"Virtually Human explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness--simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology--becomes part of our daily lives. Meet Bina48, the world's most sentient robot, commissioned by Martine Rothblatt and created by Hanson Robotics. Bina48 is a nascent Mindclone of Martine's wife that can engage in conversation, answer questions, and even have spontaneous thoughts that are derived from multimedia data in a Mindfile created by the real Bina. If you're active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram, or blogging regularly, you're already on your way to creating a Mindfile--a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind. Soon, this Mindfile can be made conscious with special software--Mindware--that mimics the way human brains organize information, create emotions and achieve self-awareness. This may sound like science-fiction, but the nascent technology already exists. Thousands of software engineers across the globe are working to create cyberconsciousness based on human consciousness and the Obama administration recently announced plans to invest in a decade-long Brain Activity Map project. Virtually Human is the only book to examine the ethical issues relating to cyberconsciousness and Rothblatt, with a Ph. D. in medical ethics, is uniquely qualified to lead the dialogue"--

This book is a collection of writings by active researchers in the field of Artificial General Intelligence, on topics of central importance in the field. Each chapter focuses on one theoretical problem, proposes a novel solution, and is written in sufficiently non-technical language to be understandable by advanced undergraduates or scientists in allied fields. This book is the very first collection in the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) focusing on theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical issues in the creation of thinking machines. All the authors are researchers actively developing AGI projects, thus distinguishing the book from much of the theoretical cognitive science and AI literature, which is generally quite divorced from practical AGI system building issues. And the discussions are presented in a way that makes the problems and proposed solutions understandable to a wide readership of non-specialists, providing a distinction from the journal and conference-proceedings literature. The book will benefit AGI researchers and students by giving them a solid orientation in the conceptual foundations of the field (which is not currently available anywhere); and it would benefit researchers in allied fields by giving them a high-level view of the current state of thinking in the AGI field. Furthermore, by addressing key topics in the field in a coherent way, the collection as a whole may play an important role in guiding future research in both theoretical and practical AGI, and in linking AGI research with work in allied disciplines