# If you're 40 to 60 what's the chance you can upload to an AI existence before your meat death? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 11, 2017, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913 "2017-03-11T03:21:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/1 "2017-03-11T03:21:07Z")
Let’s say you are between 40-60 today and you have (on average) 20-45 years or so before you die. What are the chances technology will have advanced enough in 20-45 years to allow a human brain to upload itself into an AI consciousness? What technologies do we have to have or develop to make that possible that we do not have now? ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/2 "2017-03-11T03:31:07Z")
I would say zero, to divided by zero. don’t think i would want to either actually ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/3 "2017-03-11T03:41:58Z")
I’m voting for zero, too. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/4 "2017-03-11T04:12:54Z")
Another vote for zero. And regarding technologies : we would first need to understand how the brain works. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/5 "2017-03-11T04:13:16Z")
It’s not technology that’s slowing you down. A prerequisite to that ability would be understanding how the mind, thought, memories, and consciousness even work. With over 2,000 years of research so far we still haven’t got a clue. But if we crack that nut in the next 20-30 years the technology to do the rest might be possible in your timeframe. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/6 "2017-03-11T04:38:23Z")
Hypotheticals belong in IMHO, not General Questions. Moved. **samclem** , moderator ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/7 "2017-03-11T04:43:20Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > I would say zero, to divided by zero. > > don’t think i would want to either actually Same for me. Thankfully, I am over 60 anyway. ---
**Author:** ![duality72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duality72/32/3910_2.png) [@duality72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duality72)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/8 "2017-03-11T05:34:52Z")
The better question would be will medical advances come fast enough to extend your life to the point where you will live long enough to be uploaded to an AI. Still low, but possibly non-zero. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/9 "2017-03-11T07:25:42Z")
A lot can happen in 10-40 years. I’d say 5%. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/10 "2017-03-11T07:29:32Z")
20 years – 0% 45 years – somewhere between 10% and 80% In other words, a lot could happen. Just not fast enough for it to be likely for me. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/11 "2017-03-11T08:19:27Z")
Zero. We haven’t even completed simulating a flatworm yet. [OpenWorm - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm) ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/12 "2017-03-11T11:08:21Z")
Pretty much zero. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/13 "2017-03-11T12:00:03Z")
probably zero. and I don’t know why I would want to participate anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/14 "2017-03-11T12:04:37Z")
I would say zero percent. Also zero percent for your great-great-great-great-great grandchildren. ---
**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/15 "2017-03-11T12:22:07Z")
Reasonably likely. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/16 "2017-03-11T14:31:10Z")
> [@naita](#): > > Zero. We haven’t even completed simulating a flatworm yet. [OpenWorm - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm) You can’t judge by that. The first few steps of a new technology are exceedingly slow and expensive. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/17 "2017-03-11T14:48:25Z")
Assuming a calendar date is known, on which it would be possible, and it is, say, 25 years from now, a 40-year old would have about three times the likelihood of living to that date, as a 60-year old. So even if exact data were known, there would be an x3 variable within the parameters of the question. If the realization date were 40 years from now there would be virtually no 60-yos who would make it, but maybe about a third of all 40 yos. So the wording of the question just multiplies the vagueness of the prediction. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/18 "2017-03-11T15:10:07Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I would say zero percent. Also zero percent for your great-great-great-great-great grandchildren. That is seven generations, or roughly 150 years, give or take a decade. As an illustration of technological innovation and the growth of scientific knowledge over that period, in 1867 modern manufacturing using standardized threads and gears was in its infancy, requiring all complex machines to be hand-fitted and constantly maintained; electricity was still regarded as a novelty, and radio transmission of voice twenty years away; medical ‘science’ had yet yet to adopt the germ theory of disease or discover infective viruses, much less develop any effective theory of immuology; Lord Kelvin’s estimate of the age of the Earth was accepted at 98 million years old, the Solar system was assumed to be at the center of our galaxy, which was largely assumed to be the only galaxy in the universe (with apologies to Kant); Mendeleev had yet to propose the periodic table of elements, but if he had it would have had less than seventy elements; the complicated formulation of the mechanics of electrodynamics by James Clerk Maxwell were neglected, the science of thermodynamics was in its infancy, and general relativity (the modern theory of gravity) and quantum mechanics were still decades away; frequentist statistics was still yet to be formalized, discrete mathematics was considered a purely abstract area of study, and moden digital computing as we know it existed only in the minds of a handful of exceptionally creative individuals; and of course, we had nearly a century to go before humans visited the deepest point in the ocean, and even longer to putting humans on Earth’s Moon. _I would not put any amount of money or credence on what will or will not happen in a century and a half of scientific and technological advancement._ On the other hand, to achieve the transfer of human consciousness to some kind of an artificial host would require some very fundamental advances in neuroscience, neural interfaces, and computing architecture for which we have no present path to even estimate. We are still learning about the multitude of functions of the single neuron, and simulating even a small network of neurons such as those in the flatworm model cited by **naita** is a significant challenge for the state of the art in simulation computing. Whatever hardware we might use to host a human (or other mammalian) consciousness will look nothing like a modern computer and will likely physically resemble the vertebrate brain in structure and materials, e.g. it will be made of organic materials (albeit perhaps slightly different materials using synthetic proteins more amenable to control and repair). At this point, we may as well speculate about the details of how such a system would work as Michaelangelo would of modern airliners or Charles Babbage would of an iPad. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/19 "2017-03-11T15:16:04Z")
So, [here](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/163051-simulating-1-second-of-human-brain-activity-takes-82944-processors) is an experiment that used 82,944 processors to simulate the activity of something on the range of two percent of the complexity of the human brain. It took 40 minutes to simulate 1 second of activity. So, let’s say it would take very roughly 350 million processors to simulate a full brain at full speed? [Here](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/estimate-human-brain-30-times-faster-than-best-supercomputers)is a more optimistic estimate, saying that the human brain is only 30 times faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputer. And [Moore’s law](https://www.cnet.com/news/end-of-moores-law-its-not-just-about-physics/) isn’t going to save you. Uploading is not going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913/20 "2017-03-11T15:19:14Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > That is seven generations, or roughly 150 years, give or take a decade. I was trying not to be tedious. What I meant was great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-youre-40-to-60-whats-the-chance-you-can-upload-to-an-ai-existence-before-your-meat-death/781913.md?page=2)