We need to talk about UI

The first ever mentions of a human mind being transferred to a computer began in 1950s literature with works like Izzard and the Membrane by Walter M. Miller Jr. (1951) or The Altered Ego by Jerry Sohl (1954). Just a few years before these were published, the first atomic bomb was used for mass destruction. This feels important to mention as it was such a technological advancement that began the discussion of the value human lives have. With the rise of cybernetics, people could only begin to wonder if the digital realm could ever be a space humans could ever inhabit.

More recently, the film Transcendence (2014), proposes a near future where a human brain is replicated into a computer. The result, a power hungry algorithm with no regard for humanity. In the TV series Pantheon (2022), governments use uploaded intelligence for profit and war, as the limit to their capabilities was far greater than any machine or AI. In the film The Creator (2023) humans can upload into a cybernetic body to abandon the need for food or fragility. All of these works show different possibilities of what a future with UI looks like, an infinite extent of the mind. The idea of eliminating the physical barriers of the brain seems fascinating, yet it is then that the conversation gets complicated. Philosophers, researchers, programmers, have explored the ethical dilemmas that inevitably come up in the equation. Is it still human? Is it conscious? Is it playing at immortality?

The conversation for UI is more important than ever. In 2024 a group of researchers from Princeton managed to copy all of the neurons of a fruit fly’s brain, hundreds of thousands of them, millions of connections. This is the first time an animal’s brain is mapped digitally. You can play with the fly yourself in flybrain.app. In the website, the research team mentions that “The human brain has 86 billion neurons. We are probably going to see it mapped in our lifetime.” (Dorkenwald et al. 2024)

An uploaded brain has no physical senses to experience the world around it, unless it is given robot hands, and maybe a robot nose. Yet, would human design be the most effective? In the city of the immortal there are no hugs. I heard a pastor give his opinion about this topic in mass recently. Death, ironically, is what brings humanity the closest. A world with no more death could be a world without love. Can we simulate death in the digital world? The counter argument is that the digital world can be a step in evolution, be the masters of the world we create, apart from power to maintain the digital world, we could leave mother earth alone. 

The closer we are to a life in the digital world just leaves me wondering if we are not already living inside of one. What is to say that we are not just AI agents translating code inside our brains.