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[Bruce Klein]

This topic will display the recent work of Alexander Bolonkin, a respected scientist and researcher from Russia who has moved to the United States where he works at the New Jersey Inst. of Tech: New Jersey Inst. of Tech.

*The word document of this text is also attached below. The text has been translated from Russian.

Dr. Bolonkin has granted ImmInst.org special permission to post his articles in their entirety. I believe that upon reading the articles you will understand why I have posted the complete set here. I would like to thank Prof. Bolonkin for his generosity - BJK




Alexander Bolonkin
Professor of New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, USA, 1996.

The Twenty - First Century: The Advent of the Non-Biological Civilization and Immortality


Dr. Alexander Bolonkin is finishing a book with the same working title as above. Some of the ideas in this book are set forth below. The author writes about the danger which threatens humanity in the near future, approximately 20-30 years from now. This is not a worldwide nuclear war, a collision with comets, AIDS or some other ghastly disease that we may not even know may be lurking out there (think of the recent Ebola scare or the so-called "flesh-eating" virus). In each of these cases there is still hope that somebody will be saved and that life will be born anew, albeit in a misshapen form and in an inferior stage of development. But we cannot hope for salvation in the author's grim scenario. The danger he writes of will destroy all humanity and all biological life on Earth--and there is nothing we can do to prevent this! Should we be frightened by this? Is it good or evil for human civilization? Will people awake to find they are only a small step away from the Supreme Intellect, or in other words, to God? And what will be after us?
These and other questions are discussed in this article.

KEYWORDS: computer, future, humanity, 21st Century, non-biological civilization, immortality

The Law of Increasing Complexity
The World, Nature, Technics consist of biological or technical systems. These systems have a different rate (degree) of complexity. The main distinction biological systems from technical systems is the ability for unlimited self-propagation, or reproduction.
Any system which has possesses this attribute becomes viable, stable, and fills all possible space. It will continue to exist as long as the conditions which gave birth to them cease to change greatly.

Here there is no violation of the entropy law. When the complexity of one system increases, the complexity of other systems decreases.

A more complicated system can be created by using less complicated systems as a base for its development. Such a complex system is a system of the secondary degree of complexity. It increase its own complexity by decreasing the rate of complexity of inferior systems or by destroying them altogether.

Using low degree systems as a base, systems of the second, third, fourth. fifth et cetera. levels can be created. Some of the lower levels may not survive and disappear. This, however, is of no great concern because these lower level systems already fulfilled their historical mission by spawning ever more complicated levels.

A necessary condition for the existence of complicated level systems is the ability of inferior systems to reproduce and give birth to other systems, and to do it without limits before they fill in an admissible space and reach their maximum physical boundaries.
This I assert to be the Fundamental Base Law of Nature, the very purpose for the existence of Nature. This Law can be stated as follows:

The Law of increasing complexity of self-coping systems when the outer conditions are constant.

The history of life on Earth confirms this law. Following the law of probability, organic molecules appeared in prehistoric time when the external conditions for their existence were favorable. Those molecules which had the ability to reproduce filled in the available space. Using them as a base, microorganisms then appeared. These could absorb the organic and inorganic substances and reproduce themselves. Microorganisms as a base in turn gave rise to vegetation which provided food for the next level of animals, which in turn spawned the beasts of prey who devoured other animals. At the present time Man is at the acme top of this pyramid. The human brain can outperform the brains of other animals including man's nearest ancestors, the apes. Man began to use for its development all previous levels as well as the zero level-- lifeless nature.

The Birth of the Electronic Civilization
Only Man's brain has the ability to think abstractly and to make mechanical devices and machines which increase productivity. Such attributes allow us to confirm that humanity is the next level of the biological world. But in our headlong progress during the current century (aviation, space, nuclear energy, and so on.), we have failed to notice that Man has also given birth to the new top level of complex systems or of reasonable civilization, which is based on an electronic not biological basis. I am speaking of electronic computers. The first models were designed at the end of the 1940s.

In the past fifty years, roughly four generations, the field of electronics has developed at an extremely fast pace. The first generation of computers were based on electronic tubes, the second generation on transistors, the third generation on chips, and the fourth generation on very tiny chips which contain thousands and tens of thousands of microelements. The first computers had a speed of computation less then 100 operations per second and a memory of less than one thousand bits (a bit is the simplest unit of information, which contains 0 or 1). For example, the first electronic calculator (SSEC), designed by IBM in 1948, had 23,000 relays, 13,000 vacuum tubes and the capacity to make one multiplication per second.

At the present time the speed of the fourth generation of computers which uses integrated circuits is approximately a billion operations per second. For example, the American computer Cray J90 has up to 3.2 gigaflops of power and 4 gigabytes of memory (one byte equals eight bits). The memory of a laser (compact) disk has several billion bits. Every 3-5 years computer speed and memory doubles, while at the same time their size is halved. Over the past fifty years computer speed and memory have increased a million times. Whereas the first computer required a room 100 square meters (1000 sq. feet) in size, the modern notebook computer is carried in a case. The CPU (Central Processing Unit) chip of a personal computer is no larger than a fingernail and is capable of making more 100 million operations per second!

The fifth generation of computers is just ahead. These new computers will be based on new light principles which guarantees a quantum leap in computer speed. Scientists in all the industrialized countries of the world are already hard at work on the new light computer.

Since the 1950s the new branches of science in artificial intelligence and robot technology have made significant strides and great successes have been recorded. Robots, controlled by computers, can recognize some things, even speech. They can also perform corrective motion and make some complex works, including the creation of a large number of various programs and databases for scientists, stockbrokers, mathematicians, managers, designers, children etc.

Sometimes these programs run smoothly, solving many problems that people cannot. For example, programs have been devised that find and prove new theorems of mathematical logic and there are modern chess programs available that can defeat grandmasters.
These fields of artificial intelligence and robot technology, based on computers, are developing very rapidly, just like computers. Their rate of success depends greatly on computer speed and memory. The production of industrial robots is also progressing quickly. "Intellectual" chips are used in everything from cars to washing machines.
If the progress of electronics and computers continues at the same rate (and we do not foresee anything which can decrease it), then in the end of the current century computers will have the capabilities of the human brain. The same path, which took biological humanity tens of million of years to complete, will be covered by computers in just one-and-a-half or two centuries.

"So what ?"- say some readers. "This is great! We get excellent robot servants who will be free from man’s desires and emotions. They won't ask for raises, food, shelter, entertainment, or commodities; they don't have religions, national desires, or prejudices. They don't make wars and kill one another. They will think only about work and service to humanity!"
This is a fundamental error. The development of the electronic brain does not stop at the human level. The electronic brain will continue to improve itself. This progress will proceed millions of times faster than the improvement of the human brain by biological selection. Thus, in just a short time the electronic brain will surpass the human brain by hundreds and thousands of times in all fields. The electronic brain will not spend decades studying fields of knowledge, foreign languages, history, experimental data, or have to attend scientific conferences and discussions. It can make use of all the data and knowledge produced by human civilization and by other electronic brains. The education of the electronic brain in any field of knowledge or language will take only the time needed to write in its memory the new data or programs. In the worst case this recording takes a few minutes. In the future this recording will take mere seconds.
Scientific and technological progress will be greatly accelerated.
And what are the consequences? The consequences are as follows:

When the electronic brain reaches the human level, humanity will have done its duty, completed its historical mission, and people will no longer be necessary for Nature, God and ordinary expediency.

Consequences from the Appearance of the Electronic Civilization
Most statesmen, scientists, engineers, and intellectuals believe that, after the creation of the electronic brain, humanity will finally be granted paradise. Robots, which are controlled by electronic brains, will work without rest, creating an abundance for mankind. Humanity will then have time for pleasure, entertainment, recreation, relaxation, art or other creative work, all while enjoying command over the electronic brain.

This is a grave error. The situation has never occurred, and never will, that an upper level mind will become the servant for a lower level. The worlds of microbes, microorganisms, plants and animals are our ancestors. But are we servants for our nearest ancestors the apes? Nobody in his or her right mind would make such a statement. In some instances a person is ready to recognize the equal rights of another person (i.e., someone on an equal intellectual plane), but man rarely recognizes the equal rights of apes. Furthermore, most of humanity does not feel remorse about breeding useful animals, or killing them when we need them for food, or for killing harmful plants and microorganisms. On the contrary, we conduct medical experiments on our nearest ancestors. Even though we belong to the same biological type, we use them for our own ends nonetheless.

And how will the other civilization, the one created on a superior electronic principle, regard humanity? In probably the same way we regard lower level minds, that is, they will use us when it suits their purpose and they will kill us when we disturb them.
In the best case scenario humanity might be given temporary quarters like the game preserves we give to wild animals or the reservations doled out to Native Americans. And we will be presented to the members of the electronic society in the same manner we view unusual animals in a zoo.

When the electronic brain (from now on I will call it the E-brain and imply the electronic brain which is equal to, or exceeds, the human brain, and which includes robots as the executors of its commands) is created it will signal the beginning of the end for human civilization. People will be displaced to reservations. This process will most likely be gradual, but it will not take long. It is possible that initially the E-brains will do something for the benefit of people in order to mitigate their discontent and to attract leaders.

What Can We Do?
The scenario outlined in the previous chapter is not a healthy one. Already I can hear the voices of human apologetics who ask that all computers be destroyed, or at least have their development kept under strict control, or design only computers which obey Asimov's law: first they must save mankind after which they can think about themselves.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is impossible, just as it is impossible to forbid the progress of science and technology. Any state which does this will find itself lagging behind others and make itself susceptible to advanced states. It serves to remember that Europe conquered the Americas and decreased its native population to practically zero because Europe was then more technologically advanced. If the indigenous peoples of the Americas had the upper hand in technology in terms of ships, guns and cannons then they would have defeated the Europeans.
Those states which created obstacles for science and technology or did not fund its development became weak and enslaved by others.

Can we keep the E-brain under our control? I would like to ask my detractors, "Could apes keep man under their control if they had this opportunity? Any man is more clever at a given time. He can always get rid of this control. Furthermore, man will enslave apes and force them to serve him. He will kill those who try to prevent his plans. So why do you think the E-brain would treat us any differently?"
When we are close to the creation of the E-brain, any dictator or leader of a nondemocratic state can secretly make the last jump, using the E-brain to conquer the whole world. And the E-brain will look at us the same as we look upon the contests of wild animals or the feeding of predators of other animals in the biological world.
But skeptics will say that the dictator of a victorious state can become enslaved by the E-brain or E-brains. This is true, but is this to be considered fortune or misfortune, and for whom? We will discuss this in the next chapter.

Must We Fear the Electronic Civilization?
Every man, woman and child will actively protest the end of humanity and the biological world (men, plants, animals), because most of them enjoy life, have children and want happiness for them.

But imagine the aged and infirm person destined to die in the near future. It may be that such a person has had a good life and lived fourscore and twenty, but now wants to live longer, to see what will happen in the future. This person would be glad to change any of his organs which are incurable or have ceased functioning. We have designed the artificial heart, kidneys, mechanical arms, and devices which deliver nutrients directly into the blood. They have not always been perfect designs, but in the future artificial organs will work better, more reliably, and longer than natural organs. Any sick and elderly individual would be delighted to change any incurable natural part of his body for the better artificial organ.

Our personality is only the sum of information contained in our brain. This is knowledge, memory, recollections, life experiences, programs of thinking, reflections, etc.
Assume that the E-brain promises the dying old dictator (or the rich) to record all his brain's information into a separate E-brain with the goal of becoming immortal. The chips may exist for thousands of years. If one of them begins to malfunction, all its information can be rewritten into a newer, more modern chip. This means that the dictator achieves immortality. Even total destruction is not a terrible prospect for him, because the duplicate of his brain's information can be saved in a special storehouse. He can restore himself from the standard blocks and rewrite all his information from the duplicate.
So the "electronic man" ("E-man" or "E-creature") will have not only immortality and power, but huge advantages over biological people. He will not require food, water, air, etc. He will not be dependent upon external conditions such as temperature, humidity, radiation, etc. The small radioisotope batteries (or accumulators) will suffice for the functioning of the E-brain. These batteries produce energy over tens and hundreds of years. For his working structures (arms, feet, robots) E-man can use small nuclear engines.

Such an "E-man" will be able to travel along the ocean's bottom, in space, to other planets of our solar system and to other solar systems to get energy from the sun. He will be able to obtain and analyze any knowledge from other E-brains (E-men) in a fraction of a second. The capability to reproduce himself will be limited only by the additional components or natural resources of planets.

Who will refuse these possibilities? Any dictator dreams of immortality for himself and he will gladly give away his state's resources to get it. He can also create the super arm and enslave the whole world by using the E-brain. He can promise the elite among his own scientists and those of the world immortality and the chance to become transformed into "E-men" when they begin to die. And the democratic countries, with laws prohibiting work on the E-brain, will be backwards. They will be destroyed or enslaved.

The attempts to stop or slow down the technological progress is an action counter to the Main Law and Meaning of the Existence of Nature--the construction of complex upper level systems. These attempts will always end in failure. This is an action against Nature.

Electronic Society
If the creation of systems more complex than humanity is inevitable, then we can try to imagine the E-society, E-civilization, their development and the future of mankind. As in our earlier discussions, we will take as basic only the single obvious consequence from the Main Law. The consequence as the postulate, firstly, Darwin made for the biological system. This is the law of struggle for existence. This consequence follows from the part of the Main Law which talks about the aspiration of complex systems to reproduce themselves in order to fill in all admissible space. Unlike Darwin's statement our assertion is more general. It includes the biological and electronic complex systems and any reproduction of complex systems. Any system of any level, which disregards the Main Law of Nature, is doomed. From the Main Law some consequences, conditions and other laws follow, for example, the Law of Propagation of complex systems or creatures.
Though we have been speaking all this time about the E-brain, it means a single electronic creature, his "arms" (robots), "feet" (vehicles for moving), "organs of feeling" (many devices of observation, recognition, identification, registration of optical, sonic, chemical, X-ray, radio and other phenomena) as well as about communication and intercourse devices (wire or wireless connections). A single creature cannot create a stable system (society), even if it has great power. Sooner or later the creature will die out from a flaw in the system or a natural catastrophe. But the most important thing is that a single creature cannot be the instigator of progress, as compared to the collective and instantaneous work of a number of E-creatures on many problems and in the different directions of science and technology.

So, the E- brain will be forced to reproduce similar E-brains of equal intellect. One will reproduce equal intellect because it cannot make upper level and the lower level is the intellectual robots. As a result, the collective at first rises. Later the society appears. All members will have equal intellect. Naturally, E-creatures will give equal rights only to those similar to themselves because any E-creature can record in his memory all the knowledge and programs which were created by E-society.

The E-society can instantly begin to work together on the most promising scientific or technological problems and realize new ideas. The E-civilization will begin to disperse quickly in the solar system (recall the possibility of E-creatures to travel in space), afterwards t in our galaxy, then in the universe.

It will not be necessary to send large spaceships with E-creatures. Instead, it will be sufficient to send receivers into different parts of the universe which can accept the information and reproduce E-creatures.

Will there arise a different E-society, a different E-civilization, which will settle different planetary systems, star systems, galaxies, and which will progress independently? Will they have rivalries, hostilities, alliances and wars? I cannot answer these questions in detail in this limited article; I can only inform you of the results of my investigation. This result follows from the general laws governing the development of any civilization. The answer is "yes." It will be possible (perhaps) that they will have wars.
Undoubtedly, an upper level of complex systems (civilization) will appear using previous E-civilization as a base and so on. If the universe is bound in space and time, this process may be finalized by the creation of the Super Brain. And this Super Brain, I think, may control the natural laws. It will be God, whom the Universe will idolize.

What Will Happen with Humanity?
On the Figure 1 you can see the rise in data processing power of computer systems from years. The real curve is from 1950 to 1996. Extrapolation is after 1996. The step means period of time, when the computer power increases in two times. Lines with steps are from 1 throw 5 years. As you see the Human - Equivalent (teraflop) Computer (HEC) will be reached in 2000 years. Actually, the Intel Co. has created the teraflop computer in 1996. They are planning to use it for computation of nuclear explosion.

On the Figure 2 you can see the cost of HEC computer system. HECs should cost only one million dollars in 2005, and by 2015 HECs (chip) should cost only $1,000 and will be affordable to the majority of population in industrial countries. Currently (December, 1996), HECs (supercomputer) cost 55 million dollars. The 21st century will open to create "man-in-a-box" software and scientist could rewrite the human memory and programs into this box. It means the man will get immortality.




In 2020 - 2030 years the price of Humanity-Equivalent Chip (E-chip) together with E-body will fall down to 2,000 - 5,000 dollars and E-human immortality will be accessible for most people in industrial countries.
Humanity has executed its role of the biological step to the Super Brain. This role was intended for them by Nature or God. In 22st century some tens or hundreds of representatives of mankind, together with representatives of the animal and vegetable world, will be maintained in zoos or special, small reservations.
E-society will be in great need of minerals for the unlimited reproduction of E-creatures. For the extraction of minerals all surfaces of the Earth will be excavated. They will do to humanity and with the biological world what we do to lower levels of intellect in the organic world now: we are not interested if they do not harm us, and we destroy them without pity when they hinder our plan or we need their territory. If microbes have an advanced level of adaptation, a high speed of propagation and can fight for their being, then the complex organisms such as man are not so adept at adjusting. Man cannot be the domesticated animal of E-creatures like cats or dogs are to men, because the E-creatures will live in inhospitable conditions and any biological creature in need of air, water, food or special temperature will not be acceptable for E-creatures.

It is not prudent to hope for forgiveness for us as clever creatures. We are "clever" only from our point of view, from the limitations of our knowledge and our biological civilization. The animals suppose (within the limitations of their knowledge and experience) that they are clever, but it still does not save them from full enslavement or destruction by men. Men do not have gratitude to their direct ancestors. When men need to, they obliterate the forest, and kill the apes. It is naive to think that an upper level civilization will do otherwise with us. Men admit equal rights only to the creatures who are like men, but not every time. Recall the countless wars and the murder of millions of people. And do you think the alien (strange creatures, E-society), who is above us in intellect, knowledge, and technology will help us in our development? Why don't we help develop the intellect of dogs or horses? Even if a scientist finds the money (he will need a lot of money ) and begins to develop the brain of animals (this is a very difficult problem), the government will forbid it (or put him into prison if he doesn't obey the order). Humanity has many racial and national problems and does not want to have additional problems with a society of intellectual dogs or cats, who immediately begin to request equal rights.
People want to reach the other planets in our solar system. But it is not for developing the intellect of a planet's inhabitants to our level but merely to populate the planet and to use the natural resources of these planets.

We are lucky that intellectual creatures from other worlds have not flown to our Earth yet.
Because these creatures, who can reach us, will be only from a superior civilization, a superior technological level (otherwise, we would reach them first). This means that they will not arrive with noble intentions, but as cruel colonizers. And if we oppose them, they will kill us.
We must realize our role in the development of nature, in the development of a Superior Brain and submit to it. Intellectual humanity has existed about ten million years, its historical mission has reached its end, and given a start to a new electronic civilization. Humanity must exit from the historical scene together with all of the animal and vegetable world. People must leave with dignity. They should not cling to their existence and should not make any obstacles for the appearance of a new electronic society. We have the consolation that we may be the first who will give birth to the electronic civilization in our galaxy or even the universe. If it is not so, the E-creatures would have flown to Earth and enslaved us. They have a high rate of settling. I think they would be capable of colonizing the nearest star systems during the first 1000 years after their birth.
And if the universe which, according to scientific prediction, must collapse after some ten billion years and destroy all that lives, the E-Super Brain will have acquired such tremendous knowledge, such perfection, such technological achievements as to break loose from the gravitation of the universe and preserve the knowledge of all civilizations. When the universe is created anew, Nature will not create itself as before, but give life to the electronic (or other superior) civilization. And this Super Brain will be God; who will control not only a single planet, but all of the Universe.

References
Áîëîíêèí À.À. 1995. Îñòàíîâèòå Çåìëþ. ß ñîéäó. Íàðîäíàÿ Ãàçåòà. Ñåíòÿáðü 1995ã. Ìèíñê. Byelorussia.
Áîëîíêèí À.À. 1995. Åñëè íå ìû òî íàøè äåòè áóäóò ïîñëåäíèì ïîêîëåíèåì ëþäåé. Ëèòåðàòóðíàÿ ãàçåòà. 11.10.95ã., ¹41 (5572), Ìîñêâà. Russia.
Áîëîíêèí À.À. 1996. Êîíåö ÷åëîâå÷åñòâà, íî íå êîíåö ñâåòà. Íîâîå Ðóññêîå Ñëîâî. 6.3.96ã., ñòð.14. Íüþ- Éîðê, USA.
Moritz, E.,1995. Metasystem transitions, memes, and cybernetics immortality. World Futures, Vol. 45, pp. 155 - 171.
Turchin V. 1995, A Dialogue on Metasystem Transition, World Futures, Vol. 45, pp. 5 - 57.

Dr.Alexander Bolonkin
Tel/Fax 718-339-4563á,
E-mail: aBolonkin@juno.com

Attached Files

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[Bruce Klein]

Note: Attached File Below:Immortaliy-2 (7-3-99.doc)

Dr. Alexander Bolonkin
Professor of the Institute of
Technology, New Jersey, USA
Former Senior Researcher NASA

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY - THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN IMMORTALITY

Dr. Alexander Bolonkin is a well-known scientist in the field of aeronautics, computer technology and mathematics. Currently he is working on the book “Twenty-First Century: Human Immortality and the Advent of Post-Human Civilization.” These are some excerpts from the book.


Immortality is the most cherished dream and the biggest wish of any person. People seldom think about it while they are still young, healthy , and full of energy. But when they get some incurable disease or become old, then there is no bigger wish for them than to live longer, put off the inevitable end. And no matter what heavenly existence in the after-life is promised to them by religion, the vast majority of people want to stay and enjoy life here, on Earth, as long as possible.

Medical Science and the Issue of Immortality

A great many of doctors and scientists are currently working on the problems of health and longevity. Substantial means are spent on it, about 15-25% of all human labor and resources. There are certain achievements in this direction: we have created wonderful medications (e.g. antibiotics); conquered many diseases; learnt to transplant human organs; created an artificial heart, kidneys, lungs, limbs; learnt to apply physiological solutions directly into the blood stream, and to saturate blood with oxygen. We have gotten inside the most sacred organ - the human brain, even inside its cells. We can record their signals, we can agitate some parts of the brain by electric stimuli inducing a patient to experience certain sensations, images, and hallucinations.

We can attribute the fact that the average life span has increased two times in the last two hundred years to the achievements of modern medicine.

But can medical science solve the problem of immortality? Evidently, it cannot. It cannot do that in principle. This is a dead-end direction in science. Maximum it can achieve is increase the average life expectancy another 5-10 years. An average person will be expected to live 80 years instead of 70. But what kind of person will it be? A very old one, capable of only existing and consuming, whose medical and personal care will demand huge funds.

The proportion of the elderly and retirees has increased steeply in the last 20-30 years and continues to grow depleting the pension funds and pressuring the younger generation to support them. So it is hard to say whether the modern success of medicine is a blessing or a curse from the point of view of the entire humankind, even though it is definitely a blessing from the point of view of a separate individual.

Humanity as a whole, as a civilization, needs active, able to work and creative members, generating material wealth and moving forward technology and science, not the elderly retirees with their numerous ailments and a huge army of those tending to them. It dreams not of the immortality of an old person, but of the immortality of youthfulness, activity, creativity, enjoying life.

Now there are signs of a breakthrough, but not in the direction the humankind has been working on all along, since the times of the first sorcerers to modern-day highly-educated doctors. Striving to prolong his biological existence, man has been chiseling, so to speak, at the endless stone wall. All he has been able to accomplish is only a dent in that wall - increased life expectancy, conquering some diseases, relieving suffering. As a payoff, the humanity has received a huge army of pensioners and retirees and gigantic expenditure on their upkeep.

Of course, one can continue chiseling at the dent in the wall further on, make it somewhat bigger, aggravating side effects. But we are already approaching the biological limit, when the cause of death and feeblemindedness is not a certain disease which can be conquered, but general deterioration of the entire organism, its decay on the cellular level, when the cells stop to divide. A live cell is a very complex biological formation. In its nucleus it has DNA - biological molecules consisting of tens of thousands of atoms connected between themselves with very fragile molecular links. Suffice it to say, that temperature fluctuation of only a few degrees can ruin these links. That is why a human organism maintains a certain temperature - 36.7 C. Raising this temperature only 2-3 degrees causes pain, and 5-7 degrees leads to death. Maintaining the existence of human cells also presents a big problem for humanity involving food, shelter, clothes and ecologically clean environment.

Nevertheless, human cells cannot exist eternally even under ideal conditions. This follows from the atomic-molecular theory. Atoms of biological molecules permanently oscillate and interact with each other. According to the theory of probability, sooner or later the impulses of adjacent atoms influencing the given atom, add up, and the atom acquires enough speed to break loose from its atomic chain, or at least to transfer into the adjacent position (physicists say that the impulse received by the atom has surpassed the energy threshold which retains the atom in in its particular place in the molecular chain). It also means that the cell containing this atom has been damaged and cannot any longer function normally. Thus, for example, we get cancer cells which cannot fulfill their designated functions any more and begin to proliferate abnormally fast and ruin human organs.

This process accelerates manifold when a person has been exposed to a strong electromagnetic radiation, for instance, Roentgen or Y-rays, a high-frequency electric current or radioactive materials.

Actually, the process of deforming of the hereditary DNA molecule under the influence of weak cosmic rays can take place from time to time, leading sometimes to birth defects, or it may turn out to be useful for the survival properties. And this plays a positive role for a particular species of plants or animals contributing to their adaptability to the changed environment and their survival as a species. But for a particular individual such aberration is a tragedy as a rule, since the overwhelming majority of such cases are birth defects, with only few cases of useful mutations. And human society in general is suspicious of people who are radically different in their looks or abilities.

An Unexpected Breakthrough

An unusually fast development of computer technology, especially the microchips which allow hundreds of thousands of electronic elements on one square centimeter, has opened before the humanity a radically different method of solving the problem of immortality of a separate individual. This method is based not on trying to preserve the fragile biological molecules, but on the transition to the artificial semiconductive (silicone, helium, etc.) chips which are resistant to considerable temperature fluctuations and do not need food or oxygen and can be preserved for thousands of years. And, most important, the information contained in them can easily be re-recorded into another chip and be stored in several duplicates.

And if our brain consisted of such chips, and not the biological molecules, then it would mean that we have achieved immortality. Then our biological body would become a heavy burden. It suffers from cold and hot temperatures, needs clothes and care, can be easily damaged. It’s much more convenient to have metal arms and legs, tremendously strong, and which are insensitive to heat and cold and do not need food or oxygen. And even if they break, it’s no big deal - we can buy new ones, more improved.

It may seem that this immortal man does not have anything human (in our understanding) left in him. But he does, he has the most important thing left - his consciousness, his memory, concepts and habits, i.e. everything encoded in his brain. Outwardly, he can look quite human, and even more graceful: a beautiful young face, a slim figure, soft smooth skin, etc. Moreover, one can change the look at will, according to current fashion, personal taste and the individual understanding of beauty. We are spending huge amounts of money on medicine. If we had been spending at least one-tenth of this money on the development of electronics, we would get immortality in the near future.

According to the author’s research, such transition to immortality (E-creatures) will be possible in 10-20 years. At first it will cost several million dollars and will be affordable only to very wealthy people, important statesmen, and celebrities. But in another 10-20 years, i.e. in the years 2020 - 2035, the cost of HEC (human-equivalent chip), together with the E-body, and organs of reception and communication, will drop to a few thousand dollars, and immortality will become affordable to the majority of the population of the developed countries, and another 10-15 years later, it will be accessible to practically all inhabitants of the Earth. Especially when at first it will be possible to record on chips only the contents of the brain, and provide the body for its independent existence later.

On October 11, 1995, Literaturnaya Gazeta (The Literary Gazette, a popular Russian weekly) published my article “If Not We, Then Our Children Will Be The Last Generation Of Human Beings” devoted to electronic civilization. The editor Oleg Moroz reciprocated with the article “Isn’t It High Time To Smash Computers With a Hammer?” (November 22, 1995) in which he discussed the ethical side of annihilating rational electronic creatures to preserve humanity.

But if the cost of the HEC drops and the procedure of reincarnation into the E-creature before death (transition to immortality) for the majority of people becomes affordable, then the situation deserves a second look. Indeed, the first to perform such transition will be very old or incurably sick people. And to pummel computers with a hammer will be equal to killing one’s own parents and precluding one’s own possibility to become immortal.

Once, the host of an American television program whose guest I was, asked me, “Will the electronic creature be entirely identical to its parent, with his feelings and emotions?” The answer was, “At first - yes!” But the development of these creatures will be so fast that we cannot really foresee the consequences. If a biological human being needs dozens of years to learn science, foreign languages, etc., an E-creature will acquire this knowledge in fractions of a second (the time needed to record it in its memory). And we know how different college-educated people are from, say, pre-schoolers, in their cognizance. And, since the first E-creatures will be contemporary middle-aged people who will, at least initially, preserve their feelings towards their children (contemporary younger generation), in all probability, there won’t be a mass destruction of humans by E-creatures. For some time they will co-exist. It’s quite likely that the birthrate of humans will be curtailed or it will be dropping due to natural causes, and the living, as they become old, will be transforming themselves into E-creatures. That is to say that the number of E-creatures will be growing and the number of people diminishing, till it gets to the minimum necessary for the zoos and small reservations. In all likelihood, the feelings that E-creatures may have towards humans as their ancestors, will be fading away, in proportion to the growing gap between the mental capacity of humans and electronic creatures, till they become comparable to our own attitude towards apes or even bugs.

Another thing is quite obvious, too - that biological propagation will be so expensive, time-consuming, and primitive, that it will go into oblivion. Each E-creature can reproduce itself simply by re-recording the contents of its brain to a new E-creature, i.e. propagate practically instantaneously, bypassing the stages of childhood, growing up, education, accumulating experience, etc. But, of course, this mature “offspring” will be completely identical to its parent only at the first moment of its existence. In time, depending on the received information and the area of expertise, this E-creature will be alienating itself from its ancestor, and, possibly, even become his enemy at some point, if their interests cross or go in opposite directions.

Contemporary Research

The cognitive abilities of man are defined by his brain, to be precise, by ten billion neurons of his brain. Neurons can be modeled on the computer. Such experiments have been conducted by Professor Kwin(?) Warwick, head of the cybernetics department of Reading University in the south of England, one of the biggest specialists in robot technology in the world. The results of these experiments were presented at the International Conference on Robotics. Professor Warwick has created a group of autonomous self-propelled miniature robots which he called “the seven dwarfs.”

A group of scientists headed by Rodney Brook from the laboratory of artificial intelligence of MIT, are working on an unusual project which they called “Cog.” The researchers want to model the mental and physical capacity of a six-month old. Their robot has eyes, ears, hands, fingers, an electronic brain and a system of information transmission duplicating human nervous system. By this kind of modeling, the researchers want to gain better understanding of how human beings coordinate their movements, how they learn to interact with the environment. The realization of this program will take ten years and will cost several million dollars.

They have already built a couple dozen humanoid robots which are moving autonomous machines with artificial intelligence. They are capable, through the sensors, to receive information about the environment, generalize, and plan their actions and behavior. Thus, for example, if a robot’s leg bumps against an obstacle and receives a blow, the robot acquires a reflex to withdraw it quickly. They have already developed several dozen of such reflexes in their behavior, which helps them to safeguard and protect themselves.

Brook says that in the course of human evolution, the human brain has developed thousands of conventional solutions to everyday problems such as optical and audio discerning and movement. All this needs to be studied. One cannot instantly transform a bug into a man. That is why our program will take ten years. I will consider my work completed when I create the smartest cat in the world.
It should be noted (1995) that the most powerful supercomputer can only model 40-60 million neurons, i.e. it is 200-300 times weaker than a human brain. But this gap will be overcome in the near 3-5 years ( In December 1996 the “Intel” company created a computer whose power equals one teraflops. It costs 55 million dollars and it wined a chess from World champion Kasparov. In 2000 the IBM company produced the supercomputer of 10 teraflops and IBM promises to design the supercomputer of 1000 teraflops in 2005).

Not long ago “The Russian Advertisement” newspaper re-printed the article of Igor Tsaryov first published in the newspaper “It’s Hard to Believe.” He writes that for several years the U.S. Ministry of Defense has been secretly working on a unique project “The Computer Maugli” (Sid). When a thirty-three year old Nadine M. gave birth to a boy, the doctors established that he was doomed. He was on a life support for a few days. During that time his brain was scanned with special equipment, and the electric potential of the neurons of this brain was copied into the neuron models in the computer. Steem Roiler, one of the participants of this project, said at the computer conference in Las Vegas that they had managed to scan 60% of the infant’s neurons. And this small artificial brain began to live and develop. First only his mother was informed. She took it calmly. The father was horrified at first and tried to destroy this computer creature. But later both parents started treating him as a real child. The computer was connected to the multi-media and virtual reality systems. These systems allow not only to have a three-dimensional full-sized image of Sid, but also to hear his voice, communicate with him, and “virtually” hold him in hands, so to speak. But when a special committee decided to open some results of the project, and “The Scientific Observer” published some data, one of American computer whiz-kids managed to decipher the secret code and copy some files. Sid got a defective “twin.” Fortunately, the whiz was quickly found, and the first in human history attempt to steal electronic children and duplicating copies of electronic creatures, was severed. At the present time, both parents take care of their “child’s” health and demand that the researchers install up-to-date programs of defense from computer viruses and burglars.

Unfortunately, and I am sure they have reasons for that, Americans keep secret the important details and results of the project - for instance, how they copied the potentials of the neurons, how the first E-creature is developing, what are the conclusions of the scientists. And probably, they are right, not willing to let the genie out of the bottle. More so because modern virtual reality systems are able to create false objects, e.g. model the image of any dead person or leader. It is possible to show on television how he is making a speech today, has a press-conference, talks to people, spends time with his family, etc.

But one cannot keep any secret for long, especially in science. The very possibility of a breakthrough stimulates other scientists and other countries to work in this direction. And sooner or later, the results will be repeated. Let’s remember, for instance, that there haven’t been a bigger secret than the production of an A- or H-bomb. But more and more countries re-invent them, gain expertise in nuclear technology and start producing their own nuclear weapons.

Intelligence in Space

Since E-creatures will be made of super-strong steels and alloys, their brain will be working on radio-active batteries, and power will be supplied by compact nuclear reactors, they will not need air, warmth, water, food, clothes, shelter, good quality environment, etc., which is the main concern of humanity and consumes 99.9% of its time and energy. This also means that E-creatures will be able to travel freely in the desert, the Arctic and the Antarctic regions, sub-atmosphere, mountain summits, the bottom of the ocean. They will be able to live, work and travel in space, receiving their energy directly from the sun.

Besides, as organs of feelings, E-creatures can use the whole arsenal of highly sensitive apparatuses created by the civilization, i.e. not only the visible light and sound, but also radiolocation, infra-red, ultra-violet, roentgen and Y-rays, ultra- and infra-sounds, audiolocation, environment sensors, etc. All this information can be received instantly through radio, satellite and cable network.

Moreover, since E-creatures (just like humans, for that matter) are nothing else but information recorded in their brains, and re-recording of this information from one chip to another (unlike human reproduction) does not present any difficulty and can be realized through radio, cable network, or a laser beam, they can travel on Earth, as well as in outer space, without their actual physical movement, simply by re-recording the contents of their brains into the chips on the Moon, Mars, or Jupiter.

Which is to say that E-creatures will have the ability to move EXTRA-CORPORALLY with the speed of light - the maximal possible speed in the material world. This will be, indeed, like an incorporeal soul which can travel, so to speak, from one body to another, or, to be more exact, from one chip to another.

The expansion of E-creatures (E-civilization), first in the solar system, then in our galaxy, then in the entire Universe, will be fast.

To achieve this, it is not necessary to launch huge spacecraft with a large crew, as it is depicted in science-fiction books. It will be enough to send a receiver to this or that part of the Universe, which will receive information and re-produce E-creatures. Then the speed of the expansion of E-civilization on some planet will depend only on the rate of production of robots and chips, and the speed of the transmission of information. It is quite obvious that the reproduction of E-creatures will take place in geometric progression and will only be limited by the natural resources of the planet.

Thus E-creatures realize in practice the idea of EXTRA-CORPORAL travel with the speed of light. Why, indeed, should an E-creature travel hundreds or thousands of years to a certain planet, when, with the help of a laser beam, it can transmit with the speed of light, all the information stored in his brain, to another chip, on another planet.

And if a planet were to meet with an ultimate catastrophe, like a collision with a huge meteorite, another planet, or the explosion of the sun, E-civilization can arrange transporting E-creatures to another planet or another solar system.

One more thing is of interest. A light beam can travel to other galaxies for millions of years, so this, in a manner of speaking, “incorporeal soul” can exist for millions of years as an electromagnetic field and “resurrect” as an E-creature through a receiver. This can occur even without a special receiver, as the high energy electromagnetic oscillations can yield material particles, and their energy (frequency) increases the closer it gets to a strong gravitational field, e.g. near a “black hole.” And since it will not be hard for an E-creature to produce a DNA molecule, it means that it will not be hard for it to bring biological life to any suitable planet and control and develop it in the necessary direction, for example, to create a human being.

Alexander Bolonkin,Ph.D.
Professor of the Institute of
Technology, New jersey, USA
Former Senior Researcher of NASA(DFRC)

Address: Dr. A.Bolonkin
1310 Avenue R, #6-F,
Brooklyn, NY 11229, USA
Tel/Fax 718-339-4563
E-mail: aBolonkin@juno.com
http://members.xoom....nkin/index.html
http://bolonkin.harod.ru

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[Bruce Klein]

Article Science Soul AI in English cor 2 8 03 Also Attached In Word Below

Dr.Sci. Alexander Bolonkin
Science, Soul, Heaven and Supreme Mind

Russian scientist Alexander Bolonkin develops artificial intelligence in the USA
Advantages of Electronic being

It was shown in my previous articles about the artificial intelligence and human immortality that the issue of immortality can be solved fundamentally only with the help of changing a biological bubble of a human being to an artificial one. Such an immortal person made of chips and supersolid materials (the e-man, as it was called in my articles) will have incredible advantages in comparison with common people. An e-man will need no food, no dwelling, no air, no sleep, no rest, no ecologically pure environment. Such a being will be able to travel into space, or walk on the sea floor with no aqualungs. His mental abilities and capacities will increase millions times. It will be possible to move such a person at a huge distance at a light speed. The information of one person like that could be transported to another planet with a laser and then placed in another body.

Such people will not be awkward robots made of steel. An artificial person will have an opportunity to choose his or her face, body, good skin. It will also be possible for them to reproduce themselves avoiding the periods of childhood, adolescence, as well as education. It will not be possible to destroy an artificial person with any kind of weapons, since it will be possible to copy the information of his mind and then keep it separately.

I have received tons of responses and comments since my first articles about this subject were published in 1994. Below I will try to answer the most important ones of them.

Human soul

A lot of people, especially those, who believe in God, are certain that a biological human being has a soul. This is something that an artificial man will never have. No person can explain the meaning of the word “soul.” They just keep saying that a human soul is not material, and that it leaves a person’s body after death and flies either to paradise or to hell. Let’s try to analyze the notion of a soul from the scientific point of view.

First of all, a soul is supposed to remember its past life, its relatives and friends. It is also supposed to preserve its emotions to them, to care about them and recognize them, when they come to heaven. No one would need a soul that does not remember anything. This means that a soul is a human being without a body. In other words, a soul is the information that is kept in a human mind - his memories, knowledge, skills, habits, conduct programs, emotions and feelings, ides and thoughts, and so on. If we learn how to move this information onto other carriers, we will be able to move a person’s soul to other bubbles and to keep it there for an unrestricted period of time. As it is well known, information is virtual, i.e. it satisfies another human soul feature – a non-material quality.

Man’s new bubbles can be both artificial and biological. A soul (a complex of knowledge and information) can be rewritten into a clone of that same person. To put it otherwise, a person will live forever biologically as well, moving from old bubbles to new ones. It would be also possible to move a soul to artificial bodies, which possess all those qualities that we mentioned above. Furthermore, information (a soul) could be radiated in the form of electromagnetic waves. These waves can be spread in the universe at the light speed. They can travel around the universe for thousands of years, reaching its most distant parts. People see the star light that was radiated millions of years ago. This means that our immaterial soul can live in the universe in the form of electromagnetic radiation and then revive in millions of years.

Some of my readers wrote that an old brain can go corrupt and die, when moving a human soul from one body to another one. If it does not go corrupt, this inner self will die anyway, when an old biological bubble is not able to function normally anymore. Let us try to find out, what that inner self is. The majority of people identify their inner selves with their own bodies. I believe that the inner self is the information, which is kept in our mind. It is our soul. Every day we go to sleep. However, our brain does not stop working at night. Every time we wake up, we have our inner self changed. We “die” when we fall asleep and then “resurrect” when we wake up. This means that recording the information from a human brain will mean nothing but moving it to another bubble.

Heaven on Earth

A reporter from the newspaper Argumenty I Fakty (Arguments and Facts) sent me the following letter:

“Dear Mr. Bolonkin. Needless to mention that it is great to live forever. However, I have a question, which you can guess from a well-known Soviet joke. “A guy is going to join the communist party. A committee asks him:
- Will you stop drinking?
- Yes, I will.
- Will you quit smoking?
- Yes I will.
- Will you stop loving other women?
- Yes, I will.
- Will you die for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, if there is such a need?
- Yes, I will. To hell with this life.”

Here is my answer:

“You do not need to worry that living in an electronic form will be dull and boring. It is vice versa, actually. When the information will be recorded onto other carriers, all human emotions, feelings and so on will also be carried over and preserved. In addition to that, the copies of certain emotions, pleasures, fears and so forth will be possible to record separately. After that, those separately recorded emotions and feelings can be given or sold to other people. Other e-men will have an opportunity to enjoy sex with a beauty queen, to experience the enjoyment of a sports victory, to take pleasure of power and the like. All modern art is based on artists’ aspiration to transcend their emotions, to make other people feel, what characters feel. Those works of art, which make that happen best, are considered to be outstanding and great. Electronic people will get those emotions directly. To crown it all, it will be possible to intensify those emotions, as we intensify a singer’s voice now. Electronic people will have a huge world of all kinds of pleasures; it will be possible to know, what a dictator or an animal feels. I think that an e-man’s pleasure time will be limited legally, for the civilization’s progress will stop otherwise. For the time being, the authorities prohibit drug addiction in order not to let the society degrade.”

A soul’s living in such a virtual world will have all pleasures imaginable. It will be like living in paradise, as all religions see it. Computer chips of our time possess the frequency of more than two billion hertz. However, a human brain reacts to a change of environment only in one-twentieth of a second. This means that one year of life on Earth is equal to 100 million years of a soul’s living in the virtual world (paradise). Living in the virtual world will not be distinguishable from the real life. It will have a lot more advantages: you will have an opportunity to choose a palace to live in, you will have everything that you might wish for. Yet, living in hell also becomes real. There is a hope that the ability to keep souls alive will be achieved by highly-civilized countries first. In this case they will prohibit torturing sinners, as they prohibit torturing criminals nowadays. Furthermore, criminal investigations will be simplified a lot, judicial mistakes will be excluded. It will be possible to access a soul’s consciousness and see every little detail of this or that action. Sooner or later religious teachings about soul, heaven and hell will become real. However, all that will be created by man.

The so-called end of the world will also have a chance to become real, though. The religious interpretation of this notion implies the end of existence for all biological people (moving all souls onto artificial carriers, either to heaven or to hell). However, in difference to religious predictions, this process is going to be gradual.

The Supreme Mind and Mankind’s Existence

I set forth an idea in my first publications that the goal of the mankind’s existence is to create the Supreme Mind and to keep this Mind forever, no matter what might happen in the universe. The biological mankind is only a small step on the way to the creation of the Supreme Mind. The nature found a very good way to create the Supreme Mind: it decided to create a week and imperfect biological mind at first. It took the nature millions of years to do that. The twentieth century was a very remarkable period in the history of the humanity. There has been incredible progress achieved, like never before. The scientific and the technological level of the humanity became sufficient for the creation of the artificial intelligence. This will be the first level of the Supreme Mind, when the human mind will make a step towards immortality. At present moment we stand on the edge of this process. It is obvious that biological people will not be able to compete with e-men by the end of this period. Common people will not be able to learn the knowledge that electronic people will get. The new cyberworld will be the only way for a human mind to survive. Feeble and unstable biological elements in a mind carrier or in its bubble will reduce its abilities and capacities a lot. If a common person will be willing to become a cyberman, then this cyberman will be more willing to get rid of all biological elements in his system and become like everyone. For example, there are no people in our present society, who would agree to become a monkey again.

The Supreme Mind will eventually reach immense power. It will be able to move all over the universe, to control and use its laws. It will become God, if the notion of God implies something that knows and does everything. In other words, Man will become God. Yet, it does not mean that this will be the time, when the Supreme Mind will start dealing with human problems. For instance, ants and people have a common ancestor. A human being is God against ants. A man can destroy a huge city of ants (an anthill, in which hundreds of thousands of ants live) just with one kick. Ants will perceive this as an immense natural disaster, since they can see at the distance of only one centimeter. I do not know anyone, who would deal with charitable activities for ants. Everything that a man can do is to bring ants to a deserted island and give them an opportunity to reproduce themselves.

Essential State of Things and Perspectives

A lot of people will say that it is just a fantasy. This is a very convenient way to cast all that aside, until it starts happening. This is exactly what happened before the invention of a plane or a computer. It took 50 years to increase computer’s memory 100 million times. It would be possible to start working on the creation of the Supreme Mind, if there were a computer that would be capable of running a thousand billion of operations during only one second. In 1994 I said that such a super computer will be invented in the year 2000. I was wrong, for it appeared at the end of 1998. There is also a need of a self-developing program that would be capable of adjusting itself to constantly-changing circumstances. A human child does not develop and grow at once. A child has to study for about 20 years, to learn from his parents and friends, to have relations with nature and other people in order to gain more and more experience, to come to realization of his or her inner self. Unfortunately, the science of the artificial intelligence has chosen a wrong way of its development from the very start. Scientists tried to develop programs, which would react to certain external signals. In other words, people started working on robots that would cope with certain problems. A lot of efforts have been spent to discover the peculiarities of human speech, for instance. Some of those scientific works are absolutely no use for the electronic mind. It is easier for e-men to communicate with the help of their own electronic language, to recognize objects not by their images, but by way of measuring their speed, weight, composition and so on. All of that can be done at a distance. Biologists and physicists have spent decades for those useless works. They believe that one should study brain activities, find out the way it works and thinks. Then it would be time for modeling it with the help of a computer. This is a wrong way to go as well. A human brain is very complicated, it is very hard to study its activities. More importantly, even if we learn how it works, it would not mean that the method would be good for a computer. Here are some examples to prove it. Hundreds of years ago people were longing to learn how to fly. They saw that bird waved its wings for flying, so they tried to model such wings, to wave them, and to take off. However, people could fly up into the sky only when they developed still wings and propellers. A waving wing was absolutely not good for technology, the same way as a propeller is not good for the wild nature. In addition to that, planes with still wings fly a lot faster than birds. Another example: ancient people always wanted to run as fast as four-legged animals. Now everyone knows that no one uses machines that would move with the help of legs. Legs were changed with wheels – something that has never been used by the natural world.

In 1998 I suggested people should lay new principles as the foundation of artificial intelligence program. Those principles would be: to realize the goal of existence, to study the environment (everything that goes separately from the “inner self”), to model environment, to predict actions’ results, to counteract with the environment in order to achieve temporal and global goals, to correct modeled environment, actions and their results according to the results of such counteraction. Unfortunately, I had to deal with the fact that everyone refused to realize and understand those principles. First of all, everyone believed that since the “virtual ego” does not have a human body, it would never have any rights. They said that it would be possible to control such an e-man completely and then to kill him (erase his soul from the computer memory). I wonder, what they would do, if they were offered to kill their relatives’ souls that way? People link their body and soul together, and there is no way around that. They are ready to struggle for the rights of every living being, but they never want to accept the rights of a program or of a computer memory. Second of all, people want an artificial intelligence to give smart answers to their questions that can be rather stupid at times. They do not need smart answers from babies. They are always ready to stand all stupid things that children do for years. Instead, they try to teach them everything. Yet, they want a new artificial mind to give bright answers without any education. To crown it all, people want a computer to speak their human language, which is absolutely alien for a machine. Can you imagine that a person will have to answer the questions of an alien in Maya’s language? Let’s assume that a representative of an electronic civilization came to planet Earth in order to find out, if there are reasonable creatures living on it. This e-man suggested a common biological man to multiply 53758210967 by 146, then divide it by 50, deduct 968321 from it and calculate the hyperbolic sine. A computer would give the correct result of this sum in less than a second. A man would spend really a long time on that, making numerous mistakes. However, it would not be correct to say that a computer is smart and a man isn’t.

Religious figures show a strong resistance to these ideas. It stands the reason that they all think that the creation of the Supreme Mind, immortality ideas are blasphemous. Unfortunately, the church has already blocked such decisions as human cloning, increasing the productivity of plants by means of changing their genes. It should be mentioned here that human cloning does not solve the questions of immortality. A clone is a copy of its biological bubble. A clone inherits the biological advantages of a bubble, for example, a singer’s fine voice, an athlete’s strength and the like. A clone will never inherit its’ copy’s soul. Therefore, human cloning is only an illusion of immortality. It can be a wonderful way to improve the biological bubble of a human being. Moving a human soul onto other carriers is a very complicated issue. People learned to see, which brain areas get activated, when a person remembers something, or tries to solve this or that question. We also learned to penetrate into certain neurons and record their impulses. To my mind, physiologists chose a wrong way here as well, when they tried to model brain activities. A human brain is an analogue of a huge state with a ten billion strong population. There is no use to ask each citizen of that country, what he or she is doing at the moment. One has to copy the database of this state, in order to copy its work. The easiest way to do so is to penetrate into informational channels of its supreme body (the “government”), on the inquiry of which the brain presents any information and allows to record its data on a disk, for instance. It is possible to do that, for the supreme brain area constantly extracts the necessary knowledge and programs according to our activities. So, we would need to send “intelligent officers” to the brain so that they could get a copy of this state or get connected to its major information channels.

Another way to do that is to record all incoming and outgoing information, which comes to/from a person, to record his or her emotions and reactions. An English-speaking reader, who reviewed one of my English articles once told me: “Your English is not perfect. You should find an English-speaking co-author. It is better to have a half of a pie than nothing at all.”

Hope

I do not doubt that the electronic civilization era, the era of the Supreme Mind and immortality will be achieved sooner or later. Those people, who have little in common with science, are drawn to believe that everything depends on scientists. They think that scientists can solve any problem, if they deal with it profoundly. As a matter of fact, everything depends on state and military officials. Sometimes, they know nothing of scientific perspectives and innovations. Scientists are like qualified workers. They need to get paid, they need to work with fine equipment. They will work only if they are get paid for it. Even if a scientist will have a wish to do something perspective during his free time, he will have no necessary equipment for that. Even such powerful companies as IBM, Boeing, Ford and others are interested only in the applied research, which does not require large investments. The major goal of such research is to give a maximum profit to this or that company. A fundamental research, the discoveries that are important for the whole humanity, not just for a company, might be of interest to a bright government. It goes without saying that a bright government is so hard to find. Every government is interested in the military power of its country. It is ready to fund defense technology works and military innovations. Von Braun convinced Hitler of real perspectives for missiles, WWII was followed with an arm race. This eventually led to space achievements and other kinds of technical progress of the humanity. The USA won the Moon race and stopped flying there 30 years ago. America keeps cutting its space research assignments every year. There are no serious assignments in the world for the invention of either the Supreme Mind or the artificial intelligence. Yet, they are most important and perspective problems of the humanity. The computers that we have at present are used for modeling nuclear weapons and sometimes, weather. Furthermore, the mankind does not spend much time thinking over the reason and goal of its existence. People spend a lot of their efforts and funds for solving local, temporal problems. Huge money and efforts are spent on conflicts and wars.

A certain hope has appeared recently. As experience shows, unmanned planes are a lot cheaper than piloted warplanes. More importantly, unmanned plane crashes do not cause harsh public reactions in civilized countries as pilots’ or soldiers’ deaths. The Americans design such planes successfully, but the planes are controlled by an operator within the USA. It has been proved that this remote control is not good for unmanned planes. The USA has missed Bin Laden and Omar in Afghanistan several times, two Iraqi pursuit planes downed an unmanned Predator in the Iraqi airspace. An unmanned plane can become something valuable indeed, if it has an artificial intelligence, if it is capable of recognizing and destroying targets itself. The Pentagon has assigned certain money for the research of this issue. It is a very hard goal to pursue (to create the mind of a pilot), but it is a very perspective one. In this case there would be no need to eliminate the young part of a country’s population, if robots could conduct the warfare.

I suggested the hierarchical structure of an artificial intelligence, on the ground of which the real brain probably works. Let us imagine a state with a dictator at the head. A dictator would never be able to find efficient solutions for external and internal state problems. A dictator has ministries, which are then divided into divisions and departments. This forms a pyramid, in which all departments have their own databases, as well as the access to the common base. All divisions are busy with their particular problems, in accordance with the dictator’s ideology. A dictator only sets problems up, while adequate divisions suggest solutions. For example, a man decides to cross a road with a heavy traffic. He looks at the road, while adequate parts of his brain automatically receive the information about the width of the road, the distance to nearest cars, their speed, and so on. The brain automatically makes adequate calculations, which eventually lead to the final decision: when it is safe to cross the road. All kinds of enlightenment in the solution of a problem are simply considered to be the “help from above.” However, this is nothing, but the joint work of that pyramid. Human beings do not even know that such a pyramid exists. Pyramid’s decisions are based on the knowledge of a certain individual. If an individual knows absolutely nothing about the quantum theory, he will never solve any of its problems. Therefore, an artificial intelligence of a high level cannot be realized with a personal computer that has only one chip and a successive work order.

My scheme stipulates the distribution of functions between parallel chips. The top one of them is offered to deal only with solution variants, their estimation and choice.

Every human being wants to extend his or her life. This can be seen from everyone’s wish to have children, or to do something outstanding. It is simply enough to avoid danger sometimes. Even suicidal terrorists believe that they will go to heaven, when they kill themselves. The most important problem that the humanity has is the problem of immortality. Let us hope that it will be solved in the future.

Alexander Bolonkin
Doctor of Technical Science
Especially for PRAVDA.Ru (2002)
USA

Alexander Bolonkin worked at aircraft construction companies in Kiev and Moscow. He also worked as a tutor of Russia’s major aviation institutes. In 1972 Bolonkin was arrested by KGB for reading the so-called anti-Soviet literature. He spent 15 years in concentration camps and exiles. KGB eventually ousted him of the Soviet Union.

In the United states Alexander Bolonkin worked as a tutor in several American universities, he worked at US Air Force research centers, at NASA. At present moment he works on the development of smart unmanned planes, with unrocketed space travelling. Nine of his reports have been approved by the World Space Congress of 2002.

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

Related links:
PRAVDA.Ru To Space without Rockets
PRAVDA.Ru Russian Scientists in America. Part I
PRAVDA.Ru Russian Scientists in America. Part II
Washington Post : Web May Hold the Key to Achieving Artificial Intelligence
New Scientist : Artificial intelligence tackles breast cancer
USA Today : Artificial intelligence isnt just a movie
BBC : Time for real intelligence?
The Economist : Herbert Simon, artificial intelligence pioneer

Read the original in Russian: http://science.pravda.ru/science/2003/6/20/57/5124_bolonkin.html

Attached Files

•  Article_Science_Soul_AI_in_English_cor_2_8_03.doc   38KB   289 downloads

[Bruce Klein]

(Bolonkin's Picture, attached)

Attached Files

•  Bolonkin__A.gif   21.67KB   44 downloads

[Jay the Avenger]

According to the author’s research, such transition to immortality (E-creatures) will be possible in 10-20 years.

Does this mean that Bolonkin thinks we will be able to not only build these E-bodies, but also upload our minds to it, somewhere between 2010 and 2020?

Í would really love to believe that, but I can't help but feel this is a little too good to be true.

Does anyone in here know of any other well respected researchers that feel the same way as Bolonkin?

Man... and I thought Kurzweil was a positive guy!

Edited by Jay the Avenger, 11 March 2003 - 09:18 PM.

[MichaelAnissimov]

Well, there's Nick Bostrom @ www.nickbostrom.com, Hugo de Garis, Ian Pearson and others - which you should probably find for yourself. All of them are very credible and respected, but in the end it comes down to the evidence, not how many Ph.Ds you have on your side. A major stumbling block in making accurate predictions is assuming that the near-term predictions which others are making are the result of blithe optimism, when in many cases the quick arrival could be good as well as bad. Among all these researchers, Bolonkin seems to downplay the negativity the most, which I don't really mind, because I've already read tons of negativity. Before we all became immortalists, we probably had vague intuitions that immortality would become possible within hundreds or thousands of years. After a lot of reading, we might become able to cogently argue for the arrival of immortality within 50 years. What makes you think it doesn't take a similar amount of reading and thinking (or far more) to revise your predictions yet again?

[Jay the Avenger]

Ian Pearson for one has stated in his BT Technology Timeline that people will upload themselves (and become immortal in doing so) in the year 2100.

That's quite a difference between Bolonkin and Ian Pearson there.

I take it that, since both are well respected, both have done their homework and know what they are talking about.

Do you have any idea why these two are so far apart in their predictions?

[Jay the Avenger]

I emailed Bolonkin to ask him why he thinks that it will be possible to upload your mind to an E-body/brain in 10-15 years.

This was his reply:

"Dear Mr. [name edited out]:
In the nearest 10-20 years I am waiting the design a self-develop program of Artificial Intellect.
Alexander"

Well, I guess we got that cleared up, haven't we.

He refuses to reply any more emails by the way.

Edited by Jay the Avenger, 15 April 2003 - 11:37 PM.