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Immortality for the rich by 2045?

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Immortality for the rich by 2045?

3News NZ

Project 2045 hopes to connect human brains to robots (file)

Project 2045 hopes to connect human brains to robots (file)

 

By 3 News online staff

A Russian businessman is calling on the world’s richest people to help fund a project to develop human immortality technology by 2045.

The project aims to eventually develop the means to download the human brain to a computer chip in a robot.

Dmitry Itskov, 31, launched the project last year and last week sent out the call for funding.

“Members of the Forbes richest list: human life is unique and priceless. It is only when we have to part with life do we realise just how much we have not done, that we have not had enough time to do what we really wanted… Today you have a chance to change this situation.”

The 2045 team of Russian scientists will research how to extend human life “by means of cybernetic technology” in four steps.

From 2015 to 2020 the team hopes to develop robots, reminiscent of the 2009 movie Surrogates, which can be controlled by the human mind and allow people to work in dangerous situations.

By 2020 to 2025, Mr Itskov and the scientists hope the technology to transfer an intact human brain from a worn our human body into a robot will be available.

From 2030 to 2035 he hopes the technology to transfer human consciousness onto a computer chip will exist and allow for “cybernetic immortality”.

By 2045 the goal is for “substance independent minds” where people’s minds could have bodies with perhaps superpower-level abilities.

The 2045 team predicts the human species will change forever.

“Humanity, for the first time in history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species,” the website says.

They also think the Earth will no longer be enough for people.

“Pre-requisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.”

3 News

 

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Comments

1/08/2012 9:33:30 p.m.

steve wrote:

what about the soul ..? they wil 'transfer' it into the chip too..?
all living creatures have a soul..wich is beyond our manipulation..fortunately enough..this prerogative belongs to goods..whatever who they might be..

31/07/2012 12:21:04 p.m.

Funny_Guy wrote:

Other aliens have already got it, they can take a informational hologram of you, that contains all the "stuff" you experienced from your "six" sensors, from birth, and keep it on a very powerful computer.

31/07/2012 9:22:39 a.m.

Gary wrote:

This sounds like the destruction of humans not immortality. Technically interesting but realistically dumb. The human mind and spirit is made up of more than just the brain. The body is a significan and important part of the whole process. Can anyone really believe that you could take the brain of a healthy person and stick it into a machine and say look you are immortal now!! Do you really think the brain would survive?? OR do they just download all the thoughts and knowledge into a chip so you are here but not here?? Sounds like someone is just touting for some reasearch money by using this facinating idea. We have advanced, at least now we copy nature with our inventions as we realize we can not do better, so why we think we are at a point to upstage billions of years of evolution does suggest we will attract all the mad scientists out of the wood work. Pitty Hitlers dead he would have loved this one!

31/07/2012 7:35:21 a.m.

Luke Robson wrote:

@Mike - "hence the low % of our brain usage"... bollocks... http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html

30/07/2012 9:16:56 a.m.

Mike wrote:

The idea is not new.

Its biggest problem will be how the brain operates vs how computers operate.

Take modern computers, most are still 32 bit processing, with some 64 bit, and some a huge 128 bit.

The Human brain is organic and its bandwidth is billions of bits. Put it in another perspective. Take a gigabit picture and all the detail it has, now simiplify it to a few bits like 128 bits.

Now while storage has improved so we can store in a computer the memory of a brain, we haven't come even close to handling the processing. Yes brains tend to be slow vs computer, but much of this is also lack of training/skill of the brain, hence the low % of our brain usage.

While we are making progress, we need a lot more before we can make progress in this direction and its asking too much too soon. Taking a few isolated activities of the brain, we are making progress.

Already they have made progress in replacing sight and sound. With further work on those they can increase the sight interface towards normal levels of vision, and similar with hearing. With those 2 already in research, adding an external storage device accessable from the brain could probably be done in the next 30 years. Again these things probably wont work so well on adults, and would work best on the young like infants - but who wants evil scientists experimenting on kids?

If they add a storage device as an implant, could probably add a phone to it to give the skull-phone in many sci-fi stories. Even then it wouldn't be a download of a person, just give different interface with an existing brain.

30/07/2012 2:59:41 a.m.

vyjayanthi wrote:

awesome idea!!!!!!!!!! cn't believe it!!!!!!!!...

28/07/2012 10:02:17 p.m.

Sam Chapman wrote:

If you read Tom Sharpe's novel 'The Throwback' you'll see just how bad such an idea is ...