If you've played Portal 1 and 2 you may be wondering whether GLaDOS is possible, or if you can truly put your mind into a computer. Today we discuss the possibilities.
Courtesy of uvlist.net
Both Marvel and Portal have shown a brain in a computer. Many sci-fi movies have portrayed an AI (artificial intelligence) going wrong.
I have to warn you before you get too far into this post that this is loaded with Portal 1, 2, and 3 spoilers. If you want a spoiler-free gaming experience for either one you should stop reading now and come back after you've finished the games. I have to give background information to go into everything. Thank you for understanding and go on reading at your own risk.
For those who are still reading
If you are still here, welcome! We need to talk about some important plot points in the game before going into all the evidence proving it or disproving it. I will primarily try to see whether you can put your brain into a computer and whether AI can go so horribly wrong (cough cough, GLaDOS, cough cough) it is deadly. Portal is a game where you literally have to kill the AI while surviving test chambers that you can potentially die in. Also, Aperture Science is extremely unethical for many obvious reasons and illegal in several ways. No other humans remain. This is proven when we look at the evidence of the ruins around us and the fact no one has leaked anything to the outside world (a dead giveaway that no one is alive to tell the tale). The AI has taken over the facility by Portal 2.
First, we'll look at whether Aperture Science could have even been created. After that, we'll talk about whether Cave Johnson or Caroline could have put their brains in computer storage. After that, we'll discuss Glados and Wheatley (Portal 2). Shall we dive in?
Aperture Science
Like I said, it is highly illegal to do the experiments and tests on humans that Aperture does. The game dialogue mentions Cave Johnson offering test subjects 60 dollars - 120 if you let them dismember and put you back together - for volunteering yourself. Clearly, he is aiming at the homeless who don't have anyone that cares whether they survive. He even reflects this when he offhand mentions that the waiting room is probably more comfortable than the park benches the test subjects were found on. Not ethical at all. Not nearly enough payment for scientific testing. Probably because he couldn't do it on employees anymore and was running out of money.
What are they testing? Portals and portal guns. Assuming they can create the gun, can portals happen? Yes, but not the way the game creates it. The laws of physics probably aren't going to work that way. It needs interaction with the gravitational field to avoid violating the conservation of energy, according to some comment strings on science that I found. Click here for details. It might also require nuclear power energy to make the gun work. The portals might be possible, yet they'd be bending physics and be extremely dangerous to use. You may be able to bend it. Yet, you can't break physics. As for creating the gun, well, good luck doing that. Science says no and has no support whatsoever for a real portal gun. You can make one look real with editing, but no, you can't have one. Technically Aperture science has already been debunked in one paragraph. Sorry, folks.
The next question to answer is how Aperture Science even got permission to do any studies at all using humans. Seriously, either they lied through their teeth to get funding, didn't ask anyone, or they had an unethical person sending funds their way. Or Cave Johnson was rich to begin with and did all this on the down-low. We see that the lab is all underground, so the next logical question is whether you can hide a lab that is so extensive underground. Game creators can create whatever they want, but real building requires permits and other lovely paperwork that would make someone defund this lab or destroy it. Someone would ask questions while he bought the supplies to make everything function on its own. Fortunately, for Cave Johnson, this isn't a problem because he bought a salt mine no one cared about, thus no cared what he did with it.
The answer to the question above is that it would probably not fly today for Aperture Science (except after an apocalypse), but what does go is a real underground facility studying geological material. It goes a mile underground and has funding from universities (which obviously check in on it). It has gotten awards. It is called Berkeley Lab. It is nothing close to Aperture Science. We are talking about geology, not portals. It is underground because they need to access rock for the geological experiments they do there. Notice that no one is using test subjects and AI. They are observed on all levels. Aperture had no one to answer to, thus it may be that Cave Johnson was rich and didn't need help. Which was actually the case. No one asked what he did with his salt mine.
If no one knew anything but what they did you could get away with a lot. If war has taught us anything, it has taught us that signing a paper saying "I die of treason if I leak information" is effective. The same can go for a science facility. Bury the illegal experiments and testing deep enough and you could get away with it, sadly. Maybe you couldn't get away with it forever, but I'd bet you could do it for a short time. Unless, of course, everyone died. Then all the secrets would die with the scientists and their test subjects, and only papers would remain. This is the only possible part of this storyline. Subjects and scientists all died because GLaDOS went rogue.
According to the fandom wiki, it started as a shower curtain company. It turns out that selling shower curtains to the military made Cave Johnson rich. Apparently, he tried to create deadly shower curtains and send them as a nasty gift to the Navy (who didn't want his shower curtains) and then got exposed to mercury. He then realized he was dying and created a plan to make Aperture Science last forever. The first two projects to make it last forever just failed miserably, but portal science bloomed, thus we get to GLaDOS being created to beat Black Mesa's technology as they studied portals. The company started as one thing and became another. Also, Cave Johnson needed no extra funding and dodged a lot of questions that should have been asked. He had truly terrible ideas.
The sad truth of unethical experiments is that they did happen. Asylums did lobotomies. A woman let test subjects do anything to her to see what they would do if no consequences would happen during that hour. We know that people have dropped drugs in someone's drinks for military testing. There is even an urban legend of a game that caused LSD-like symptoms and disappeared three weeks after it appeared. Is it possible that someone made a rat maze and put a human in it to see if they'd solve it? Maybe. I doubt I'll ever find the evidence online unless I hit the dark web (I'll pass on that). I just know that science has not always been ethical.
A brain stored in a computer
Now we get to the ludicrous part. Uploading your brain into a computer might be possible, but there are complications that mean it may not be 'you' precisely. It wouldn't be to the level of GLaDOS. Science doesn't know what would happen. Scanning your brain potentially means invasive surgery because mapping it with a simple scanning device is not possible. We are too complicated. Computers may never be fast enough to actually scan your brain and understand it all.
Cave Johnson and Caroline Courtesy of chteuchteu.com
Assuming you managed to find the technology to do this, could you live a full life after your brain had technically died? Not unless you are in virtual reality. Your senses would never be the same. You wouldn't have a human body. You'd have half the life that you did before. Would it be worth it? Probably not. I'd probably just go meet my creator instead. You could also be deleted by someone. Oops, you died like Caroline (Portal 2).
The reality is that this isn't possible - yet. I actually hope it is never possible, mostly because of the ethics of the concept itself. God offers us Heaven, but we have to die on Earth first, so it makes no sense to me that uploading yourself to live forever is good. I'll take Heaven rather than live forever and have half the life I did before. Also, if our brains are as complicated as science claims, it is likely impossible to live forever like Caroline or Cave Johnson (Portal 3) - and Cave begged to be killed! Keep that in mind.
GLaDOS and Wheatley
GLaDOS is the system that runs the testing facility. Upon being activated, she became independent and sent neurotoxins all through the building on "bring your daughter to work day", resulting in a lot of death and a morality core being put into her. Wheatley comes along in Portal 2 and leads Chell right into where GLaDOS was defeated, thus reactivating her when Chell pushes a button. Wheatley eventually replaces GLaDOS and creates a whole different monster, where Glados has to help you defeat Wheatley so she can be back in her robotic body. The real question is this; are independent AIs possible?
I don't want GLaDOS to be doable in real life. Why? There are countless reasons. One, she is lethal. Two, she went rogue and killed so many test subjects and scientists it isn't even funny. Rumor has it that she has stuffed test subjects in companion cubes. Rattman survived by hiding in walls for a long time. She's terrible. End of comment.
Wheatley is just stupid. GLaDOS calls him a moron multiple times. He fails to maintain the building in a way that keeps it from self-destructing. Forced between choosing two evils, you as a player have to put GLaDOS back in her body. After this, she deletes the backed-up mind of Caroline (the only good part of GLaDOS) and lets you leave the facility. I don't want Wheatley to be a reality either because he killed multiple test subjects to get to GLaDOS and take her place. He also tries to kill Chell.
We need to ask the obvious question; can AI go rogue? It depends on the algorithm. If it is made too complicated it is possible. You have to be able to understand the code or it could choose to do destructive things. Some people want regulation on AI to make sure rogue doesn't happen and are convinced they are more dangerous than countries we are at war with. Others say that it isn't human intelligence, so at worst it breaks and the system attached breaks with it - if you don't overpower it.
Assuming it could go rogue, the danger you are in depends on how much power it was given in the first place. If your little vacuum robot goes rogue you can literally kill it with a few blows of a hammer. Glados and Wheatley, on the other hand, were given complete control of a facility. Oops. Yeah, let's not overpower our AI if going rogue is possible. In real life, however, I doubt that anyone would be willing to build Glados....oh, wait, someone made Alexa turn into an animatronic Glados.
The only way Glados can work is if we fully understood the brain and could map it fully (Which means you die in the process, so Caroline probably died to become Glados. Not great.). The video above explains it better than I ever could, so click that and watch it for more information in better detail (and in English and not science-ese). Below is the Alexa that got turned into Glados. It clearly can't kill you in this animatronic version. But please don't attempt anything past the animatronic version or we all might die as a society.
Conclusions
While the lab itself is only possible within the apocalyptic universe of the game (given that people would start asking questions when he bought moon dust), the lab testing itself (minus the portals within the game and the gun itself) could potentially happen. Again, you couldn't test portals, but you could make a human run a rat maze, then kill off the subjects and scientists to hide the experiments. As for GLaDOS and mapping the mind to upload it, we aren't there yet. We may be at some point in time. I sure hope we never make it that far because we may destroy ourselves if we do. Just for kicks, let me leave the game theory on the companion cube down here for you to watch.
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