Whole Brain Emulation: Reverse Engineering A Mind with Randal Koene

Hey Everyone,

The SingularityNYC Meetup group is back for 2015! Randal Koene (http://www.randalkoene.com/) will be our first speaker, discussing requirements and potential paths to whole brain emulation. More details of the talk can be found below.

Capco (http://www.capco.com/) has been generous enough to host our first event, and they will be providing food and beer. Please note that it is critical that you register with your full first and last name on the RSVP list and bring an ID to the event. You will not get in otherwise. Message me if you are having issues.

We look forward to seeing you all there!

-The SingularityNYC Team

Format

• 40 minute presentation

•• structured Q+A (if you have a related question, feel free to send it to me beforehand)

• small group breakout sessions where we will discuss varying implications of whole brain emulation

Talk Description

Randal’s talk will take us from start to finish through the process from our current condition to a possible substrate-independent mind achieved by whole brain emulation. He will address the goal, the criteria for success, the scientific and technological challenges and the feasible solutions. He will point out opportunities at technological milestones, such as emerge through access to high-resolution large-scale brain data and the development of improved neural interfaces and neuroprostheses.

"Being" ultimately depends on one's ability to experience and to do so in the manner that is characteristic of one's individual mind. Concrete investigation of the way in which a mind emerges from brain activity has recently become possible, largely due to rapid advances in computational neuroscience and data acquisition, both structurally (the popular field of “connectomics”) and functionally (brain activity mapping).

The process of personal experience – like any process – involves some mechanisms operating at a given time under the influence of an environment state, a state that can include sensory input and functional “memory” established as a result of prior conditions.

An emulation or prosthesis is then the attempt to replace a system of processing with an equivalent set of mechanisms that carry out the same processing within established success criteria. The engineering approach to understanding a system sufficiently that it can be emulated or replaced by prostheses is known as system identification.

Randal will describe how system identification may be feasibly carried out for an individual human brain, and how constraints and requirements can be learned through projects with iterative improvements.