case of future studies it represents a case where a radical future possibility can be examined in the light of current knowledge.
Economics
- The economic impact of copyable brains would be immense, and have profound societal consequences.
Individually
- If brain emulation of particular brains is possible and affordable, and if the concerns of individual identity can be met, such emulation would enable backup copies and “digital immortality”.
Resources: Brain Emulation Roadmap