Artificial You - Book Review
I just recently finished Life 3.0, by Max Tegmark, and Artificial You - by Susan Schneider just happened to pop up on recently added on O'Reilly Safari. It looks like it wasn't released on several other places, so no reviews, which I see as a minor perk.
A nice discussion about AIs, consciousness and human enhancement and uploading. Of course, most of it is highly conceptual, but it still quite interesting and somewhat fun in a SF way to talk about. It goes in a different theme than Life 3.0, but still covers much of the same areas.
SF fans will see many parallels to new and older books. For example, the issue of duplication is covered in an interesting way in Kiln People, by David Brin. Probes with uploaded minds are covered in some of Charles Stross' work, and he also has AIs based on human uploads. We are legion by Dennis E. Taylor also goes into interstellar probes and mind duplication.
I do disagree with some of it (for example, there is much talk about how future brain enhancements may in fact be killing you with another self being created, which may or may not be conscious), but the author's views on it are still well thought off.
I guess we (or future humans) will see. I suspect the general way humanity will see this will be much more pragmatic than most of the approaches of the book.
A nice discussion about AIs, consciousness and human enhancement and uploading. Of course, most of it is highly conceptual, but it still quite interesting and somewhat fun in a SF way to talk about. It goes in a different theme than Life 3.0, but still covers much of the same areas.
SF fans will see many parallels to new and older books. For example, the issue of duplication is covered in an interesting way in Kiln People, by David Brin. Probes with uploaded minds are covered in some of Charles Stross' work, and he also has AIs based on human uploads. We are legion by Dennis E. Taylor also goes into interstellar probes and mind duplication.
I do disagree with some of it (for example, there is much talk about how future brain enhancements may in fact be killing you with another self being created, which may or may not be conscious), but the author's views on it are still well thought off.
I guess we (or future humans) will see. I suspect the general way humanity will see this will be much more pragmatic than most of the approaches of the book.
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