Mind Uploading and Childbirth

6

In a world where every human mind has been uploaded, and no organic humans remain, can we still produce offspring?

In a worldbuilding project I'm dabbling with, there are many people uploading their minds to a virtual world. I ran upon a roadblock, though. Could the people in the virtual world, who don't have physical bodies, do something in the virtual world to create real children?

To be clear, I don't mean design an artificial intelligence, as the physical world equivalent would be building a robot child (in my opinion). While some people would be fine building a kid like that, there are many who would prefer the "natural" way. If organic childbirth were not possible, and thus they had no choice, they would need another way. Something they would see as more "natural" than just creating a regular A.I.

PastAndFuture

Posted 2020-01-23T01:27:36.493

Reputation: 211

That's just augmented reality or mixed reality regardless whether the feedback is digital or not. – user6760 – 2020-01-23T04:16:16.577

1What is the goal of producing a child? Have a biological baby? Have a "mind baby" in the virtual world? Have a real baby that will eventually join the parents in the virtual world? Have some sort of hybrid (say, a cyborg) that will exist in the real world and in the virtual world at the same time? – VLAZ – 2020-01-23T08:44:40.063

1Greg Egan did a good job of creating a digital reproductive system in his novel Diaspora. I'd recommend it as a great book in general, but you especially might want to read the first section to get some inspiration. Basically, all human minds are created by a combination of other uploaded minds, and are then developed and matured in a sandbox-style digital environment. – Snowshard – 2020-01-23T16:06:21.563

Answers

2

Who maintains the virtual world's infrastructure? They can fertilize embryos.

If every human being is biologically born and then uploaded at birth, someone or something has to service the computers. If that someone or something is human, then there should be a human population capable of producing the offspring that get uploaded. I don't think that's what you're looking for, though.

My understanding is that your world has virtually zero adult humans outside the system. That's a problem, because something still has to keep the computers running.

You may want to build a mini-society composed of robots capable of sustaining the internet. When parts fail, spares will be manufactured and installed by automated drones. When you run out of spare parts, raw materials will be harvested and refined by mining bots. Plus, you will need someone to service the dozens of power plants that keep the system online in the first place.

You can employ some of these robots to conduct in-vitro fertilization. They can fertilize stored eggs with stored sperm, provide sustenance to developing embryos in artificial wombs, and then harvest each consciousness at the right developmental stage. It can be fully automated like the Matrix - except the bodies are composted.

One problem with this solution is that you will eventually run out of eggs and sperm. You may need a factory-sized genetics lab in which DNA is constantly recombined and distributed into lab-grown gamete cells. In this way, parents in the virtual world can have biological children.

Zxyrra

Posted 2020-01-23T01:27:36.493

Reputation: 19 415

A very thorough answer! I'm looking at it from multiple points on the timeline at present, including one where there's about 5000 people digital and the rest are still in flesh bodies, and one where the entire population is no longer carbon-based. As in no human beings born biologically, none uploaded at birth, everyone is in the system. We're talking around 2350 CE, so the technology would definitely be advanced enough to tend to itself and keep things running. There are also people in the digital world able to supervise the outside, operate robots, etc.

Thank you so much for the answer! – PastAndFuture – 2020-01-23T04:59:38.853

" If organic childbirth were not possible" – Thorne – 2020-01-23T22:51:42.543

@Thorne The question requires both "real children" and no "organic childbirth". My answer is a way of reconciling these two contradictory statements just like yours. Whereas your answer chose to forgo "real children" to use AI kids, I chose to forgo "not organic" to make technically organic kids that still fit the scenario of "no organic people". While no answer can fix this paradox, they can still fit the author's scenario. – Zxyrra – 2020-01-23T23:49:57.287

What is real when everyone is AI anyway? You still end up with an AI mind either way. – Thorne – 2020-01-24T00:53:19.030

Technically you could grow one baby, scan it and just keep handing out copies – Thorne – 2020-01-24T00:54:12.817

@Thorne While a mash-up of two mind-scans will make a "child", that doesn't mean it successfully emulates how the genes for consciousness are combined when people are conceived. Plus, "real" is defined pretty clearly by the OP: "I don't mean design an artificial intelligence". Imo, lab-grown-kids are the most truthful solution to the author's desire for no adult humans and no AIs. Plus, if human-derived AI have "souls" in the OP's world as a consequence of their biological conception, arguably their algorithm-generated offspring may not. – Zxyrra – 2020-01-24T01:00:21.927

@Zxyrra, the statements are not actually contradictory. "Real children," admittedly a vague term, was intended to mean offspring who are by all rights just as valid as organic children, coming from a process that the parents cannot control, much like organic childbirth. I don't accept custom-building an AI as an answer, because it allows the humans to decide what features the child has or lacks. Standard childbirth does not. – PastAndFuture – 2020-01-24T19:01:55.220

1Additionally, I have left the matter of souls undefined. There is little to say on them scientifically, but you are right that the people I'm referring to would have numerous concerns, one of which is "would a child we program into existence have a soul?" – PastAndFuture – 2020-01-24T19:02:52.777

2

Yes - the Ghostborn

The way you describe them, for your infomorphs you are following the dichotomy of emulated uploaded minds ('Ghosts' - digital equivalent of naturally-evolved neural networks) and true artificial intelligences ('AIs' - programmed or artificially designed neural network, with or without some layers of network 'evolution' on top of that). That means you have the technology for the former, and you can expand it to emulating more than just adult brains.

It will be more CPU- and memory-intensive, as you will want to emulate the embryo's whole body to account for all the complex procedural influences required for the formation of a brain the 'normal' ways (but in emulation). It also will require sufficient prior research into human development - a lot of it. But given those two parameters, it's not physically impossible to emulate the whole process of growth from a single cell, just very computational resource-intensive.

vicky_molokh

Posted 2020-01-23T01:27:36.493

Reputation: 1 672

2

Frankly, we (including top neuroscientists) have no clue how conscious works, what it is exactly, where it comes from, and how to make new ones (except the biological way).

Asking if a digital consciousness could have children is therefore impossible to answer (without wild speculation). The only reasonable guess we can make is that a digital consciousness would be able to make copies/clone itself.

Really, it's up to the plot of whatever story you're writing but if you have computers capable of simulating a human consciousness, simulating a sperm and an egg and the subsequent digital-biological child shouldn't be too difficult. Sure, that's a lot of cells and you'd need a virtual environment to "raise" the child in but it would be doable.

Dragongeek

Posted 2020-01-23T01:27:36.493

Reputation: 3 043

-4

Yes

An uploaded mind is just a program and you can copy programs and make new programs.

A parenting program would take random features from both parents and build a base personality matrix from that. Said parents could then take the new AI and teach it just like a normal child.

Considered everyone is an AI, making a new AI is no difference.

In the Matrix, Sati is a child program of two other programs.

Thorne

Posted 2020-01-23T01:27:36.493

Reputation: 30 089

So basically, the parents get to retain the notion of randomness, that they don't really have control over how their child turns out. They just combine their features in a hat and the program creates an arbitrary new mind. Am I understanding you correctly? – PastAndFuture – 2020-01-23T01:38:26.830

Basically yes but not only their mind but virtual physical appearance as well. The whole method could be done exactly the same was as actual childbirth in the virtual world. – Thorne – 2020-01-23T01:43:05.200

If you think about it, do you know if we are living in a simulation or not? If we are in a simulation, it's exactly what we are doing right now. – Thorne – 2020-01-23T01:44:08.703

1Hypothetically, sure. But the people I'm thinking of likely don't feel that way. They see this world as the REAL one, and any computerized world as necessarily fake. Thereby, if they ever consented to be in a computer, or were forced to be in one, they would desire a form of reproduction so close to the original that they could not tell the difference. – PastAndFuture – 2020-01-23T01:48:19.583

How do you tell the difference between a virtual world and a real world? – Thorne – 2020-01-23T01:59:28.327

If you look at the move, The Matrix, everyone is living in a virtual world and they don't even know it. – Thorne – 2020-01-23T02:03:32.553

A very intriguing question I've thought a lot about, but that's not really the point of this topic. I'm discussing how to give people who know they're in a virtual world an appealing means to have children the "normal" way. Not whether we know if this is real or not. – PastAndFuture – 2020-01-23T05:00:47.347

1It's a question of what it means to be human. Is an uploaded mind still human? If you copy the mind are both still human? If you change it, is it still human? If you merge two minds is the result human? If nobody can tell the difference does it even matter? – Thorne – 2020-01-23T05:08:46.727

Asked: 2020-01-23T01:27:36.493

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Active: 2020-01-23T13:49:47.763