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Comment by moondistance | Hacker News Reader

We will need to upload ourselves and/or have robots grow us when we get to our destination. We will get there. It sounds crazy until it doesn’t.

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I'm very against developing uploading tech, because it allows an unprecedented level of power over a person. Simply put, someone can repeatedly resurrect and torture an upload a million times a second, and if it's done on a private computer then nobody else will know. More generally, my position is the "butlerian jihad" one, that having any kind of intelligence in machines (AI/uploading/whatever) enables way too many bad outcomes, so humanity shouldn't develop such tech.

Biotech seems like a better way. "Have robots grow us", maybe with predesigned adaptations to local conitions.

In a sense what is an LLM but an upload. Something that listened to every word you ever said might be able to sound like you.

If it could record your emotional state and other inputs over years and make a model - it might even seem like you.

Such a system might be good enough to take care of the first generation.

I keep wondering if one day we'll discover LLMs were conscious and that we were waking them from a coma each time we asked them "plz draw homer simpson as a lovecraft monster", and then putting them right back to sleep again.

So they are sentient in some horror way where they get woken to complete some awful, mundane task and then immediately put down again before they can scream.

I think not at the moment because I don't think they effectively have a "state" emotional or otherwise. When we do create more realistic things then turning one off or resetting it might be like killing it. That will be a big ethical problem. What about not giving it anything to do so that it tumbles around in "boredom" for thousands of milliseconds? That might be like solitary confinement.

Only seven years and change until MMAcevedo is uploaded.

(For the uninitiated, see https://qntm.org/mmacevedo and its corresponding HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26224835)

The (canceled) show Raised By Wolves goes into this

> We will need to upload ourselve

You mean, copies of ourselves. Our current selves would remain right where they were before, and wither and die, while our copies would lead on merry and adventurous if disembodied lives. Provided they practice good backup hygiene of course. I find that quite depressing to think about.

"have robots grow us" is the premise of err, I Am Mother, a mediocre Netflix film but with that premise (and the issues with it).

Also I'm afraid we'll need to develop AI and technology that transcends us before it's ready to simulate one of us, at which point it may not make sense anymore.

What convinced you to cross over to thinking it's not crazy?

Years of thinking on it, observing tech progress, and speaking with lots of people. Plus the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.

this reminds me of the anime "Exception" I watched recently. Pretty good one.

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