The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil

Many who think quantum-level emulation is necessary take this position because they believe subjective consciousness rests on (as yet unknown) quantum effects. As I argue in this chapter (and detailed further in How to Create a Mind), I think that level of emulation will be unnecessary. If something like panprotopsychism is correct, subjective consciousness likely stems from the complex way information is arranged by our brains, so we needn’t worry that our digital emulation doesn’t include a certain protein molecule from the biological original. By analogy, it doesn’t matter whether your JPEG files are stored on a floppy disk, a CD-ROM, or a USB flash drive—they look the same and work the same as long as the information is represented with the same sequence of 1s and 0s. In fact, if you copied out those digits with pencil and paper and mailed the (very large!) stack of papers to a friend, and they typed the digits manually back into a different computer, the image would reappear intact!