Robots are better men

The nanorobots will advance and finally a nanorobot learns to simulate the brain cell it is in.

Let's perform a thought experiment. The nanorobot in the brain cell sends all outgoing signals along the axon just as the original cell body content does. Subsequently the cell body content is disabled, the nanorobot in the brain cell now provides all outgoing signals along the axon. The outgoing signal is all that connected cells perceive from the cell and as far as the connecting cells are concerned, it is as if the biological cell was still there, normally active. Then more and more cell body contents are replaced by a nanorobot. When this happens in your brain, would you notice anything different? The picture now is that effectively all cell bodies of the specific brain part are replaced by nanorobots. But they still contact each other via the natural axon-dendrite arboring network.

To mimic a human brain part entirely, it might be necessary to mimic all the actual present axon and dendrite arbors in nanowire. At this moment we don't know enough from the brain to judge this. But in this storyline is assumed that connections between replaced cell bodies, directly from cell body to cell body by nanowire (C-60 tubes?), will suffice to replace the arbors. The axon arbor and dendrite arbors are not copied in nanowire.

The next thing is the connection between a replaced cell body and a natural cell. I assume the existence, at least during a short stretch of time, of Open end axons and open end dendrites, axons and dendrites that have their branch ends just somewhere in the space between the cell bodies, without being connected yet to a synaptic cleft. A nanowire that starts from a nanorobot in a neuron then may end IN the open end of an axon or dendrite. Perhaps better will work that the open ends are enveloped by a small box from which a nanowire goes out.

     

Left: a natural neuron (green) with its axon (red). The axon has an open end (red dot) that is enveloped by a box (black) that is connected by a nanowire (black line) to a nanorobot (black square) in another neuron.

Right: a nanowire is connected to a box that envelopes a dendrite open end (blue dot). The dendrite (blue line) ends at a neuron (green).

The small box protects the end from influence from the outside and prevents the open end, which is an unnatural state, to decay somehow. Then a message through the nanowire directly enters the box around a dendrite open end, or the signal through an axon directly enters the nanowire via the small box. The small box in fact replaces the synaptic cleft.

When all cells of a brain part are replaced by a nanorobot connected by nanowire, all living tissue can be removed, the entire original cell body as well as all its natural connections. Along with it we notice that we separate from the DNA that has accompanied us as a womb for so long a time. Your brains have become a robot brain - at least the replaced parts.

So far this thought experiment. When a real robot brain is made from your own brain, one shall usually first copy all the nanorobots that are in the cells of your brain onto a place somewhere outside the body, maintaining their precise relative position, and then start to make the necessary connections between the brain cell copies outside your body. So one avoids the need to disturb the living tissue and the nanorobots in the natural brain can remain their position and function in the cells they are in. Subsequent copies of the artificial nanorobot brain can be made as much as you need. You can stay the living-tissue-one you are along with one or more robot copies of yourself. Your stronger companion? Your better self?

This anyway is an AI, an artificial intelligence. Although it is made as a copy of the human brain, and not a single-chip-million-program-lines mind. That is to say, if one can simulate one brain cell in an ordinary computer (the processing of the outgoing and incoming signals in the cell only) and subsequently simulates all cells of a brain part, including their connections, then one should be able to have a working human brain on an ordinary computer. That then will be a quantum computer, I guess, if one wants to have results before this universe ends its lifetime.

How the world will be when 1000 of such robot people think 1000 times as fast as we do, act 100 times as fast as we can and live considerably longer than we do? It are men, aren't they, human minds in a robot carrier. Everything living-tissue men can, robot men can do better. (Except for the f-word of course. But well, they don't replicate like that.) Will it be 500 up to 1000 years from now, before there are better men?

Living-tissue humans will spread over the universe in a kind of large wide open globular structures with light and warmth, just drifting in space. Or maybe we find a way to accelerate the entire system without the need to drag along an enormous amount of fuel-mass. In doing so it would create a sense of gravitation. Of course there is some kind of boundary keeping the air within. But there will be no planet and no sun. Well, there might be a group of quite small accompanying planets for all necessary commodities. And wherever we come, they already will have been - those better men.

Open end axons

Second attempt
This doesn't mean we're done with human brains - natural human brains I mean. Maybe the boxes at open ends of axons and dendrites can also play a role in guiding the developing arbors when one is copying from a brain part consisting of natural neurons to a brain part consisting of natural neurons. Let's assume the dendrite arbors are grown as much and as extended as possible, an overgrow of dendrites. A box then envelopes an axon open end, gently pulls the open end towards a destination, incite it to branch where necessary and when arrived at a target dendrite branch the box looses itself from the open end and finally pushes the open end towards the desired place in the dendrite arbor. There the synaptic cleft has to form then. Does it do automatically there?
End of second attempt

This procedure replaces the first attempt from page 1, proposing guidance by chemical attractant release, a process that might be too laborious and too insecure, if it works at all. If so, then the brain part copying process will only start to be operational when those small boxes can be manufactured. Which is about the same time a nanorobot will be able to simulate the cell it is in, I guess.

Third attempt
The open end box may be not materially wired to a nanorobot, but in stead transmit the electric signal by radio transmission to another open end box. Call such a box a transmitter box. If the receiving open end box is in the same brain, could then all neuron connections in the brain part be made like this? Is it feasible, such a myriad of cells all radiotransmitting to each other all the time?

This also opens the possibility for a brain part to keep the natural neuron contents but transmit the messages between the neurons by transmitter boxes instead of through axon and dendrite arbors. Then it might well be that such a brainpart is a lot faster than that brainpart made of natural cells with natural connenctions, but slower than a brain part of nanorobot cells with transmitter box connections.
End of third attempt

Let's perform another thought experiment. An open end box can also transmit to an open end box somewhere outside the body. Imagine that when the brain part under consideration is removed, a hole is left in the brain. The inner surface of that hole can be connected to the outer surface of a brain part residing outside the body. Each neuron at the surface of the hole that is provided with a transmitter box, is connected to the corresponding transmitter box of a neuron at the outside surface of the outside brain part by radio transmission. That brain part outside the body may consist of natural neurons, but of course it also may be a robot brain part made of nanorobots. The robot brain part has to slow down its activity to keep pace with the natural brain it is connected to, I guess.

One even can imagine not removing the brain part out of the hole and that all axon or dendrite connections, everywhere they pass the surface of the hole (call it the border), are inserted by a transmitter box. That transmitter box is in fact two transmitter boxes that envelope two open ends that are created on the spot.

     

Axons are red, dendrites are blue.

Left: a surface transmitter box, consisting of two transmitter boxes next to each other that are connected by a wire (black), is inserted in the axon where it crosses the border. In the Off mode the short wire just transmits the axon signal unaltered. In the On mode the short wire is blocked.

Right: Is the surface transmitter box able to replace a synaptic cleft?

The inserted transmitter boxes, when in Off mode, just pass the messages as if there was no transmitter box inserted there. But in On mode they disconnect the natural signals passing the border and in stead connect these surface transmitter boxes with the appropriate surface transmitter boxes at the surface of somebody else's corresponding natural brain part (also remained in place and also disconnected from its natural neighbor brain parts). Or with a robot brain part. One can choose the second person being asleep during the time it misses the function of the brainpart surrounded by transmitter boxes. Or one can switch brain parts of two different persons. Not a real switch, but a swap in its functions, as if the two brain parts had exchanged place.

For convenience of this example we simplify that the personality of a person is in a brain part that has a neat - e.g. more or less spherical - border. When a hostile agent succeeds in inserting surface transmitter boxes all around the personality brain part, it can take over temporarily that person by swapping personalities. I do not immediately see how to protect against such a hostile take over.

Mathematical skills consist of pure knowledge plus the ability to use that knowledge skilful. If mathematical skills are in a brain part with a neat border, one could swap your own very limited mahematical skills with a brain part elsewhere that has very extended skills. That could be a robot brain. Workers in a job could swap any skill brain part by a sufficiently extended skill brain part elsewhere on a daily basis. In the morning collaborator A decided to do the skill-1 job that day, and in the evening, just before going home, they disconnect again. Person A might need some rest then, which it gaines in the selfdriving car that brings him or her home. Next day A could decide to swap skill-2 jobs, and so on.

Mind that a living tissue brain part cannot work in two ways simultaneously. Living tissue brain is not a quantum computer.

If a volunteer group of people would agree to be asleep, one should be able to assemble from their brain parts an temporarily entire new mind that as such does not exist.

Telepathy is achieved, with other persons as well as with robots, to an extend that nowadays is seldom conceived of.

As far as we know there is no telepathy in nowadays nature. With humans there are quite a number of strange events reported, but its occurrence is rather accidental. It seems to play no role in evolution, there seems to be no evolutionary pressure on any telepathic skill. We cannot copy a telepathy brain part. *a)

With open end axons and open end dendrites one should be able to wire the feeling brain parts of more persons to, or next to, your own feelings, as much other persons as you can handle. It is advisable to provide that extra feeling parts as well as your own feelings with a dimmer switch as is suggested at page 3.

Yeah!! Yeah!!

Telepathy with natural cells only

This part I wrote before I conceived of the transmitter boxes.

Suppose, from another person you copy into yourself, into your skull, the brain part with which that person thinks. The copy is grown in next to your own corresponding brain parts, the copy does not replace anything. The nanorobots in the cells of the original brain part in the other person precisely register the important activity of the cell they are in. In each cell of the copy in your head is a nanorobot that online forces that cell to act and react precisely as the original does at the same location in the brain of the other person. Then you momentarily think what the other person thinks, along with your own thoughts, as long as the nanorobots are engaged. Of course the brain part is provided with a dimmer switch. Mind you only copied the thinking brain part, so you only get through the thoughts. To actually feel what the other person feels you have to copy the feeling brain parts too.

So the copy might think and feel as the original, but the rest of your brain might not be able to understand the results, to interpret them. E.g. the person is a professor in mathematics and thinks about some mathematical structures, its proofs and so on. If you don't know anything about mathematics, you will not be able to follow the arguments. You understand the separate words but don't see the picture. For that you need to copy the mathematical brain parts too and the corresponding memory part. This forced example of telepathy will always be possible, but might turn out laborious when the brain parts don't match. When the two brain parts do match, two professors in mathematics, two mothers about their children, instant telepathy might be possible somehow. Which mother does not want to know what her baby thinks and feels, all the time? But as said, most probably youth brains grow too fast to host nanorobots in a useful way. So this is not recommended.

 
When all this comes to existence

The self-driving car

I cannot resist to mention a few things about the self-driving car here. I suppose self-driving cars can and will be steered by some sort of human brains as described in this storyline. Not an entire human brain of course, only the necessary parts of it. Emotions seem undesirable, your car should be cool. Consciousness might be an advantage. This paragraph is about consequences for society.

1) Traffic jam   In a lot of countries there are traffic jams on intercity highways every day. But all jams solve at the end of the day, there are no reports of people sleeping in or nearby their cars in the night and making the u-turn to their work again the next morning. So each day everybody did come through. But it can be done better.

When you get in your self-driving car in time, the board computer of your car takes care that it is at the highway acceleration lane at the assigned point of time, assigned by the highway supervising network that is connected to all self-driving cars. This network takes over the steering of your car as soon as you enter the acceleration lane. At full speed the self-driving car merges with the stream precisely in the hole that the network has assigned to you. If your car allows this, you can lay down and have a nap during the ride. The network computer maintains the safe maximum speed that is the property of your car. The network sometimes has to take unusual measures. City maximum speed is often about 1/3 of highway maximum speed. When leaving the highway and taking the exit to a city road and a lot of cars take the same exit too and the city stream with which is to merge is already quite dense, then the network computer has to distribute the cars over more city roads and there the supervising computer of that city road takes over. There might be little chance that you can follow your favorite city road exit.

Notwithstanding this kind of uncommon measures, there are no traffic jams anymore. But you still have to be at the acceleration lane at the assigned moment and you not always can take your desired exit route. Driving manually on highways during traffic jam time will be forbidden, except for an emergency situation.

2) Traffic lights will be removed in the city. At every crossing there are cameras all over the place that are connected to the computer that supervises that specific crossing. At busy places at busy times that computer takes over the steering of all cars in its area. As far as possible it will direct cars criss-crossing over the place so that all cars come through within safe minimum of relative distances and at safe maximum speed. This means that manual driving at busy places at busy times is not allowed: too insecure, too slow and too dangerous.

When the crossing supervising computer suddenly fails, then there is an emergency situation to which only the computers of the self-driving cars can react. This might mean that at busy places at busy times the board computers of the self-driving cars must already be in contact with each other at each crossing, in order to perform emergency measures when needed, like all cars slowing down at a safe pace simultaneously and some of them parking at available places in the parking strip.

3) Parked cars in the street   As soon as you have stepped out of your car at your destination the car goes to the parking lot underground that is assigned to your location or adress and it stays there. The next morning it takes care that it is present in front of your house or location at the moment that is calculated by your self-driving car to reach in time the assigned moment for entering the acceleration lane.

Parked cars in the street will become exceptional. This does not mean that parking strips will disappear. To separate the often busy traffic stream from the sidewalk by the parking strip feels al lot safer. The strips will be maintained for emergency situations and for e.g. your car to stop after vacation in front of your house for the time you need to get the children out of the car and into the house and unload all of your luggage.

4) Driver licence and driver ability   A real lot of car passengers will have no driver licence anymore. You don't need a driver licence in a self-driving car, under normal circumstances. Actual manual driving will become exceptional.

In case of malfunction of the car's board computer while you are in an environment without supervising network and no one on board that has a driver licence, people are supposed to let grow in a driver brain part - no, that will take to much time and effort. You allways will be able to connect to an outside driver brain part with the aid of surface transmitter boxes around the appropriate part of your brain. Maybe it will be compulsory to have such a driver brain part outside yourself but inside your car plus the appropriate surface transmitter boxes in your own brain - or at least this will be recommended for at least one person in the car.

5) Smashing into water   Every self-driving car is supplied by a window-smashing device in case the car plunges into water, along with synthetic inflatable bubbles that keep the car floating until help arrives. Your car's board computer judges the water around the car and in consultation with the people inside activates the window-smashing device and/or the inflatable bubbles. (Shall I activate window-smashing or inflate bubbles? No, you stupid, it's only raining!)

6) Delivery   All delivery will be done by self-driving trucks, self-driving cars, self-driving bikes and self-driving drones. All daily delivery onto supermarkets and to all other shops, all delivery of mail packages, all taxi driving of people, all emergency transport amongst which is the fire-brigade along with its material. In everybodies house there is a smart fire-alarm in every room that automatically registers fire, judges the fire source and always informs the fire-brigade immediately, eventually alarming it when necessary, in consultation with the persons in the house as far as that is possible in the circumstances.

7) Bikes, scooters and motors are cheaper than a car, are lighter, take less space and use less energy. As driving skill two-wheel drives need equilibrium mastering, a task that very well can be performed by a machine. They should not interfere with the four-wheel traffic at crossings at busy places at busy times. Then and there manual driving will be forbidden.

8) Last but not least there are the Pedestrians. Of course one should be able to do shopping in nearby stores by feet. But then again, they also should not interfere with the traffic at busy places at busy times. How to cross the street?