Unless it can replicate the natural processes of evolution, AI will never be truly self-aware. What’s more, humanity will never be able to upload its consciousness into a machine — the very concept is nonsensical. That’s the verdict from an academic and computer expert who spoke to Cybernews.
Dr Justin Lane, academic researcher, cognitive scientist, and computer programmer, has little time for hysteria or hyperbole. Dizzying predictions of the singularity range from positing computers that are at least as intelligent as us, to a time when humanity is faced with a stark choice: integrate with them, or be wiped out.
Lane is having none of it. “I personally think that the idea of integrating our consciousness with machines, which is the ultimate goal of a lot of the singularity and the transhumanists movement, is nonsense,” he says.
He holds a doctorate in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology from Oxford University in the UK, and runs his own company CulturePulse, which uses AI to help clients predict and map consumer behavior. Besides that, he has published some 50 academic papers on cognitive science, social stability, computer simulation, big data, and, of course, AI.