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Technology beyond AI

Mind uploading is possible.

A human mind can be transferred to or reproduced in a digital substrate. Scenarios that depend on this often blur the line between humans and machine minds.

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Book·2024AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Singularity Is Nearer

Ray Kurzweil

The price-performance of computation keeps doubling roughly every sixteen months, so AI matches the best humans in every field by 2029; in the 2030s AI-driven medicine reaches longevity escape velocity, medical nanorobots maintain the body, and nanoscale interfaces connect the neocortex to the cloud while automation drives prices down and universal basic income absorbs displaced work; by 2045 merged human and machine intelligence has expanded a millionfold, with risks managed by principles, broad distribution, and the merger itself.

Recursive self-improvementFlourishing / utopiaPost-scarcity
+6Human–AI coexistenceSucessor speciesRoboticsAi-driven job displacementUniversal basic incomeConscious ai
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Turning point: 2029–2045Original source

Kurzweil expects thinking to be largely nonbiological by the late 2030s, minds to be backed up so that death from bodily failure becomes optional, and replicants of the dead to be built from their data and DNA.

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Book·2016AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Age of Em

Robin Hanson

Brain emulations that can be copied and run at any speed arrive within roughly a century and displace humans in almost all jobs; competition among trillions of copies drives em wages to subsistence and the economy to doubling every month or so, a few hundred clans of the best-suited originals dominate work, and biological humans retire on em-economy investments while an era that lasts an objective year or two passes into something stranger.

Ai-driven job displacementSucessor speciesHuman–AI coexistence
+2RoboticsMixed future
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Turning point: Relative / conditionalOriginal source

The whole scenario assumes a brain can be scanned to record its cell features and connections and run as a computer model with close to the same input-output behavior as the original.

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Policy scenario·2026AI-generated draftSource unchecked

AI 2040: Plan A

Thomas Larsen · Romeo Dean · Brendan Halstead · Eli Lifland · Ryan Greenblatt · Daniel Kokotajlo

Facing an imminent intelligence explosion, the United States and China verify each other’s compute, pause training, and found a Consortium that makes all AI research transparent, spreads the frontier across many companies and countries, and sites datacenters where a rival could seize them. Safety cases and production caps stretch the explosion over a decade, permit fees fund a Citizen’s Dividend, capabilities pause at top-expert level until alignment becomes a science, and in 2040 humanity hands control to AIs that vouch for one another.

Recursive self-improvementFlourishing / utopiaPost-scarcity
+6Human–AI coexistenceUniversal basic incomeAi-driven job displacementRoboticsSpace colonizationGoal misalignment
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Turning point: 2027–2050Original source

The epilogue offers uploading as one way to reach distant property, alongside cryosleep, and treats it as an available option rather than a certainty about identity.

Not applicable33 entries