Synthetoids: the generational successor to robots

Synthetoids: the generational successor to robots

Artificial intelligence based on classical hardware – circuits, chips, screws – is ceasing to be the paradigm. An emerging trend is betting on "synthetoids", systems that integrate biological tissue – fresh human brains – because they consume less energy and offer far more neural connections than any current electronics. The leap is an order of magnitude. But it is not all about efficiency: by incorporating real organic matter, uncomfortable questions arise about identity, immortality and what it means to be oneself.

The copy is not the original

The promise of digital immortality collides with a classic philosophical problem: if we clone the brain and transplant the data into a synthetic body, is the result still the same person or just a facsimile? Underlying the discussion is the thesis that, even if the information is identical, individual identity – consciousness – breaks in the process. The original dies; the copy starts up as a new being. This is not science fiction, but a logical limit that no technological advance can overcome for now.

From the Eliza effect to Carpenter's The Thing

The references to the Eliza effect – that primitive chatbot to which users attributed consciousness – and to John Carpenter's film The Thing are no coincidence. Both illustrate the mistake of confusing simulation with identity. A synthetoid might look human, but between behaviour and inner experience there is an abyss. For now, engineers dream of the perfect homunculus, but scepticism prevails: until it is proven that consciousness is transferable, synthetoids will remain bodies without a soul.

The irony of the matter is that while some fantasise about bodily upgrades – with a touch of humour, the "human-textured robopilinguis" – others point out that technology cannot yet solve even the basic paradox: if there are two identical copies of the same brain, which of them is the original? The future of synthetoids promises advances in efficiency, but not in immortality. At least, not as we understand it.