What would be the ultimate hack? Breaking into the computers of the Pentagon? The CIA? The NSA? How about hacking into the human mind and reverse engineering consciousness itself?In his new book, ‘Hacking Consciousness’, lifelong computer hacker Chris McKinstry, explores the origins and purpose of human consciousness from a hacker’s ?reverse engineering? perspective. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines from computer science and neurobiology to evolutionary psychology and statistics, McKinstry argues that consciousness and meaning evolved to help us survive in a socially complex world, and that the same process can be duplicated inside a computer. The book iscusses both the theory behind and specific implementation details of TheMindPixel Digital Mind Modeling Project, which is online at mindpixel.com, an Internet based attempt to ?construct and validate a high-resolution digital model of the average human mind from millions of Internet users worldwide?. Through numerous hands-on neural network simulations, McKinstry hopes that the MindPixel Model can be used as the ?Ultimate Training Corpus to raise an artificial neural network into true artificial consciousness.McKinstry is calling his fledgling online consciounsess GAC (pronounced ?Jack?), an acronym for Generic Artificial Conciousness. It really remains to be seen how successful the project is, or whether it can establish itself as more than vapourware. To find out more you?ll either have to go see McKinstry?s forthcoming talk at H2K, buy the book, or just wait until you can talk to GAC itself about it. It might be a long wait. More from GAC

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