The concept of "mind uploading" is the entirely fallacious notion that a human might achieve a radically different form of existence by some process in which his mind and memories are transferred into a computer or robot. The concept is completely erroneous because your brain is not the source of your mind, and the brain is not the storage place of human memories. So there is nothing in a brain that could be transferred to some machine to transfer your mind to a machine.
You should not have an ounce of regret after reading of facts about brains that debunk the idea of mind uploading. The very reasons why it is will always be impossible to upload your mind into a computer or a robot are the same reasons why you won't ever need to do any such thing. Your mind and memory cannot be explained by anything in the brain, and that means you must have a mind and memory because you have something like a soul. Having such a soul that is not a product of your brain, you need not worry about your existence ending when your brain dies. Bodies and brains die, but souls do not. The massive evidence for paranormal phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, deathbed visions and near-death experiences provide independent reasons for thinking your mind will survive death.
There is a rather recent paper on this topic of mind uploading, a paper with some false claims. The paper is published by something called "The World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews," which does not seem to be an established and respected scientific journal, but one of the many "scientific journals" that make money from authors paying to get their papers published. Entitled "The Digital Afterlife: AI Cloud Consciousness as the New Immortality," the paper is by someone named Dhruvitkumar V. Talati, who seems to have no higher academic credentials such as a master's degree or a PhD. Looking at Talati's achievements, as listed on the page here, we seem to see lots of good experience with computers and technology. But the page says nothing about any training in neuroscience or psychology, nor does it mention any writings on such topics. Based on this page and the articles of Talati I see on Google Scholar, Talati does not seem like a very deep and serious scholar of either brains or minds; and it sure shows in his paper, which makes some false statements on these topics.
Before discussing his misstatements, let me discuss the "brain-computer interfaces" which Talati frequently appeals to. Such things are unimpressive affairs, which do nothing to raise any hopes of mind uploading. The simplest thing that could be called a "brain computer interface" is simply an EEG device connected to a computer. Such a thing looks rather like this:
All that is going on in such an affair is that brain waves from a person are being read by use of an EEG head cap, with the brain wave data going to some computer. The data is extremely noisy data consisting of squiggly lines with lots of ups and downs. It looks like what we see below:
By analyzing such data, nothing can be understood about what a person is thinking or remembering. No one has ever been able to discover any "neural code" allowing someone to figure out what a person is thinking or remembering from analyzing such lines. Traces of muscle movements sometimes show up in such lines, and detection of such muscle movements may be misleadingly depicted as "thought reading."
There is another type of "brain-computer interface" that is more invasive. Electrodes may be implanted inside someone's brain. That does not offer much of anything more than what you get from an EEG cap that does not require opening up someone's skull.
Recently some organizations have gone one step further, by implanting into someone's brain some tiny chip. Such a thing does nothing to create any real connection between a brain and a computer. Still the only thing that is occurring is the reading of electrical activity from the brain.
It is important to clarify what is NOT occurring under these so-called "brain computer interfaces":
- No one is actually reading thoughts. A paralyzed person with such an invasive "brain computer interface" may be able to control a cursor (a little symbol on a computer screen) by moving such a cursor in different directions. But this occurs not by the reading of thoughts from the brain, but by the system picking up indications of muscle movements. Typically such systems include eye readers that can pick up tiny movements of the eye and eye focus, and cause a screen cursor to move in a corresponding way. And even if the eye is not directly tracked, because muscle movements cause blips in the lines of brain waves, it is rather easy to analyze brain waves and pick up things corresponding to tiny muscle movements or intended muscle movements.
- No actual thought-deciphering of brain waves is occurring. You cannot pick up what a person is thinking from brain waves. So if I silently think "Abraham Lincoln was a good leader," you can never pick up any such thought from analyzing brain waves.
- There is no reading whatsoever of synapse states.
- There is no reading whatsoever of neuron states.
- There is no reading whatsoever of memories stored in a brain. Microscopic examination of brain tissue has never revealed any trace of learned knowledge or episodic memories by examining brain tissue. Microscopic examination has occurred abundantly with electron microscopes very many times larger than anything going on in a so-called brain-computer interface.
Now lets look at some of the misstatements in Talati's paper.
Talati: "The rapid advancements in neuroscience and brain mapping, coupled with the development of brain-computer interfaces, have paved the way for the potential transfer of human cognition into a digital medium."
Reality: There has been no such progress -- no such way has been paved. Claims of "mind reading" by insertion of brain chips are misleading. No actual "mind reading" is occurring, and the very meager results come from tricks such as eye-tracking, in which eye movements are used to guide a cursor. The primitive "brain-computer interfaces" created thus far (described above) offer no reason for hoping that there could ever occur a "potential transfer of human cognition into a digital medium."
Talati: "At the core of the concept of AI cloud consciousness lies the idea of transferring human cognition, thoughts, memories, and personality into a digital medium. This process involves the use of brain-computer interfaces and advanced neuroscience techniques to map and replicate an individual's neural patterns and cognitive processes (Campbell et al., 2002). With the proliferation of cloud computing and the ever-increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence, the storage and simulation of human consciousness within a virtual realm have become a tangible possibility."
No one has done any work making the idea of mind uploading anything like a "tangible possibility." The progress of cloud computing and artificial intelligence is merely progress in computer programming and data processing. There has been no neuroscience progress that should make anyone believe in the possibility of mind uploading. To the contrary, the more we learn about the physical shortfalls of brains, the less confidence we should have in the possibility of mind uploading. As discussed above, the "brain-computer interfaces" developed thus far are crude affairs offering no sound basis for suspecting a possibility of mind uploading.
Talati: "Researchers in the field of neuroscience have made significant strides in mapping and understanding the complex neural patterns and cognitive processes that underlie human consciousness. (Campbell et al., 2002) (Goh, 2021) Through the use of advanced neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography, scientists have been able to identify and analyze the neural correlates of various cognitive functions, including memory, decision-making, and self-awareness."
The description of a human mind as mere "consciousness" is a profoundly misleading word trick of many modern writers, a trick I call "consciousness shadow speaking," in which something of oceanic depth (the human mind) is made to look like the faintest shadow of what it is. Human minds, human mental capabilities, and human mental experiences are a million times more complex than mere "consciousness." No progress has been made in explaining brain causes of the main facets of human mental activity. Scientists are utterly unable to explain how a brain could produce any such things as thinking, personhood, imagination, insight, learning, or recall. When scientists try to explain such things, they give us only the most vacuous hand-waving, such as incoherently trying to explain the formation of memories as "synapse strengthening."
Excluding all of the "lying with colors" diagrams that mislead us by depicting tiny "1 part in 200" differences as if they were big differences, the search for neural correlates of mental functions has done nothing to substantiate claims that mental functions such as thinking, imagination, learning and recall are brain processes. As discussed here, here, and here, such studies typically show only tiny differences such as 1 part in 200 between resting brains and the brains of people engaging in mental activities. As such differences are merely the type of differences we would expect from chance variations, they do nothing to support claims that mental activities are brain functions.
Talati: "The field of brain-computer interfaces continues to evolve, with researchers working to overcome the complexities of neural dynamics and the potential impact of psycho-neurophysiological fluctuations on brain signals (Saha et al., 2021) (Maiseli et al., 2023) (Mak & Wolpaw, 2009). The advancement in neuroscience and the development of brain-computer interfaces form the scientific foundation of AI cloud consciousness (Mak & Wolpaw, 2009) (Rao et al., 2012) (Saha et al., 2021). BCI [brain-computer interfaces] serve as a critical bridge, enabling the translation of neural signals into digital commands that can be used to transfer and simulate human consciousness within a virtual environment."
It is rather obvious what is going on in the statement above. Talati is just repeating over and over again the phrase "brain-computer interfaces" or BCI, a phrase he uses 16 different times in his paper. The references do nothing to establish any possibility of mind-uploading, because all so-called "brain computer interfaces" are very crude affairs which do little other than than analyze the noisy ups and downs of brain wave lines. While continuing again and again to appeal to "brain-computer interfaces," Talati is making some false statements. Specifically:
- It is very false that "the advancement in neuroscience and the development of brain-computer interfaces form the scientific foundation of AI cloud consciousness." No work in these fields provide any basis for thinking that computers or artificial intelligence will ever be conscious.
- It is utterly false that "BCI [so-called brain computer interfaces] serve as a critical bridge, enabling the translation of neural signals into digital commands that can be used to transfer and simulate human consciousness within a virtual environment."
- It is utterly false that "brain-computer interfaces...which serve as a critical enabler for mind uploading." None of the work done in so-called brain-computer interfaces provide any realistic hope that a mind could ever be uploaded into a computer.
We can tell the lack of any theoretical foundation for mind uploading by how infrequently Taliti refers to memory. He makes no substantive references to memory. His paper's two uses of the word "memory" are both vacuous passing references, mere statements in which he claims that there are "neural correlates of various cognitive functions, including memory, decision-making, and self-awareness." There is actually no good evidence that brains look or behave any different when you are learning, deciding or recalling. Taliti's paper also makes no uses of the word "synapse" or "synaptic," and its only reference to neurons is the incorrect statement that humans have trillions of neurons (the actual number is something like 86 billion). It rather seems that when he wrote this paper on mind uploading, Taliti was neither a very deep and serious scholar of human brains, nor a very deep and serious scholar of human minds. An excellent knowledge of computer technology does not qualify you to write a paper claiming that mind uploading will be possible. The more you objectively study brains and their many physical shortfalls which exclude them as a source of the human mind, the less you will tend to believe in the possibility of human minds being uploaded into computers. And the more deeply and thoroughly you study human minds and human mental experiences and human mental capabilities in all their strange and spooky diversity, and the best examples of human mental performances, the less you will tend to believe in the possibility of human minds being uploaded into computers.
No one should take seriously the notion of uploading minds into computers unless there is ever announced the electronic reading or microscopic reading of memories from human brains. Such a thing has never occurred, and it never will occur. If human memories existed in human brains, scientists would have been able to read such memories around the year 1960, when microscopic technology advanced far enough to scan the tiniest components in brains. Around that same year of 1960, scientists were able to discover that there is genetic information in DNA, and were able to figure out the coding system by which such information is represented.
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