Comment by yyyk
4 years ago
What makes you think the body is useful? Robots will be able to do everything better, and if not, there'll be no shortage of labour. The body is mostly a cost center. If we strip down the human to a mind in a box it's so much cheaper (and no need for guards either!).
Well, you are correct in the sense that only the consciousness needs to be incarcerated in order to sustain the profit model, but:
(a) compute cost for uploaded brains is probably more than the cost for the pig slop and water/sewer bills of current model. Recall that prisons right now almost never have AC. If you're going away from corpses, you'll have to pay for that.
(b) Cost of caring for the physical body has pretty much been solved by the markets. The customer has a social network that sends money in and pays transfer fees. This network also pays per call and email. Then the customer purchases food and clothing at monopoly prices, since... it's a captive market! Just imagine the ARR hit when people stop eating.
Of course, uploading wastes precious computing resources. Which is why I was considering not uploading them, just keeping a brain in a vat. We can still charge them for nutrients, calls and VR time, but avoid all those pesky bodily costs.