Incoming links: Electron microscope
A device that exhibits the Josephson effect.
This is the most plausible way of obtaining a full connectome looking from 2020 forward. Then you'd observe the slices with an electron microscope + appropriate Staining. Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (2014) really opened Ciro Santilli's eyes to this possibility.
Once this is done for a human, it will be one of the greatest milestone of humanities, coparable perhaps to the Human Genome Project. BUt of course, privacy issues are incrediby pressing in this case, even more than in the human genome project, as we would essentially be able to read the brain of the person after their death.
As of 2022, the Drosophila connectome had been almost fully extracted.
This is also a possible path towards post-mortem brain reading.
Wikipedia defines Mind uploading as a synonym for whole brain emulation. This sounds really weird, as "mind uploading" suggests much more simply brain dumping, or perhaps reuploading a brain dump to a brain.
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (2014) section "Whole brain emulation" provides a reasonable setup: post mortem, take a brain, freeze it, then cut it into fine slices with a Microtome, and then inspect slices with an electron microscope after some kind of staining to determine all the synapses.
Likely implies AGI.
www.lgcstandards-atcc.org/products/all/49896.aspx:
- £355.00 in 2019
- biosafety level: 2
Size: 300 x 600 nm
Reproduction time: www.quora.com/unanswered/How-long-do-Mycoplasma-bacteria-take-to-reproduce-under-optimal-conditions
Has one of the smallest genomes known, and JCVI made a minimized strain with 473 genes: JCVI-syn3.0.
The reason why genitalium has such a small genome is that parasites tend to have smaller DNAs. So it must be highlighted that genitalium can only survive in highly enriched environments, it can't even make its own amino acids, which it normally obtains fromthe host cells! And because it cannot do cellular respiration, it very likely replicates slower than say E. Coli. It's easy to be small in such scenarios!
Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) section "How to lose the cell wall without dying" page 184 has some related mentions puts it well very:
One group, the Mycoplasma, comprises mostly parasites, many of which live inside other cells. Mycoplasma cells are tiny, with very small genomes. M. genitalium, discovered in 1981, has the smallest known genome of any bacterial cell, encoding fewer than genes. Despite its simplicity, it ranks among the most common of sexually transmitted diseases, producing symptoms similar to Chlamydia infection. It is so small (less than a third of a micron in diameter, or an order of magnitude smaller than most bacteria) that it must normally be viewed under the electron microscope; and difficulties culturing it meant its significance was not appreciated until the important advances in gene sequencing in the early 1990s. Like Rickettsia, Mycoplasma have lost virtually all the genes required for making nucleotides, amino acids, and so forth. Unlike Rickettsia, however, Mycoplasma have also lost all the genes for oxygen respiration, or indeed any other form of membrane respiration: they have no cytochromes, and so must rely on fermentation for energy.
Downsides mentioned at youtu.be/PSDd3oHj548?t=293:
- too small to see on light microscope
- difficult to genetically manipulate. TODO why?
- less literature than E. Coli.
Data:
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/97 contains genome, genes, proteins.
- www.genome.jp/kegg-bin/show_pathway?mge01100 all known pathways. TODO: numerical reaction coefficients? Which enzyimes mediate what? Appears to factor pathways across organisms, which is awesome.
The hole point of Intel SGX is to allow users to be certain that a certain code was executed in a remove server that they rent but don't own, like AWS. Even if AWS wanted to be malicious, they would still not be able to modify your read your input, output nor modify the program.
The way this seems to work is as follows.
Each chip has its own unique private key embedded in the chip. There is no way for software to read that private key, only the hardware can read it, and Intel does not know that private key, only the corrsponding public one. The entire safety of the system relies on this key never ever leaking to anybody, even if they have the CPU in their hands. A big question is if there are physical forensic methods, e.g. using electron microscopes, that would allow this key to be identified.
Then, using that private key, you can create enclaves.
Once you have an enclave, you can load a certain code to run into the enclave.
Then, non-secure users can give inputs to that enclave, and as an output, they get not only the output result, but also a public key certificate based on the internal private key.
This certificates states:and that can then be verified online on Intel's website, since they keep a list of public keys. This service is called attestation.
- given input X
- program Y
- produced output Z
So, if the certificate is verified, you can be certain that a your input was ran by a specific code.
Additionally:
- you can public key encrypt your input to the enclave with the public key, and then ask the enclave to send output back encrypted to your key. This way the hardware owner cannot read neither the input not the output
- all data stored on RAM is encrypted by the enclave, to prevent attacks that rely on using a modified RAM that logs data