The human brain is relying more and more on technology, but some believe that one day it could be fully replaced by it.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has suggested that the human, in its entirely, could one day be moved to the cloud. As such, even when the biological brain dies, humans could still continue to exist digitally. Armstrong says that the Self, or human consciousness, could also be moved to the cloud.
“Another layer of (brain augmentation through technology) could be, alright, let’s connect your neocortex to the internet and a bunch of other people,” Armstrong said in a conversation with Jack Altman. “The percentage of your brain power happening in the cloud, I think will grow over time. Even today, we are connected to the internet by our thumbs on a keyboard, or on a screen visually with input, and we can talk to an AI agent,” he added.
“But if you have a higher bandwidth connection between those things, more of more of your thinking over time will happen in the cloud. And so what I think is going to be interesting is this is how you get to upload merge with AI. Let’s say that you know who you are today — if you had your arm cut off in an accident or something, you still feel like you, right? And so imagine if you have like two hemispheres of your brain. What if you had like 4, or 16 or 32 of them, and now there’s a bunch running in the cloud with these AI, you know, kind of like an AI agent or some kind of AGI thing?” he continued.
“If one day your human brain got too old, and the longevity drugs ran out, and (the human brain) was turned off — you could have continuity of self. You’ll still feel like you, and you’ll be fully uploaded,” Armstrong said.
This is a materialist view of consciousness, which posits that material phenomena could give rise to consciousness. Armstrong is suggesting that once external technologies are connected to the human brain, they’ll be able to create their own consciousness that’ll mirror the consciousness of the human mind. Even if the human brain were removed, the new consciousness will enable the “person” to continue living.
Many philosophers don’t agree with this view. David Chalmers, for instance, has come up with the hard problem of consciousness, which states that thus far we have no idea how consciousness is created, and we can’t be sure that increasing computing power can give rise to experiences that humans uniquely feel. Spiritual traditions like Advaita Vedanta say that consciousness is the only reality, and it can’t be created by any material means. As such, these views would suggest that while it would be possible to augment brain power through AI and cloud, consciousness could still remain tied to its current mysterious origins, and will not be replicated. As such, once the human brain dies, the sense of self will die with it. These are deep philosophical debates, but the advent of AI has made more and more people think about consciousness — and how it will be altered in a post-AI world.