Elon Musk prepares robots with human personalities

Elon Musk believes that Tesla's robot, known as Optimus, could not only perform a great number of tasks but would even be able to have a very human trait, such as personality.

According to the director of the autonomous vehicle company, in the future the memories and personality of a human could be added to this robot. This was stated in an interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the Axel Springer publishing group.

“We could download the things that we think make us unique. Now, of course, if you are no longer in that body, it will definitely be a difference, but as for preserving our memories, our personality, I think we could achieve it,” said Musk, although he did not clarify when he thinks this idea will come true.

It should be borne in mind that it is only by the end of 2023 that it expects to produce a moderate amount of these models. Hence, the technology needed to insert a human personality into the machine can be quite a while. Or not, only time will tell.

In December 2021, when he gave more details of his robot project, he spoke also of the possibility of adding a layer of humanity to it. “Over time, the Bot can acquire a different personality,” he said, adding: “It's not like all robots are the same. That personality, or whatever you want to call it, can be adapted to the owner.”

At that time, he also speculated that they could become humanoids like R2D2 or C3PO from the Star Wars franchise.

Will it be possible to generate replicas of personality or memories? This idea is not new and in fact science has been investigating the subject for a long time. Nectome, a company made up of scientists trained at MIT, proposed as early as 2018 that in the future a digital copy of the brain could be made to host it in the cloud. To achieve this, the brain needs to be fresh so that it can be preserved in an optimal state for subsequent reconstruction.

The system was thought to immortalize the essence of people who are in an irreversible state of health. The first step would be to inject a mixture of chemicals through the carotid arteries in the neck while they are alive and under anesthesia.

In this way, the patient would die immediately and his brain would be vitrified so that, eventually, his connectome, that is, a map of the connections between the neurons of the brain, can be reconstructed. With this information, a computational simulation would then be created with which the patient (or rather his mind) would return to life, but only in digital format.

A connectome is a map of the connections between neurons in the brain. This could be the basis for recreating a person's consciousness, although there is a long way to go to this because the brain is an extremely complex system and is not yet fully understood.

There are more than 100 billion neurons in the brain and each neuron can be stimulated by another 10,000 neurons, so the number of neural networks in the brain is enormous. In addition, there are many aspects linked to personality, memories and so many other connections that it would not be so easy to reproduce.

The road is long and there is a long way to go. In fact, the company defines itself as a research organization dedicated to the advancement of the science of memory. “We design and conduct experiments to discover how the brain physically creates memories. And we developed biological preservation techniques to better preserve the physical traces of memory,” the official site reads.

It is clear that they are working on a process, and there are still several challenges to overcome in order to reach the final product.

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