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PARTISAN REVIEW
"Yeah, I'm Ray Kurzweil, I grew up in Queens, New York, I went over
to my Aunt Edith's house and played with Ronald and Vivien, went to
Boston, went to MIT, sold a few artificial intelligence companies, I was
on this
Partisan Review
panel, a few decades later I walked into this
scanner over here, woke up in a machine; hey, this technology really
works!" You would, of course, have to give him a body, because he
would quickly get depressed without one. However, that's another com–
plicated discussion and we have little time. But I would like to mention
that replicating our bodies is an easier task than replicating our brains.
We will have twenty-first century bodies for our non-biological intelli–
gent entities-virtual bodies and virtual reality bodies created through
nano-technology, which is building physical entities atom by atom. But
this entity will at least act as if he were Ray Kurzweil.
This introduces obvious philosophical issues that we can talk about.
One is: Is this a continuation of Ray Kurzweil's consciousness? There's
a fairly obvious argument against that, which is the continued existence
of the old biological Ray Kurzweil.
If
you come to me in the morning
and say, "Good news, Ray, we've succeeded in scanning and reinstanti–
ating your body and brain; we don't need the old carbon cell-based Ray
Kurzweil anymore," I might see a flaw in that philosophical perspective.
I might wish the new Ray Kurzweil well, but would probably end up
jealous of him because he would be in a better position than I am to ful–
fill my own wishes and dreams. But I would see him as a different per–
son than myself, and obviously his experience from that point begins to
diverge from mine. So at least he would have a different consciousness.
Another question is: Is he conscious at all? Some people say, "Well,
okay, he's a very convincing replication, and as the technology gets bet–
ter, he'll be a more accurate recreation of the original Ray Kurzweil, but
it's just a machine, and it's not conscious." This is a difficult issue; we've
debated the nature of consciousness for thousands of years, back to the
Platonic dialogues.
In
the twenty-first century we will meet entities that
are sufficiently compelling and convincing; the issue of consciousness, the
nature of subjective experience, will become a very practical issue. We
will meet entities that claim to be conscious. Even today you can meet
non-biological entities that claim to be conscious, such as your children's
video games, but they are not very convincing and they are not com–
pelling. You quickly run up against the limits of their intelligence and
personalities; you can see the boundaries of their capabilities, so it's not a
fully convincing illusion, if you will.
In
the twenty-first century, however, as we get to the 2030S and the
2040s, these entities will be very convincing and very compelling; you
