Posted on 08/01/2012 4:49:08 PM PDT by LibWhacker
If Dmitry Itskov's 2045 initiative plays out as planned, humans will have the option of living forever with the help of machines in only 33 years.
It may sound ridiculous, but the 31-year-old Russian mogul is dead serious about neuroscience, android robotics, and cybernetic immortality.
He has already pulled together a team of leading Russian scientists intent on creating fully functional holographic human avatars that house artificial brains which contain a person's complete consciousness - in other words, a humanoid robot.
Together, they've laid out an ambitious course of action that would see the team transplant a human brain into an artificial body (or 'avatar') in as little as seven years time.
Now, Itskov is asking the world's richest people for help in financing the project.
In exchange, he's offered to coordinate their own personal immortality projects for free.
"I urge you to take note of the vital importance of funding scientific development in the field of cybernetic immortality and the artificial body," he writes in an open letter to members of the Forbes World's Billionaires List.
"Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death."
Itskov goes on to offer skeptics a meeting with "a team of the world's leading scientists working in this field " to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality.
And while many are skeptical that such a plan could ever come to fruition, Popular Science Magazine points that phase one -- creating a robot controlled by a human brain -- is already well within reach.
"DARPA is already working on it via a program called "Avatar" (which, incidentally, is also the name of Itskov's project) through which the Pentagon hopes to create a brain-machine interface that will allow soldiers to control bipedal human surrogate machines remotely with their minds," writes PopSci's Clay Dillow.
"And of course there are all the ongoing medical prosthesis projects that have shown that the human nervous system can interface with prosthetic enhancements, manipulating them via thought. Itskov draws a clear arc from what we have now to the consciousness-containing holograms that he envisions. All we have to do is attack the technological obstacles in between, one at a time, until we get there."
Discovery's Alyssa Danigelis takes an opposing stance to the very idea.
"There's a world of difference between pursuing a brain-controlled exoskeleton to help paraplegics regain control and wanting to essentially upload a human brain into an artificial body," she writes.
"I read a sci-fi novel involving disembodied live brains once. It didn't turn out well"
What's your reaction to this pursuit? If you had the opportunity to live forever - albeit cybernetically - would you do it?
I will take Jesus and his sacrifice and skip eternity in hell (John 3:16)
> My thinking went immediately to that process.
> If you want eternal aches and pains ... just refuse Jesus and go to Hell ...
> But be forewarned ... you can’t see no partyin’ and friends in eternal darkness.
Resistance is futile.
Brings a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.
/johnny
This is along the lines of the group looking for the inception of the “singularity”, where humanity and machines merge. Making our own hell is what it appears to me.
You are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind! Dead is dead!
Ray Kurzweil has been arguing this line for many years and has some fairly persuasive arguments to back it up.
Unfortunately for mankind there is a non-scientific reason we die. It is because God said we would after man sinned. Man cannot save himself from this judgment.
Fortunately salvation from death can come by trusting Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior. This is the only way out, and to try some other way is to accept the first lie: “You shall not surely die.”
“Human immortality could be possible by 2045, say Russian scientists”
Then a tyrant like Putin can be ruler forever.
“Kinda wish I had writing skills to put that sort of thing into book form.”
Don’t wish it ... give it a try :-). I built my whole career on mastering things I thought I would never understand :-). Now I’m fairly decent with digital logic / FPGAs :-). I don’t think I’m the best and will be learning about this stuff forever, but I hold my own, get my job done, and my peers seem to dig what I do :-).
Free will is amazing. I know that sounds like Peter Pan advice, but its so true :-). Just start writing stuff. Identify what’s bad, what’s rambling, etc. and sculpt it like you would any other work of art.
Immortality, thy name is progeny.
This story is about the image of a person living on - while the body is dead. I prefer to have children who will be a blessing to themselves and to the rest of humanity. They may be more work - but growing old is part of living. Dying is part of life. I’d rather be remembered for my contributions, than to be memorialized by a facsimile of myself in a metal container.
Our brains are seeping in a soup of hormones which effect our thinking. The hormones are produced in many different parts of the body due to all manner of external stimuli. Good luck simulating all of that.
Why Nixon? There are a lot far worse than him (the entire demonRat party, for example).
Or did you mean it as a good thing that he (Nixon) could have ruled forever?
Neither I just like the idea of Robo Nixon terrorizing lefties.
These guys didnt see Forbidden Planet did they.
Ask the Krell what happens when you release the “id”.
Ok, 1st this is never going to happen (though sinful men want it to),
2ndly even if human (bodily incorruption) were to be achieved-which it won’t God will net let it—to be stuck in a sinful state for all of evernity would=Death! NO non-thanks.
Great movie!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.