Chappie didn't exactly solve consciousness - Chappie (2015) Discussion

[–] Sabre-El 10 years ago

Yes. I didn't notice that. Although to me this seems to be a mistake by the movie-makers. I believe they actually wanted to show that a person/robot dies when the consciousness in transferred, but they had forgotten in when applying to 'Mommy'

Clark: Jonathan Kent; isn't it a little past your bedtime?

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[–] Neuronhead 9 years ago

The Mommy transfer could have been while the system was still just a prototype. The Chappie and Dione transfers came later.

Much of the current thinking around AI is that once it reaches human level intelligence it will very quickly become much greater than human level. If Chappie had "solved consciousness" or even developed the ability to copy a mind, he was already past us.

I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe

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[–] kaine-qld 10 years ago

Its what I was thinking while watching this. I also dont understand how Chappie cant be transferred somewhere else easily, its just a program.

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[–] roobens 10 years ago

Chappie isn't just a program. That's specifically mentioned in the film. He's not just preordained data since he has consciousness, it's an entirely different and new kind of data set that Deon has only just created, so it can't be copied and stored in the same way normal data can. What Chappie "solves" is how to copy, transfer or store it, using Hugh Jackman's hardware and some crazy algorithms/math/programming he gleans from pretty much assimilating the entirety of human knowledge. Although it's done pretty quickly in montage form in the film, I think it's supposed to be a pretty huge deal that he did it. Hence all the stuff with the CPUs overheating etc.

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[–] 10 years ago

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[–] evert_chin 9 years ago

this isn't exactly true either.

Chappie conciounous could form in the violatile L1 Cahce equivalent memory of modern x86 CPU we known of. It is also highly possible that it is secured memory space where no other debug interface allowed to access it (which also protects it from getting hacked). Thus, the maker said Chappie would 'die' if the battery run out.

Also, another possiblity is, the 'cpu' that the drone uses could be enitrely different thing which doesn't have the exact physical pathways (just like our brain's neural pathways) for every each of them (unique). Thats mean, even if they manage to clone the entire software/data using convention ways, it wouldn't have the same conciousness since the circuitry pathways aren't exactly the same. Chappie figured out a way to duplicate the pathways or at the very least, emulate it on the new body so that they can be the same "conciousness"

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[–] chris-wulfers 9 years ago

You can read about the great wall of China, and see pictures, and you'll have one perspective. You can walk on the great wall of China and see it for yourself, and you'll have a completely different perspective.

I don't think it's absurd to suggest that it is unknown whether experiences, which is the sum of who we are, is transferable.

In the immortal words of Mr. Data, there is an ineffable quality to memory.

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[–] Neuronhead 9 years ago

But if you can create a conscience AI, then you already know what is it.

No, a lot of the AI development as around code evolving and being able to improve itself. If you can create an AI that is able to develop beyond you then there will certainly be many aspects of its "thinking" that you won't understand.

I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe

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[–] kaine-qld 10 years ago

Chappie isn't just a program.

Thats exactly what he is. He isnt a magical force, its a program on a harddrive.

it's an entirely different and new kind of data set that Deon has only just created, so it can't be copied and stored in the same way normal data can.

Then the hard drive and CPU wouldnt know how to use it, its as simple as that.

What Chappie "solves" is how to copy, transfer or store it, using Hugh Jackman's hardware and some crazy algorithms/math/programming he gleans from pretty much assimilating the entirety of human knowledge. Although it's done pretty quickly in montage form in the film, I think it's supposed to be a pretty huge deal that he did it. Hence all the stuff with the CPUs overheating etc.

At best he copies it. You cant transfer conciousness, its impossible. Everything you are is mapped in your neural pathways, once they are destroyed you are either a vegetable or dead. Whatever new vessel it is copied to would be a new entity.

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[–] opaz 10 years ago

Yes consciousness cannot be transferred, but perhaps in the future you can first move the entire brain into a new synthetic body and then replace the brain piece by piece allowing the brain to expand and build new pathways onto the new synthetic brain.

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[–] kaine-qld 10 years ago

Chappie didnt do that though, he sure as hell didnt solve consciousness.

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[–] opaz 10 years ago

No, he only made a copy while the original died. Completely useless.

Actually, perhaps not useless for the rest of the world if a brilliant person can be copied and live on even if the original dies.

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[–] kneejo 9 years ago

There is no indication that either Deon or Chappie1 died at the moment of transfer of consciousness. Deon had a non-fatal wound and Chappie's battery just happened to die right at that exact moment? Looks like the movie intended to show an actual transfer.

It's funny how some of the above replies assume that consciousness cannot be copied because it is related to the neural pathways. It's funny because most slaves of science don't know what consciousness is. Science (which is limited to the physical world) has not found an explanation and assumes it is located in the brain.. but what if consciousness is not a physical thing, like many old religions say it is? What if the brain is just an interface for the consciousness? Something that develops the more the consciousness learns to interact with the physical world and the body it is in? Let's call it spirit, because that's what consciousness has been called for thousands of years. Spirit has been around before the physical universe existed, we call that Spirit God. This same spirit gave us humans life, or more precisely, it gave our physical bags of meat consciousness.

People who are experienced in spirit work know very well that spirit can be outside the physical body, even transfer to another body, is immortal and will continue after the death of the physical body.

My point is: don't pride yourself on your knowledge of your limited science and think that's all there is. You don't know *beep* about spirit and if you don't look further than the physical you'll never discover what consciousness is.

Both Yolandi and Deon might actually be copies, while their original spirit is in the next place. This is the only worrying thing about the transfer process Chappie developed.

Oh, and please don't argue with me about this. Your knowledge is not great enough, as I've seen in every post above. Just take what I say and do with it what you please. I respect science, but it refuses to look into a part of our existence, and therefor any debate or discussion about the validity of my claims are pointless. Study some spiritual stuff before you even attempt to contradict me. I will not read replies to this post and I will not answer any questions. The truth is already out there.

Greetings from a ghost in a temporary shell. ;)

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[–] kaine-qld 9 years ago

My point is: don't pride yourself on your knowledge of your limited science and think that's all there is. You don't know *beep* about spirit and if you don't look further than the physical you'll never discover what consciousness is.

I know what can be proven. If you go and just make stuff up then why not imagine Batman and Goku used the dragonballs and Aladins Genie to summon a dinosaur which sucked Deon and Chappies souls out at the exact time as the ghostbusters crossed their beams and that caused a rip in spacetime which killed them as they were copied to new bodies.

Reality is what can be tested and proven, make believe is what you read in a book that is backed up by nothing.

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[–] gaemusiclounge 9 years ago

100% agree with kneejo
Besides
Nobody knows exactly what happened

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[–] kaine-qld 9 years ago

Logic dictates he died and his brain was copied.

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[–] gaemusiclounge 9 years ago

He is printed in a HD (SSD)

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[–] hiddn81 9 years ago

Nice, kaine-qld. kneejo, What you said is just the same religious BS that been said 1000 years ago,, That "Humans don't know enough". Yes that's correct. We don't know enough yet or even for good. But that doesn't mean to creat something out of nothing and call it God and Spirit. Thats what others who called themself Prophet did, and You see the result of it. You can also see now how science defeated their nonsenses long ago.. And it will continue!

What you said just shows How you scared of what others might answer. That simply shows how much you believing in your words. I mean yes you can think however you want, but if you write something and u know others might not be agree with you, man up and face what they give you as answer and do whatever it takes to prove them you're right (if you really do believe in that what you say is the truth which I seriously doubt it!)

Check the link blow if you aint scared though. lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

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[–] kingramze 9 years ago

Wow.

I realize that "the brain is the interface for the spirit" is the last bastion of hope for your theory that people are magical immortal beings... but, I'm just floored at the arrogance.

You say 1) don't argue with me because I know my magical and fairy tales and 2) I won't listen to anything you say anyway as I won't read or reply to this post.

To rebut your ridiculous proposition, (and I mean ridiculous in the original sense of "worthy and deserving of ridicule" here) ancient Egyptians didn't even recognize the brain was an important organ, much less the "soul's interface."

Today, science can explain consciousness is formed by the brain - it's just very complex and difficult to study without experimenting or dissecting live subjects. We don't yet know HOW it does what it does, but we know that it is the brain that does it. Out of body experiences are bogus and refuted by science, but the FEELING of being outside one's body can be replicated in experiments.

People's personalities have changed after suffering brain damage. Memories can be lost forever if parts of the brain are damaged. (And we can map where memories are stored and re-play some of them with electrical stimuli.) Drugs and alcohol can not only impair judgement and change moods, but affect personality long-term as well. One could say that the "soul's interface was damaged," but that's just recognizing the brain is extremely important and supposing there is some other magical force that interacts with it - some strange force/spirit that science can't measure.

If you want to reduce the incredibly complex human brain to merely being a radio antenna for the soul, then there would be no need for the complex structure of the brain.

As for the movie, it was STUPID. Chappie used the same helmet on himself as he did on humans. The brain is both hardware and software and it's nothing like the machine hardware. There's no way the 3D imaging helmet built for reading brainwaves would have worked on a machine. You'd need an MRI or better to copy a human's brain (whether you believe it to be the source of consciousness or a radio to interface with consciousness), and a machine like chappie would likely need completely different hardware to detect its consciousness.

We saw that Chappie uploaded Mommy's consciousness to a physical data storage device. Whatever is on that device is very likely digital and can be copied infinitely. It's also not the original which died in the movie long after having her consciousness copied. It wasn't a transfer, it was a copy. Chappie "saved" himself and others by copying them... but they still died, regardless.

The movie assumes that the soul is a fairy tale and consciousness is created by the brain, but it makes the stupid supposition that consciousness is something that is active and can't be copied (even from a robot... super dumb btw. In theory, if you could record the state of the hardware at a given time, you could duplicate it.), yet later Chappie accomplishes copying consciousness.

Big whoop. Copying doesn't save anyone, it just duplicates them (and being copied into a robot body might be a fate worse than death).

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[–] fker 9 years ago

Just take what I say and do with it what you please.

Thanks, I took it and flushed it right down the toilet with a quarter so it could pay the ferryman. I almost shed a tear but knowing that it would be better off I rejoiced instead.

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[–] oscar_ray2_jimenez 9 years ago

That was the best laugh I've had in weeks XD. Amazing creative comeback. Honest kudos and respect.

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[–] wookiebyron 9 years ago

No, he only made a copy while the original died. Completely useless.

Actually, perhaps not useless for the rest of the world if a brilliant person can be copied and live on even if the original dies.

We actually do the same thing in the IT world all the time. We replicate/copy a virtual machine to another computer or "body" just in case the original hardware dies. This is done in real time, any changes on the original are reflected on the clone. The clone just sits around waiting in stasis always ready to be turned on to pick up where the original left off.

Interestingly enough, if you were to turn on both the original and the clone at the same time in the same network you'll likely run into all sorts of issues like IP address conflicts and domain name funkiness. Which is safe to say that there would also be issues if you had to coexist with a clone of yourself. If your memories are identical then both you and the clone would be convinced that they are the original and the other is a clone.

If consciousness and memories are just your neurons firing off in a particular pattern who's to say technology won't be able to copy this to another brain in the future. If that's the case then is anybody really individually unique?

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[–] rr007c6396 9 years ago

Or rather, both would remember being the original and know that they could be either. They would be delusional if they tried to decide that they were "the one"

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[–] ClintJCL 9 years ago

I was actually an IP short and ran 2 machines with static public IPs, setting them to the same IP, for many months.

It's not as bad as people say. Just don't surf the web on both at the same time. You can walk back and forth between them, though.

-ClintJCL
http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/category/reviews/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl

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[–] darkreign2021 9 years ago

I don't really see how transferring consciousness and replacing it with a copy is any different. Everything that makes up a human's consciousness is the thoughts and emotions processed through the brain. The brain is nothing more than an enormous organic harddrive. If you can copy, 100% and not just some key portion, of a persons consciousness to another storage device, than that person is you.

More interestingly, as Chappie shows us at the end with Yolandi, if we could copy a personality without destroying the host, imagine the possibilities of being able to have more than one of yourself co-existing in the world. Include that with the sentient consciousness that was embedded in the base programming, having more than one of the same person and being able to study how those personalities grow and learn to react and respond differently to similar scenarios based on different life experiences, and that would completely dissolve the theory that there is a soul in each of us. In many ways, it would disprove a lot of religious beliefs, actually.

I do believe it will someday be possible to transfer our consciousness, though I doubt it would be a sustainable technology at all for 2-3 after it's initial success, largely due to the Religious backlash and protesting that such a development would incur. I imagine temporary displacement, at least at first, and more likely to a network system similar to the internet rather than a physical presence like a droid. If it were done and we could hook our minds up to a network, though, just imagine the implications to our education system. Imagine if we could figure out how to tap into the harddrive that is our brain and could actually download information straight to our brains without ever having to be taught.

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[–] kaine-qld 9 years ago

I don't really see how transferring consciousness and replacing it with a copy is any different. Everything that makes up a human's consciousness is the thoughts and emotions processed through the brain. The brain is nothing more than an enormous organic harddrive. If you can copy, 100% and not just some key portion, of a persons consciousness to another storage device, than that person is you.

So if I made another you, you'd be fine with someone shooting you dead? After allthe other you has your conciousness.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] preseznik 9 years ago

The premise is that consciousness is an element of the soul, and thus transcends simple data.

This is of course complete *beep* in reality, but that's the premise in the movie. We've accepted far less likely scenarios in entertainment media, so I have no problem accepting this in the confines of the movie.

The message remains on point.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] roobens 9 years ago

Thats exactly what he is. He isnt a magical force, its a program on a harddrive.

It was a fairly large part of the film that Chappie's AI is not just a normal program. I think you need to rewatch it.

Then the hard drive and CPU wouldnt know how to use it, its as simple as that.

That's your groundless assumption. We see Deon struggling for ages to get it functioning, and obviously a large part of this is actually getting it to interface correctly with the hardware.

At best he copies it. You cant transfer conciousness, its impossible.

Again, you're making assumptions about a fictional premise. We don't understand enough about consciousness as it is to make assumptions like that. In the film the position is clearly taken that although it's a staggering, unbelievable feat, by crunching all of humanity's knowledge, Chappie manages to do it. The "copy of mommy" is indeed a copy, but it's fairly obvious that Chappie does manage to transfer his and Deon's consciousness. You can choose to interpret that however you want, but the film's position is that it is transferred, not copied.

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[–] cutty2000 9 years ago

Maybe Chappie should have taken his consciousness mapping breakthrough to Sigourney so she could tell him a weapons company isn't interested in transferring consciousness and send him back to his cubicle.

That is Chappie: The Movie logic.

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[–] luke-hancock 9 years ago

While Chappie isn't a program, his consciousness would exist in a 1's and 0's format. I imagine that Cahppie's actual consciousness was able to be transferred toward the end of the film.
Dion's is another question. It's up in the air as to whether or not Chappie was able to figure out how to reinterpret human consciousness into computer format. I did notice that Dion went from slowly dying to dead, very quickly, when Chappie did the transfer.
Yo-Landi was definitely a copy.
That's my interpretation, at least.

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[–] roobens 10 years ago

This is an interesting question that makes me think of other films that stray near this area, in particular The Prestige. Just in case anyone hasn't seen it, I'll spoiler this next part, but basically Angier poses the question that when he creates new copies of himself and kills the old self, does his consciousness transfer to that one, or does he simply die and a new Angier consciousness born that just happens to have his body and memories? (In my opinion it is the latter).

It's possible in Chappie that the copy of mommy is a slightly different thing than what happened in the factory. In that scene both Deon and Chappie's consciousness was directly moved from one body to another, so in that case it's conceivable that it is the same consciousness that transfers over. The "back up" version of Yo-landi on the other hand, is literally a copy, so whilst other people (or robots) and she herself will experience her/herself as exactly the same (bar those memories formed after the copy was made), it won't actually "be" the original consciousness that was in her body. (I think you can compare this to moving a file on your computer, as opposed to making a copy; when you move a file it is the original which transfers over and you can see this in its properties, as opposed to a copy which has a new creation date.) So in that way Chappie raises the same personal dilemma as The Prestige. The distinction between copy and original only actually matters for the personal consciousness that "dies", since for the new version and for everyone else it's indubitably Yo-Landi and indubitably Angier.

Also, be aware that what Chappie solves is the problem of copying a living neural network/consciousness, and for the film's purposes there is no difference between human or AI consciosuness, so to him he certainly did succeed.

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[–] rr007c6396 9 years ago

If you take a file on a computer called "file1" and copy to "file2". Then "file1" gets deleted and you rename (or move - these are the same operation on a computer) "file2" to "file1" is it a different file or the same file?

Any distinction is a judgement call and in the conciousness copying analogue people tend to like to choose to believe there is a difference. However, from the functional perspective it literally makes no difference whether copying happens or "file1" is renamed to "file2" and then "file2" renamed back to "file1"

It is very interesting

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[–] abdrahman07 9 years ago

True, a better moive that could tie to this moive is called transcendence, it tries to answer what is consciousness

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[–] luis-pinto-1 9 years ago

I have a very interesting theory about consciousness.. and all begins with true twins. What if the copy of the brain state allows for some sort of quantum entanglement between two difference recipients that are provided with that same memory state at the same time? Isn't it discussed that true twins might sometimes feel the same experiences even being very far apart. This might also be the case! :) If you end up "copying" your brain state to another recipient (another brain, or something that might behave like that), probably you would end up feeling your own consciousness in two different places at the same time! It would be like having a shared consciousness...

There's also another movie where this problem arises, I believe it's "The 6th day" with Arnold.

Sorry for my potentially messy English, as it's not my native language!

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[–] joey_pesci 9 years ago

The whole concept was a balls up because the AI consciousness was essentially all on the chip on the board so when his maker came out with the bollocks "We can't move you" it ruined it. Simply take the board from the messed up droid body and install it in a new one.

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] Scribblenaut 9 years ago

This is an interesting topic. The series Ghost in the Shell is built around this whole premise. Due to an accident in her youth, the main character has a fully synthetic body. Right down to her brain but, unlike advanced a.i., she has a "ghost" (soul). A lot of the characters struggle with this. Are they really people, or are they just a collection of experiences compiled into a computer, while the original died with the body.

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