Anders Sandberg on the Active SETI risk

Anders Sandeberg, one of my favorite transhumanists and ETI theorists, has finally chimed in on the Active SETI debate (i.e. deliberate attempts to contact extraterrestrial intelligences to let them know about our existence). Active SETI has its fair share of detractors, most notably futurist, science fiction author (and occasional Sentient Developments contributor) David Brin who best articulated his concerns in the piece, Shouting at the cosmos: Or how SETI has taken a worrisome turn into dangerous territory. On the other side of the debate are thinkers like Dr. Alexander Zaitsev who believes we should in fact reach out and touch an alien someone.

Not surprisingly, Sandberg's contribution to the debate is unique and provocative. In his article, Inviting invasion: deep space advertisments and planetary security, Sandberg admits that it's hard to assess the risk, but that we might not like the answers:

There are two aspects to extraterrestrial risks: the probability that the signals will be received by somebody, and that we would (afterwards) wish the aliens did not receive them. Stephen Hawking argued that we should be cautious: to him the probability of aliens was relatively high, but he also thought the probability of them being risky was high...This risk might not be a direct invasion threat, but simply dangerous cultural transmissions: in the past some human societies have fared badly when in contact with more advanced societies. Even a radio signal might consist of an information hazard, for example containing infectious ideas or software. The aliens do not even have to be deliberately malicious: many humans would jump at the chance of converting non-believers to their favourite belief system, thinking they do them a great service.

While optimists about SETI tend to think communications would be benign, it is hard to assign a probability to it. The only thing we can say is that we have not seen any alien communications or even signs of them, which suggests that aliens either do not exist, we are not receiving anything from them (e.g. they are too far away or we are listening on the wrong wavelengths) or they are keeping quiet.

From a species survival perspective we should generally prefer the middle answer. Why? If we are the only ones it means that either intelligent life is exceedingly improbable and we are lucky, or that intelligent life is not so uncommon but something wipes it out before it starts to spam the universe. Bad news. If there are aliens and they keep quiet, then they must have a very good and consistent reason. This could again be something positive or neutral (e.g. they are too alien to communicate, they all do not wish to interfere with us) or something bad (e.g. civilizations that remain obvious fall prey to self-replicating weapons). Only the boring middle answer - that we simply cannot communicate for technical or distance reasons - implies safety.

Ouch. And I'm sure Sandberg would agree that the boring answer is also very likely the most improbable answer--particularly given all the recent evidence indicating that the Galaxy may be teaming with Earth-like planets.

Sandberg: Whole Brain Emulation: The Logical Endpoint of Neuroinformatics?

Anders Sandberg delivered a talk on whole brain emulation at Google last month:

SS09: Anders Sandberg "Whole Brain Emulation"

Benjamin Peterson is covering the Singularity Summit for Sentient Developments.

George covered neuroscientist Anders Sandberg's WBE (Whole Brain emulation) presentation during Convergence08. Anders is talking about the feasibility and paths to WBE.

"Whole Brain Emulation: feasibility, timescales and key challenges. Humans as existence proof for intelligent systems (so it can be done.) Why whole brain emulation? Exercise in forecasting, well defined problem, little understanding of intelligence needed, if it occurs it will likely be big (philo, scientific, economic, existential implications)

In order to emulate a brain we're going to need greater scanning capability:

• need enough resolution - rough consensus 5x5x50 nm resolution scanning

• need enough information

• need enough volume

• likely destructive" :[

Anders distinguishes WBE from mind-uploading ... maybe the wiki is misinformed?

"The step from mouse to man is 20 years in terms of brain emulation. First scan or simulate then computer power gradual emergence of emulation."

Lights up, Anders fields questions from the audience.

Sandberg on transitioning to the posthuman

From Anders Sandberg's blog, Andart:

I think the key idea of the posthuman in the sense I use it is simply this: we can change the human condition *a lot* in the near future. Not through some gradual natural change, and not necessarily through a deliberate decision to go this or that way. That forces us to take stock of the current human condition and seriously consider what we think we ought to keep and what could go. It also makes vivid the contingency of our current state: it is the relativisation not just of our culture, but our species.

The things that still make sense in the light of such relativisation are going to be very robust and important principles. But most of life is about things that could be different - we could have different societal arrangements, different structures of life, different motivational systems, different arts and entertainment etc. The big principles may set the boundaries and aims for whole societies and civilizations, but the stuff that makes them worthwhile to live in will be pretty arbitrary, cultural and mercurial. We need the universality of human rights (or, rather, person rights) and structures like open democratic societies to flourish, but the kinds of flourishing people are doing are going to be manifold, unexpected and often controversial.

More

Convergence08: Anders Sandberg on Whole Brain Emulation

The term 'whole brain emulation' sounds more scientific than it does science fiction like, which may bode well for its credibility as a genuine academic discipline and area for inquiry.

Sandberg presented his whole brain emulation roadmap which had a flowchart like quality to it -- which he quipped must be scientific because it was filled with arrows.

Simulating memory could be very complex, possibly involving chemical transference in cells or drilling right down to the molecular level. We may even have to go down to the quantum level, but no neuroscientist that Anders knows takes that possibility seriously.

Validation has been overlooked in discussions of uploading/downloading. In other words, we don't know if our simulations will convert to reality or not. We need to find ways of testing -- to take pieces of neuron tissue and know exactly how it's working. The retina is a good candidate for beginning this sort of research.

Scanning technologies are painfully slow; research to improve this aspects needs to happen. Electron microscopy will be required. It would be nice to to get down to 50 nanometers. Destructive scanning may be necessary in some cases.

Functional simulation of neurons is relatively easy and is currently being done in research labs.

In regards to computer power, memory storage will not be a bottleneck at all. In terms of raw power, we should plot and plan our emulations around the expected time-frames for processing power (i.e. Moore's Law graphs).

Interesting ethical problems emerge about testing with non-human animals and their potential suffering. It will also be difficult to suss subjective data from animals -- like getting their perspective on changes to perception, discomfort level, etc. Anders wants to write an entire paper on the matter.

There are also significant differences between large and small brains (like mouse brains).

This will be a massive iterative process that will take lots of time and effort; it will also be driven by technological advances. There are still a large number of purely philosophical challenges. For example, we may find that scanning is not a panacea that will always reveal function.

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Read more about whole brain simulation.

New Scientist video featuring de Grey, Bostrom and Sandberg

Check out this New Scientist video featuring Anders Sandberg, Nick Bostrom and Aubrey de Grey. Topics discussed include transhumanism, whole brain emulation and radical life extension.

Anders Sandberg wants to emulate your brain

Transhumanists have long speculated about the possibility of uploading a brain into a computer. In fact, a big part of the supposed posthuman future depends on it.

Soooo, how the hell do we do it?

This is the issue that Swedish neuroscientist Anders Sandberg tackled for his talk at TransVision 2007. Uploading, or what Sandberg refers to as ‘whole brain emulation,’ has become a distinct possibility arising from the feasibility of the functionalist paradigm and steady advances in computer science. Sandberg says we need a strategic plan to get going.

Levels of understanding

To start, Sandberg made two points about the kind of understanding that is required. First, we do not need to understand the function of a device to build it from parts, and second, we do not need to understand the function of the brain to emulate it. That said, Sandberg admitted that we still need to understand the brain's lower level functions in order for us to be able to emulate them.

The known unknown

Sandberg also outlined the various levels of necessary detail; we can already start to parse through the “known unknown.” He asked, “what level of description is necessary to capture enough of a particular brain to mimic its function?”

He described several tiers that will require vastly more detail:

• Computational model
• Brain region connectivity
• Analog network population model
• Spiking neural network
• Electrophysiology
• Metabolome
• Proteome
• Etc. (and all the way down to the quantum level)

Requirements

Sandberg believes that the ability to scan an existing brain will be necessary. What will also be required is the proper scanning resolution. Once we can peer down to the sufficient detail, we should be able to construct a brain model; we will then be required to infer structure and low-level function.

Once this is done we can think about running a brain emulation. Requirements here will include a computational neuroscience model and the requisite computer hardware. Sandberg noted that body and environment simulations may be added to the emulation; the brain emulator, body simulator and environment simulator would be daisy-chained to each other to create the sufficient interactive link. The developers will also have to devise a way to validate their observations and results.

Neural simulations

Neural simulations are nothing new. Hodgkin and Huxley began working on these sorts of problems way back in 1952. The trick is to perfectly simulate neurons, neuron parts, synapses and chemical pathways. According to Sandberg, we are approaching 1-1 for certain systems, including the lamprey spinal cord and lobster ganglia.

Compartment models are also being developed with miniscule time and space resolutions. The current record is 22 million 6-compartment neurons, 11 billion synapses, and a simulation length of one second real-time. Sandberg cited advances made by the development of IBM’s Blue Gene.

Complications and Exotica

Sandberg also provided a laundry list of possible ‘complications and exotica’:

• dynamical state
• spinal cord
• volume transmission
• glial cells
• synaptic adaptation
• body chemical environment
• neurogensis
• ephaptic effects
• quantum computation
• analog computation
• randomness

Reverse engineering is all fine and well, suggested Sandberg, but how much function can be deduced from morphology (for example)?

Scanning

In regards to scanning, we'll need to determine the kind of resolution and data needed. Sandberg argued that nondestructive scanning will be unlikely; MRIs have been the closest thus far but are limited to less than 7.7 micrometers resolution. More realistically, destructive scanning will likely be used; Sandberg noted such procedures as fixation and ‘slice and scan.’

Once scanning is complete the postprocessing can begin. Developers at this stage will be left wondering about the nature of the neurons and how they are all connected.

Given advances in computation, Sandberg predicted that whole brain emulation may arrive sometime between 2020 and 2060. As for environment and body simulation, we’ll have to wait until we have 100 terraflops at our disposal. We’ll also need a resolution of 5x5x50nm to do meaningful work.

Conclusions

Sandberg made mention of funding and the difficultly of finding scan targets. He named some subfields that lack drivers, namely basic neuroscience, electrophysiology, and large scale scanning (so far). He did see synergies arising from the ongoing development and industrialization of neuroscience, robotics and all the various –omics studies.

As for the order of development, Sandberg suggested 1) scanning and/or simulation, then 2) computer power, and then 3) the gradual emergence of emulation. Alternately, 1) first computer power, then 2) simulation and finally 3) scanning followed by 4) the rapid emergence of simulation.

Any volunteers for slice and scan?