Can human memory or consciousness be uploaded to humanoid robots? How far are we from this technologically?

Alright, let's delve into this fascinating topic. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but it's indeed a direction serious scientists are researching.

To clarify this issue, we need to break it down into two parts: Memory Upload and Consciousness Upload. The difficulty levels of these two are worlds apart.

Part 1: Memory Upload – Can We Do It?

You can imagine memories as a large collection of files stored in the brain. These files aren't stored on a hard drive, but rather in the connection patterns and strengths of our brain's approximately 86 billion neurons.

Theoretical Possibility: If, and I mean if, we could use a super scanner to precisely scan the connection patterns and strengths of every neuron in the entire brain, forming a complete "brain map" (what scientists call a "Connectome"), then theoretically, we would have copied your memory data.

Technical Distance: This is like asking you to use a mobile phone to photograph the position and shape of every grain of sand on Earth – the difficulty is immense.

1. Precision Issue: Our current most advanced brain scanning technologies (like fMRI) have too low a resolution. It's like a low-resolution satellite map that can show cities and streets, but not every person on the street, let alone what each person looks like. We need technology that can precisely resolve individual neural connections (synapses) without damaging the brain. Currently, we can only perform this level of scanning on tiny, thinly sliced portions of dead fruit fly or mouse brains, and it's extremely time-consuming.

2. Scale Issue: The number of neural connections in the human brain is astronomical, far exceeding the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. To digitize all this information would require unimaginable storage space and computational power today.

3. "Live" Data Issue: The brain is not a static hard drive; it's constantly changing. Memories aren't simply "read"; they are reshaped when you recall them. Therefore, you would need to take a perfect, instantaneous snapshot of a "live" brain.

To summarize: From the perspective of simply "copying data," memory upload is theoretically possible, but we are likely decades, even centuries, away from having the technological tools to achieve it. We are currently at the stage of "drawing a map of a village," while the goal is to "instantly copy the entire Earth."

Part 2: Consciousness Upload – This is More "Metaphysical"

This is a problem infinitely more difficult than memory upload, and it might not even be a technical problem at all.

What is Consciousness? The subjective, first-person experience you're having right now, like "I am reading this article," is consciousness. The problem is, we simply don't know how consciousness arises.

• Is it merely an emergent phenomenon resulting from complex neural computations? Like how countless water molecules gather to exhibit the property of "wetness"?
• Or does it involve something that our current understanding of physics cannot explain?

This is the "hard problem of consciousness" in the fields of science and philosophy.

Is "You" Still "You"? Even if we successfully copied your memories and brain structure perfectly onto a robot and activated it, the question arises:

• Is that robot "you"? Or is it just a "replica" possessing all your memories and personality?
• Would your subjective perspective instantly "transfer" to that robot? Or would you remain in your own body, watching a robot identical to you in action?

Most scientists and philosophers lean towards the latter. That robot would only believe it is you; it would possess all your memories from childhood to the present, it would love what you love, and fear what you fear. But your own consciousness would not transfer. It's like making a photocopy of a document: you get an identical copy of the content, but it's not the original.

To summarize: For consciousness upload, we don't even know its underlying principles. We cannot devise a technological roadmap for something we don't understand. Therefore, as for how far away we are, the answer might be "infinitely far," or perhaps this problem can never be solved by the "uploading" method we imagine.

Conclusion

• Memory Upload: An extremely difficult technical engineering problem. Optimistically, it will require decades to centuries of technological breakthroughs.
• Consciousness Upload: An unresolved scientific and philosophical problem. We don't even know if it's possible.

Therefore, in the short term (e.g., within our lifetime), the possibility of seeing this technology realized is minuscule. We are more likely to first see more mature brain-computer interface technologies, such as controlling robotic arms with thought, treating neurological diseases, and so on. As for uploading one's complete self into a machine to achieve "digital immortality," that remains, for now, only the most captivating concept in science fiction novels and films.