The Future of Sleep: Entirely Optional

Why do we sleep? This seemingly simple question is one of the longest-standing unsolved mysteries in biology. As bizarre as it sounds, there is no obvious reason why we are inactive for a third of our lives. National Geographic and TIME have both tackled this subject to explain some of the most predominant theories, but the bottom line is that no one really knows. Some scientists believe that sleep restores some as-of-yet-undiscovered substance in our brains, which is depleted while we are awake…or that it removes some as-of-yet-undiscovered substance that accumulates while we are awake. Some observers have noted that getting REM sleep is necessary for our learning of new tasks. Although this is true, it fails to explain how sleep helps us learn or why it is necessary for us to be dormant during this process. Others have theorized that the reason that mammals sleep so much compared to other animals is an artifact from the age of the dinosaurs: At the time, most mammals were nocturnal. Perhaps sleep forced mammals to keep quiet during the day, to avoid becoming dinner for a hungry Tyrannosaurus.

Last year, biologists identified a rare gene which allows people to feel rejuvenated after only a few hours of sleep, indicating that it should be possible – at least in theory – to modify the amount of sleep we need in the near future. As the Genomic Revolution picks up in the next year or two, there will undoubtedly be many other genes identified that govern our sleep processes. Understanding them may unlock the key to understanding sleep.

Meanwhile, neurologists are making progress in understanding how sleep affects our brain. As electroencephalograms become more and more obsolete, scientists are gaining access to new ways to monitor our brain activity. Improved neural scans should allow scientists to pinpoint which areas of the brain are most affected by sleep, and how.

Perhaps soon we will understand the nature of sleep. Is it vital for our survival in a way that we don’t understand? Or is it simply a relic of our evolutionary past, with no useful purpose? Understanding sleep is the first step to conquering it. Is it possible that we could develop safe medication to mimic the benefits of sleep, allowing us to remain conscious for 24 hours per day, without the nasty side effects of caffeine or other drugs? This would change our world profoundly. We would essentially be living 50% longer by squeezing an extra eight hours out of our days. People could earn much more money by working more hours without sacrificing their leisure time, or alternatively, they could have much more leisure time without sacrificing their career.

Although some people often claim to enjoy sleep, I think most people would prefer to do without it, if we had the option. I have difficulty believing that anyone could truly enjoy something that they aren’t even aware they are doing. For most of us, our “love of sleep” is really “dislike of waking up.” If we could invent a safe way to remain constantly awake while still reaping whatever benefits we get from sleep, most of us would jump at the opportunity.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2030 – Scientists have a basic understanding of the reasons (if any) that we sleep, as well as why it evolved in the first place.
By 2050 – Medication exists that makes sleeping optional, providing people with any benefits of sleep without the need to actually do so, and without any nasty side effects.

The Turing Test and Artificial Consciousness

In a party game dating back to the 1940s or earlier, a man and a woman were put in separate rooms and allowed to communicate with a judge through typed messages. One of the two would be trying to deceive the judge about his or her gender; the judge’s task was to determine the gender of the two participants through the typed conversations. In 1950, computer scientist Alan Turing modified the game to be used in the context of artificial intelligence. In the Turing Test, there is a human and computer participant, rather than a male and female participant. Both attempt to convince a judge that they are human via a text conversation. If the judge is unable to determine the human more often than chance would dictate, the computer is said to have passed the Turing Test. As of now, no computers have even come close to passing a Turing Test.

The Turing Test is commonly viewed as the holy grail of artificial intelligence. A computer that is capable of convincing humans of its humanity would have to be as richly programmed as a human brain. But would it truly be conscious, or would it merely be mimicking intelligence? Most computer scientists assert that the computer would actually be conscious in the same sense that we are. Since a brain, after all, is merely a pattern of information, it is no fundamentally different than a computer program. Both a brain and a computer program merely respond to external inputs and produce an output. There is no empirical test that we can conduct to determine if an entity is “conscious.” The only way to gauge that is by our interactions with the entity in question. When we interact with other humans, we typically take them at their word that they are conscious entities, because we are aware of our own consciousness and we observe that other humans generally behave like we do. Therefore, I think that any computer capable of passing the Turing Test would have just as much claim to consciousness as any human.

The mindset that computers, no matter how well-programmed, can only mimic consciousness will probably fall by the wayside in the 21^st century, as the distinction between natural and artificial becomes much less clear. For all of their merits, silicon computer chips have a lot of drawbacks, such as the amount of heat they emit and the amount of power they consume. In the coming decades, we will probably see more organic, carbon-based computers. At the same time, we will probably see a lot more “natural” humans with artificial additions to their brains. To some extent, brain implants already exist to help people cope with brain damage or to mitigate certain mental conditions. Eventually, they may be used in perfectly healthy individuals to enhance their mental capacity. These kinds of developments will likely blur the line between human and computer. When complex forms of intelligence can no longer be so neatly classified as “human” or “computer,” but instead represent a diverse spectrum ranging from 100% organic to 100% machine, will it still make any sense to assert that computers are able to mimic intelligence without being intelligent? I think not.

I think the reason that some people believe a computer would only be mimicking intelligence is because intelligent computers are not yet commonplace. While we have grown accustomed to computers that can crunch numbers and play chess much better than we can, we have not yet encountered any computers that can recognize patterns or respond with emotions as well as we can. As computers become more and more powerful, this day will come. Many decades from now, we may have computers that are truly capable of passing the Turing Test. They will probably lobby for basic rights under the law. When this happens, I think we will expand the definition of human rights to include non-human forms of intelligence, as there would be no moral basis for doing otherwise. And will we believe their claims that they are truly conscious beings? I think we will. They’ll get mad if we don’t.

Inception and the Ethics of Virtual Reality

***SPOILER ALERT***

I watched Inception last weekend - the first movie I've seen in the theater all year. It’s a great movie, and is a great illustration of the simulation hypothesis. Along with movies like The Matrix and Vanilla Sky, it explores the concept of whether our reality may be a simulation, and if there’s any way to tell the difference.

The reason I often blog about the simulation hypothesis is not merely because it’s an interesting philosophical question, although it certainly is. As Inception illustrates, there are some profound ethical dilemmas we will need to face in the future, when we have both the raw computing power and the understanding of our own neurology to escape to convincing, fictitious worlds.

In Inception, Cobb and Mal dream for decades (in dream-time) in a world of their own creation. Mal goes so far as to hide any evidence that she is dreaming, preferring to forget that their world is not real. When we have the technology to create simulated realities, there will almost certainly be people who want to do this. Even today, many people choose to spend a huge portion of their lives escaping into the crude virtual worlds that our technology allows, such as World of Warcraft. As long as this lifestyle is limited to computer geeks, most people will view it as an unhealthy activity. But when simulated worlds become truly convincing, it is probable that many others will want to join in.

How will society view people who want to spend years or decades in a simulation, living a better life than they have in this world? Will people scorn them like drug addicts? Will organized religions extol simulations as a way to have profound spiritual experiences, or will they be fearful of the threat that simulations pose to their monopoly on heaven? Might there be a mass exodus of people from this world, if nearly everyone prefers to live in a simulation? What would be the economic impact if a large portion of the population suddenly decided to stop working and live in a simulation? Will governments simply accept their choice and allow people to sleep the years away, or will they wake them up? Will those who remain behind envy those who have escaped to a better, simulated life? Perhaps we will empathize with them and respect their decision. (EDIT: I realized I used the pronouns “we” and “them” here to describe, respectively, those who remain behind and those who choose to live in a simulations…but honestly I have no idea which camp I would be in.) After all, how would we feel if we suddenly “woke up” to a higher plane of reality today, only to find that our “real” life was much worse than the one we experience in this world? I imagine that many of us would feel cheated out of our lives like Mal did, and be unable to accept the sudden decline in our standard of living. It seems very human to want to live the best life we possibly can. Since most of us wouldn’t want to wake up to a worse world, I think that eventually society will empathize with the dreamers and accept those who wish to remain lost in their subconscious.

This is but one of many new ethical questions we may have to confront by the middle of this century. Near the end of Inception Mal tells Cobb (who knows full well that he is dreaming), “You no longer believe in a single reality. So choose. Choose to be here with me.” Cobb rejects her offer, choosing to live in “actual reality” instead. While I’m pretty sure that the audience of 2010 is expected to applaud his decision, ultimately Mal is right. In a world where convincing simulations are possible, there is really no way to know if one is in a simulation or not. So why not just accept this and let people live in whatever world makes them happy? Could we really pass judgment on those who want to live permanently in a simulation, when we have no idea if we have chosen to do the same? Waking them up could be tantamount to destroying their lives. The audience of 2060 may react very differently to the ending of this movie.

What are your thoughts on the ethics of simulated reality? Do you think it would be more ethical (or practical) to let the dreamers dream, or to wake them up to "reality?"

50 Years of Questions

This is a video I made a couple months ago, entitled "50 Years of Questions." It's my vision for what the world might look like in the future, as well as a look back at how far we've come in the last decade.

Note that I just think these are QUESTIONS people might be asking themselves around this time. I'm not necessarily suggesting that we'll know the answers to all of them by the dates I listed.