DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Human immortality could be possible by 2045, say Russian scientists

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"
CBS

While I'm in no hurry to die, I sure don't want to live forever.

Well if the Russians say it, it must be true!!!

It's about to get crazy up in this place.

I bet Putin will fund this immediately.

Probably stands a better chance of being profitable than solar energy.

Sounds like something right out of the Robin Williams movie Bicentennial Man.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182789/

Artificial hearts, lungs, stomach etc etc.. literally, you could live forever.

Sweet...I'll be quitting my workout routine, get back on my pancake-only diet and start up smoking with lots of heavy drinking. Modern medicine will save us all!

Can I get a new back now?

I hope they find a cure for Alzheimer's before they go planting brains into humanoids. Or robots. Droids. Whatever.

It may forget who it is and (exp) itself.

I wonder if Obamacare will cover this.

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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.

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Donald Trump.

What makes them think our brains can live forever. There is so many other things they could be doing

Good. Maybe now i'll live to see the Browns win a championship.

I found this neat website the other day, interesting projections into the future

http://www.futuretimeline.net/index.htm

I instantly thought of Logans Run.

Even IF possibe You cant keep people around forever!

I think that the true physical life extension will be the result of curing disease and cloning organs that will be a perfect fit for a patient. I suspect that we will see more technology becoming part of the human experience, as humans become more directly wired in, but I don't see robotics as the long term solution.

Who wants to live forever ?

Thanks man. Last year of my twenties today.

...or you see this while trying to purchase a new bladder from Amazon.com:

"Currently Out of Stock - You will be notified by e-mail when we receive more from our supplier. Would you consider buying used?"

Or .......

"I'm sorry, but the liver you requested is backordered. With special adapter kit (part # 459-b-786-krb) you can install one of these other models instead. Would you like to continue?"

To get back to the article for just a second and correct me if I'm wrong, but you aren't really still "alive"... you are basically a brain, in a jar, "living" through a holographic image... no thanks.

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All we have to do is attack the technological obstacles in between, one at a time, until we get there.

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Uh....you mean solving the problem of human consciousness? What a bunch of garbage. You might be able to attach a brain to an artificial body, but that doesn't mean the brain will experience consciousness in the way that humans currently do. Consciousness is not simply produced by the brain independent of the body. Destroy that link and consciousness is destroyed.

But, if I could extend my life, I would. Probably not indefinitely. That's a pretty serious committment. But I'd take at least an extra thousand years.

It does. And we are at the age where we think about it

Not out of fear. At some point you don't fear death. You just reflect and think about the things you could have done better and how you could have been a better person.

I watched this episode of Through the Womhole regarding some of this. It was pretty interesting....

http://science.discovery.com/tv/through-...t-the-dead.html