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Ghosts in the Machine

 
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tbowl
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 3:11 pm    Post subject: Ghosts in the Machine Reply with quote

It's been done a lot of times. Johnny Mnemonic... Ugh okay I'm spacing right now, but I'm sure people can fill in the blanks.

It's basically taking a brain and uploading it. Not a personality, not an AI, but actually taking the brain and letting it float around the internet doing whatever it wants. Whether or not it has a soul/spirit is a different discussion, but ghosts in the machine. I'm just totally spacing right now on all of the novels/movies that have them. Not like RoboCop or Hol/Holly from Red Dwarf... Those're AI's.

Like Rimmer is kind of like a Ghost in the Machine, or the Hologram doctor from Voyager...

Gotta go!
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kfunque
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 11:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A couple others I can think of (or at least similar things that I hope count):

-The Dixie Flatline from Neuromancer (that might count more as a personality, possibly. But if I remember correctly, the program contained his memories and such as well)

-the foglets in the Transmetropolitan series (which I really need to get around to finishing). This one was less uploading, I suppose, because people weren't uploaded to the internet or any form of virtual network, but rather they transferred their consciousness to swarms/clouds of non-biological nanomachines that could take various forms or disperse themselves to become "invisible"

-Possibly various characters in the anime Serial Experiments: L.A.I.N., but to say for sure, I'd actually have to be able to understand it. Or at least understand it more than I did.
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tbowl
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 2:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There were also GitM's in Shadowrun, but I can't remember any specifically. Ugh. I can't believe my mind is drawing such a blank on this.
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Arioch
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rimmer was not an "uploaded" personality... he was an AI created by the computer based on external recordings of his behavior and dialogue, and available records. I'm not a Voyager expert, but I was under the impression that the holographic doctor was also an AI. Technically, the Rimmer hologram shouldn't have known anything about the intimate details of Rimmer's past that couldn't be found in the records... which I suppose you could say explains why there are about a half-dozen conflicting versions of his childhood. (Though a more likely explanation is that the writers couldn't be bothered with continuity...) An example of an uploaded personality would be the Major in Ghost in the Shell, who at the end uploads herself to the internet to merge with the AI known as the Puppet Master. In subsequent sequels, the new Major/Puppet Master entity exists in the internet, but occasionally downloading a portion of itself into android bodies so that it can take physical form.

The problem with the idea of "uploading" (or "downloading") someone's brain is in assuming that your memories and personality are software, when unfortunately they're not. They're physical networks of neurons. The way the brain works is completely different from the way a computer works: in a computer, the processor(s) and the memory that holds data are two different mechanisms, and you can change the function of the computer by changing the software. Computers have what's called a "bus" that connects memory to the processor, and also allows data to move between memory and some sort of input/output port, through which you can load and save data. In the brain, the processors and the memory are the same thing. You can't change the "data" without changing the physical processors themselves. Memory in the brain involves a process of strengthening and weakening the physical connections between groups of neurons; there is no "bus" or input or output "ports" through which you can upload or download information to or from the brain.

If you had a device that could make a detailed scan of the current state of all of the billions of neurons in your brain, you could make a computer model that simulates the operation of your brain. But it would be just a simulation... your consciousness would still be inside your head. Similarly, you also can't "download" data or skills into your brain (as they show in The Matrix, where Neo gets martial arts skills via download); memory and especially skill is formed over time by training and reinforcing nerve connections... neurons are not empty memory cells that you can download information into.
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tbowl
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 5:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ben can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Rimmer is a 'Ghost in the Machine' because they upload everyone's whole entire history of everything into Hol's hard drive.

Everyone on the ship is uploaded onto his hard drive. Before everyone gets wiped out, another guy dies and he immediately comes back online and its really him, and then his memory is just constantly uploading/downloading right back onto the hard drive, thus creating new 'memories.'

Damn Red Dwarf is elite... o.O

But the doctor in Voyager does the exactly same thing so I wonder if it came from something pre Red Dwarf...

Also they're tinkering with uploading people into computers right now via taking everything they've ever written (has to be someone that writes a LOT, like a blogger) and have a computer make a sandbox, take the words using an algorithm and have this this thing answer questions until it gets 'being the person' down and then can start holding normal conversations after a while.

The news report on that was a little too long ago for me to recall the specifics, but they can do it, but its still primative.

The holograms in Red Dwarf and Star Trek (cuz they did it in next gen, holodeck too) could all learn/have new memories/etc.

Basically if you were going to have a giant ship that could handle the processees, you'd have a sandbox of every employee, with the ship recording everything they say on the ship... a few years of being on a ship talking and I'm sure the computer could whip up a pretty damn close version of you that could probably even do most of your original job... Especially if it had the right math to figure out how often you agree/disagree with people and which people you work best with, etc etc... It just boils down to sh loads of math...
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Arioch
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 1:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Even if you could record everything a person says and does, you're still talking about an AI programmed to simulate a person, and not the person himself. Most socially functioning people do not say everything they're thinking... society would not function very well if people said exactly what they were thinking. The act of becoming an adult human is, in part, learning not to say everything that comes into your mind. If you recorded everything I ever said and made a simulated program based on that, that simulated person would be nothing whatsoever like me. There are thoughts and aspirations that are an integral part of me that have never been said or acted upon, and no computer could ever know. I suspect it is the same with nearly all humans.

Rimmer and the Voyager's doctor are considered to be "people" because they have an artificial intelligence that is sentient in its own right. As far as I'm aware, though, the holographic doctor was always well aware of the fact that he was artificial, and was under no illusion that he was really the same person as the one his programming was based on. Red Dwarf is a screwball comedy, without any serious scientific pretensions -- or even pretensions of continuity from one season to the next -- so it's difficult to hold to a serious technical standard.
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ronald
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 12:03 pm    Post subject: Re: Ghosts in the Machine Reply with quote

tbowl wrote:
It's been done a lot of times. Johnny Mnemonic... Ugh okay I'm spacing right now, but I'm sure people can fill in the blanks.

It's basically taking a brain and uploading it. Not a personality, not an AI, but actually taking the brain and letting it float around the internet doing whatever it wants. Whether or not it has a soul/spirit is a different discussion, but ghosts in the machine. I'm just totally spacing right now on all of the novels/movies that have them. Not like RoboCop or Hol/Holly from Red Dwarf... Those're AI's.

Like Rimmer is kind of like a Ghost in the Machine, or the Hologram doctor from Voyager...

Gotta go!



Whatabout SimOne?
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