Do billionaires crave eternal life?
July 19, 2012
(Credit: 2045.com)
Dmitry Itskov, a Russian entrepreneur, wants the world’s billionaires to fund a project called the 2045 Initiative to find the key to immortality, IEEE Spectrum notes.
Itskov expects the first fruits in about a dozen years, when a human brain is to be transplanted into a robot body. The resulting “avatar,” as he calls it, will “save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged.”
The billionaires he’s canvassing on Forbes magazine’s annual list have an average age of around 66 years.
The project would ultimately involve downloading the brain’s contents into a computer. That and other tweaks to the technology will take a few decades, Itskov says.
Itskov doesn’t cite supporting scientific evidence. — Ed.
Comments (71)
by Dan S
Those who are arguing that “only my biological body is me” don’t realize that this perspective will change when they are spending more time in their virtual or robot bodies than in their bio one. As computing processing power continues to race ahead, your e-brain will be processing at thousands and then millions of times faster than your bio-brain. Therefore your perception of time will change. When your e-self can complete a PhD in the time it takes your bio-self to walk across a room, you will be having more than 99% of your life experiences as your e-self. At that point I don’t think anyone will feel as attached to their bio-self.
It’s understandable that some people currently feel that the loss of their bio-self is death because their bio-self is currently their only self and they don’t have the experience of having more than 1 self or more accurately of having several different forms of themselves.
by Bruce Wright
That’s an interesting idea. However, I suspect that in order for you to regard your e-self as an integral part of your total self, you would need very good integration between the e-self and the bio-self – not merely an occasional “mind dump” in both directions, but a real-time and seamless melding. Since the brain isn’t designed to do this, I suspect that will be a very difficult task – certainly not something that looks likely in the near term. (What happens if and when we go through an actual Singularity who knows).
This leads to a number of questions: If the connection isn’t completely seamless, will our brains be able to cope with two or more highly similar “selfs,” one or more of which are running on a much faster time scale? Or will this be more likely to lead to psychosis instead? How do you handle the immense data transfer rates that would be required, and how do you get the information in and out of the brain without disrupting the brain’s activities? How do you integrate two or more personalities who are operating on such radically different time scales?
This is however a rather different scenario than the one proposed by Itskov, who assumes that this would be a one-time transfer without any prior melding. In that case the new e-self might feel that it had a continuum of consciousness, but in all likelihood the bio-self would not perceive it in this way.
by alex ivanov
What do you think about gradual replacing bio-parts in the brain with e-pats till no bio-parts left? At which point can you say that you are not yourself anymore? Now we can connect this e-brain to other e-brains and we will get a collective mind. Personality doesn’t exist in any particular e-brain anymore. It exists in the Net.
by Bruce Wright
Itskov’s proposal appears to be a one-time destructive transfer – which is clearly an easier technological achievement than a real-time melding, since even with nanotechnology it’s going to be hard to add all the connections needed to meld the e-self with the bio-self. (Since much of the brain’s information is encoded in its neuronal connections, it’s easier to extract that information by disassembling the brain than it is to create a real-time connection to it). Even nanotechnology still has a finite size, and if the connections are too big and/or too numerous they will disrupt the functioning of the bio-brain.
A gradual replacement of parts of the bio-brain with e-parts would be a middle ground, probably significantly more attainable than a real-time melding, though it’s still probably significantly more difficult than a one-time destructive transfer. You’d still have some issues with integrating the bio-parts with the e-parts (different time scales, etc) but you don’t have to have all of both systems working simultaneously and in parallel while still communicating with each other.
by alex ivanov
I guess till we have a real technology we can’t know for sure how it is going to work.
by MichaelK
“Transfer” is the wrong word. What you mean is “copying”.
by Brian H
The whole concept of e-dump is fake. A copy is not the original. Consider: if one copy can be made, so can 2, or 20.
Absorption of AI components into the bio-self and gradual expansion/replacement can work, but the issue of easy electronic duplication is still there.
by DrK
It’s plausible; however, much much more complicated than just downloading or transplanting a brain into a machine. Despite Freud theorizing the separation of brain and body (to the long-standing detriment of western medicine), they are in fact inseparable. Consider that the majority of neurotransmitters are made in the gut or a human’s dependance on various gut bacteria for proper functioning including mental processes. Then there’s the problem that we still don’t know how the brain actually works. That’s not to say that this vision will not some day be possible, but there’s a lot more discovery, invention, and work ahead before it can be.
by Brock
The only way this plan results in “immortality” is if you regard your Avatar copy as “you” and immediately commit (biological) suicide the moment the Avatar is created.
Drinking the Kool-Aid indeed.
The Avatar isn’t you. It’s another being that has your memories and personality at the moment of its creation, but from that moment on “you” and “it” diverge as different people with different memories and experiences. For example, what if one of us has a religious conversion, or gets married and moves to Portugal? Are we then the same person? No.
The only immortality that counts for me is biological immortality. “I” am indivisible from my physical brain. None of “you” are getting out of that brain alive.
by Chrispium
I’m in complete agreement with you here. I think that most of the people that talk about uploading, doesn’t understanding what a computer does when it moves a file from a source to a destination.
It copies from source to destination, then deletes source. In human terms, that is not continuity of existence since source gets “killed”.
by Gorden Russell
Not exactly. We copy files from the hard disk to flash drives all the time without erasing the source file.
by Chrispium
I did stipulate >moving< a file as the point. Copying is just a part of the process.
by Avatar1
A agree with you a 100% nobody will delete a original source of information
by alex ivanov
Brock, I already answered this question below. Ignorance is bliss?
by STAN
Great to see this being pursued; sensible input will be added to make it a realistic outcome , in time. Just how long is the question; the direction is reassuring,
by Rick
I think at some point we will have moved our consciousness to only be inside a virtual existence but still some may find it necessary or desirable to interact outside the virtual world with the real world. These same individuals may actually want to have several avatar like robots operating simultaneously with periodic downloads back to the virtual individual. In this way you could have a relatively low risk individual robot with it’s own version of the original individual doing whatever it is you want to do such as exploring the universe, skiing on Phobos, building/maintenance of whatever is housing and sustaining the virtual world etc. and then it all gets uploaded back as shared experiences with the original personality. Life at that point would have been redefined and most of what drives us as humans becomes unnecessary leaving other motivations to take over. We won’t need sex, war, jealousy, or the other base human emotions that have caused us so much trouble in our short history but are required as part of the evolutionary process of animal species. We would have evolved past that (hopefully) into an entirely new species. This begs the question as implied by soliciting only from billionaires as to who all it would include and how to separate ourselves from each other. I can envision a Zardoz-like scenario if only the rich are included. On the other hand religious nuts will do whatever they can to destroy this concept as a violation of God’s intent and they will, I am certain, rule that avatars and digital virtual individuals will not have souls nor be “alive” for legal purposes. I can envision that in the near future, particularly if humans are stressed over disparate distribution of income, wealth, and resources. All of that will have to be resolved at some point. It may require eliminating what human population remains that refuses the move into the singularity just for self-preservation from them.
by steve
How can you be sure that we haven’t already?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Holographic-Universe-Michael-Talbot/dp/0586091718
by Gorden Russell
Great idea Rick, sending your personality off to distant moons for adventure and then bringing it back for an experience upload. Have you heard of “experience beaming?” That’s the idea that extreme athletes can beam back what they are experiencing into the heads of people sitting in their recliners in Kansas City.
by Brian H
I am not interested in copies of myself, and I especially don’t want any that have access to my bank account.
BTW, skiing on Phobos would be very boring. Tiny gravity means very slow downhill accel.
by Holygrail
Seems to me like a snake oil scheme trying to trap gullible and scared old rich russians (the milestones, too near, tie up too well with the average age) but hey, if it works or advances science then great! and if it doesn’t who’s going to care about a few russian millionares being scammed? :)
by Chrispium
Their money could have gone to projects that actually works…
by Greg
Research is about finding out what works and what doesn’t. How many failed experiments were there before penicillin was discovered? With your attitude, nothing would ever be discovered and we would never learn anything, because you advocate only doing things that we know work already!
by Chrispium
I don’t have much confidence in the validity of any of Dmitrys claims. The timeline he sets out is more akin to wishful thinking than any grounding in solid science. If you’re going to invest, invest in things that have a more solid grounding. But hey, your money is your money, do with them what you want.
by Brian H
Penicillin? Very few, or none. It was discovered by accident while doing something else.
Immortality will probably require nanobots keeping DNA from switching itself off. We are programmed to live just long enough to leave a few descendents behind and feed them long enough to keep the line moving.
by Gorden Russell
Crispium, who can say if it won’t be possible? If these billionaires now average 66 years of age, by the time they are 86 it just might be possible. Robots are already working up fingers and skin senses, so that it won’t give sensory deprivation to be a brain in a robot body.
But on the other hand, in 20 years medical science will be able to get into the cell nucleus and stop the telomeres from unraveling, and the DNA from suffering transcription errors during cell division. This just might stop aging and even cause the body to rejuve.
by Chrispium
I have much more confidence in your 20 year scenario involving genetic modifications. I would like that to come true before 20 years though ;)
PS. Did you look at http://www.fightaging.org Lots of link to advice on how to extend your remaining years.
by Gorden Russell
Okay, Chrispium, I’ll go to fightaging.org right now.
by Gorden Russell
Those old Russian millionaires will care, and they are nobody to mess with. They got their money by their old KGB connections and if you cheat them, they will find you and make you beg for the sweet release of death.
by Chrispium
If you’re investing in immortality research, you can only say your investment failed if you died. Pretty hard to get revenge after your dead right?
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by Dave
Friggly Enterprises:
Yeah, I prefer having sex with my wife for reproduction as well.
by Spikosauropod
Well, we all knew it was coming.
Choices, choices, choices…
by Kyru Rex
There is no scientific evidence that support any of these scenarios as being remotely plausible. There is however remarkably clear scientific evidence that the human body could , if unhindered by the aging process, continue to regenrate itself indefinitely. As recent research has confirmed, indeed the DNA coding bears strong resemblance to a very advanced coding program, but only the original ”Programmer” has the means to fix it. Humans’ presumptuousness makes them so quick to simplify things they haven’t even begun to understand and take science-fiction as something that will become possible ”in the future” because ”we’ll find how”. Just another empty promise from the newest popular ”religion”, scientific speculation, only leading to the same result as all the others: disappointment and no real answers to the most important questions
by cariT
Each individual is the result of a program, like a computer program. After an egg is fertilied the programs directs it to develop first into a baby, then a teen, an adult, and finally to age, deteriorate, and die. Unless we find the code to the program, little or nothing will change. What we need is a team of biologists working with a team of computer programmers. Once the program is understood and deciphered, then the team can beguin to change it and stop the aging and deterioration. But as said by someone, the Medical Industry is against perfect health and inmortality as that will make them be irrelevant and lose their billions. So there is a big challenge for those of us who would like to remain young and healthy forever, or at least for a few centuries.
by Bruce Wright
You are making NO sense. If the “medical industry” could achieve perfect health and immortality, their payoff would be HUGE – think how much people would be willing to pay for that! Now of course some jobs would tend to disappear – orderlies, nurse’s aides and perhaps nurses generally, for example – but they’d tend to be the lower-level jobs who don’t get much say about the general direction of the industry in any event.
Lots of stuff is being done to, as you say, “find the code to the program” – and likely it will bear very much fruit over the next 20 years.
by C
Her argument is sound. Consider the cure for cancer.
No cure = lifetime of expensive local treatment costing thousands each month.
Cure = Fly to a country where you can afford the cure and be done with it.
This may or may not be influencing cancer research, but an incentive against a cure is plain to see, and I haven’t heard of us curing anything since polio (and yes I know it wasn’t *technically* cured)
BTW, I don’t think this takes a conspiracy or anything nutty like that. Industries (just like governments, individual businesses, non-profits, clubs, and even the way we run our personal lives) are built on processes (think strong habits involving many people). Incentives which sustain those processes inevitably shape them.
by Bruce Wright
Both your and Cari’s arguments amount to nothing but a string of fallacies. Let’s say some company (or country, or University, it really doesn’t matter) finds a cure for cancer. Such a cure would be immensely valuable, to the extent that it would put all of the “maintenance” treatments out of business; clearly they could charge quite a bit for the treatment. Do you actually think the stockholders of that company (or the citizens of that country, or the professors of that University) would care that their discovery would put their competitors out of business? NO! It’s up to the competitors to find something else to do, or fold up their tents and go away. Adapt or die. Perhaps eventually the total value of cancer treatments would diminish, as the first successes inspired others and as patents ran out, but that happens as well with any other technology you can name.
Your thesis would work equally well if you were talking about the replacement of horses for transportation: They were once universally used for transportation, and clearly there was a lot of capital invested in horses for that purpose and a lot of people who based their lives around them, but once things like trains, cars, and airplanes were perfected the horses were no longer useful for general transportation (they are still used, of course, in some isolated areas – but this is a diminishing market). The old-school “processes” or “conspiracies” or whatever you want to call them were unable to stem the tide of progress. And so it would be here.
The one thing that does tend to slow research into things like cancer has nothing whatsoever to do with an attempt by some faceless “industry” to maintain their current cash flow at the expense of products that they foresee that could result in the elimination of cancer; rather, it’s that the easiest (and therefore the cheapest and quickest to find) new “discoveries” are going to be things that are similar to existing knowledge in the field, rather than doing the backbreaking and groundbreaking (and immensely expensive) basic research required for a major advance when you don’t have any idea which line of inquiry would be the most profitable. In fact, that’s the idea behind having governments, foundations, and Universities fund basic research – its payoff is often too uncertain and too far in the future for many private companies to afford it. But you can be certain that once the breakthroughs in basic research have been made, private companies and Universities will be right behind them in finding applications.
by Bruce Wright
(And I might add, if you think that we “haven’t cured anything since polio” you are seriously out of the loop. Even limiting it to the area of vaccines, the progress made in just the last 20 years has been enormous. Can we cure everything? Of course not, but it’s sheer ignorance to claim that we aren’t making any progress at all).
by Chrispium
The vast majority of nations have government funded health care. You can bet they got the incentive to cure cancer. Think of the savings to the taxpayers! You could win elections with that.
by Chrispium
Someone knowledgeable in computers AND biosciences? hmmm? Oh I Know! Aubrey de Grey!!
by John Eisenschenk
Oh come on now, there a complete difference between eternal life and immortality.
And becoming a cyborg is a transformation from being human.
Immortality is being imprisoned in a human body forever.
Having eternal life is being set free into euphoria.
by Khannea Suntzu
/me hums a James Bond theme.
by GatorALLin
Once we truly understand how our DNA code works…..then like a computer program we should be able to turn back on, even regenerate old parts to be like new again. Work on things like Alzheimer’s and other cognitive decline first, so as you learn how to improve or extend the brains that are already old at age 66 average, so there is something to keep alive later (regardless of if you fix the body they are in…or move them to a new body, or even move to a robot like body). I hope the billions they spend to fix themselves are then shared as knowledge to fix everyone…and continue the advancements to figure out the next problem. I don’t like the idea that only the top 0.1% will take advantage of super expensive treatments (switch your brain to new body) that only a few can afford. I don’t think the avatar idea will even work….or if it works physically that the soul or mental side will transfer with the physical switch, but regardless, the improvements in technology should help us all in some ways. The idea that only the mega rich have a life worth extending is a failed way of thinking…and they need us (*the other 99.9%) to figure this out…maybe we need them to fund these projects….win/win….vs. the win/lose idea of making a treatment only mega rich could afford.
by Bruce Wright
Avatars A and B sound quite attainable, though possibly not in such near-term time frames, and since they don’t involve transferring the contents of the brain to a different substrate there’s no issue about continuity of consciousness, so your concerns in that area appear to be unfounded for those cases.
However, even if those levels become possible I’m not sure how desirable the result would be – if you’ve got a “new” body but a brain crippled by syndromes such as Alzheimer’s or cerebral arteriosclerosis or stroke or Parkinson’s or MS, your life may still not be so wonderful or your life expectancy so long. There may also be issues with getting “locked-in” if the connections between the preserved brain and the “new” body wear out before the brain does.
Agreed that the first priority ought to be towards solving crippling syndromes such as these; otherwise heroic efforts like this are doomed to failure.
by Bruce Wright
I might also mention that if your brain is already crippled by one of those conditions (Alzheimer’s etc), it’s not at all obvious that even transferring it to another substrate will help much, even apart from the issue of continuity of consciousness. Once the information is lost, you can’t get it back again; you might be able to create a personality that’s “related” to your original personality, but without many (or possibly even most) of your memories (in the case of Alzheimer’s and some other syndromes, for example). Perhaps better than nothing, but hardly a particularly desirable outcome.
by alex ivanov
It was said “If Russians decide that immortality is in their national interests then they will deliver it”. Dima is trying to involve the whole world. Then this will happen faster. I think it is in every nation interests to keep their people healthy and live longer. Why don’t we set is as a priority number one?
by Daniel
If I copy the information that makes me unique into another substrate, it is still just a copy. The original still remains and I will regard the copy as ‘not me’. What I want is a solution to fix and repair the biologic systems that make up my body and maintain my brain. I think that will happen a lot faster than ‘brain uploads’ into computers anyway.
by alex ivanov
If you are separated – then yes. But if you are connected (wirelessly) to each other through the brain and synch all data then you will still be the same person with two bodies.
by Bri
Two bodies? Kill the android,, your still alive. Kill the real “body” your dead. I love when they use the term “immortal”! Just ain’t gonna happen. A really long time, yes. I’d like to see what any of us would look like, actions wise, in a million years, let alone billions. The things people hanker after. The DNA code can give us quite a few years, once we know how it works. It won’t be long before we augment, every aspect of it, and diverge as a race, having little resemblance to our original biological bodies. That won’t even take thousands of years. If you like fishing and want to do it “forever” , that can and does happen in spirit. It’s not bound by time and space. Hear, I don’t care what anyone says. You’ll go crazy doing it for just ten thousand years. That’s not to say that there aren’t an infinite number of things to do. Time is unrelenting, and brutal. It takes it’s toll on everthing. Otherwise everything would exist at once, like it does in the world of spirit. Go straight in any direction, of the infinite number of directions, for all of eternity,and you will run across your lifetime, an infinite number of times! As illogical as it sounds, you can put a limit on infinity. If you do , in comparison to real infinity, you would disappear. Any finite thing, in comparison to infinity just disappears. Infinity, immortality, etc, is incomprehensible to finite things. We can attain god like power, but in comparison to the ” all powerful one god” it doesn’t even register. It shrinks into a void of inferiority. Lots of fun to talk about but don’t hold your breath waiting to ” live forever”. It just can’t happen.
by Luis
“. Lots of fun to talk about but don’t hold your breath waiting to ” live forever”. It just can’t happen.” Why do you think that? What do you think about Tipler´s Omega point?
I´ve been reading some of your posts about spiritual experiences, do you have some kind of blog or something to know a little more about? My mother told me many experiences she had like viewing kind of signs when friends or my grandfa died and we could prove twice this was extremely accurate with the real death time, but she stopped telling me because I know I looked at her like “I´m calling a psychologist for you”, but I can´t erase that things of my head.
by alex ivanov
Dear Bri,
Why are you trying to discuss Avatar project if you haven’t seen Avatar movie yet? Watch the movie first and then tell me whether Jake Sully is dead or alive.
by Tony
Yes, I agree we can expect to see neuromorphic android robots of human intelligence around 2030.
by Sherrie
Tony, I agree and I’m speaking foma bit of experience. I worked on Robert White’s neurosurgical team, giving anesthesia for human patients decades ago. He’s famous for primate brain transfers so this just might happen sooner than you anticipate. Then how will we govern, who will be “breeding” and how will mere humans manage more physically powerful machines? It is time to answer these questions, now, don’t you think?
by Mortran
2045
by Sno
I don’t get the point of “Avatar C”. Why would anyone want to create a double of themselves ? It won’t make you immortal, more like there’ll be an impostor pretending to be you.
by Ro
… the end of one’s life
just might be the key here.
by Bruce Wright
Perhaps. But I’m really not sure I’d have much interest in having a double continuing to live on after my death; why should I care, I’d already be dead?! Perhaps if one has a sufficiently big ego that would be an attraction, but such a desire almost seems like a psychological pathology IMHO.
by BB
“Perhaps if one has a sufficiently big ego that would be an attraction, but such a desire almost seems like a psychological pathology IMHO.”
Or a healthy Nietzschean outlook.
Why do you think many people choose to have their own biological children? It’s the best they can do at the moment to achieve a somewhat rudimentary copy of themselves. The problem with the West (Eurosphere) is they don’t seem to have enough ego, at least in regard to their personal selves. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that the West is shrivelling, with far fewer that replacement level native birth rates. No mater, people are fungible, import more. They seem to have a very high regard for their culture though and are aggressively trying to spread it, make the world safe for democracy and all that. They literally believe that “the culture” and “the people”, undergirding it, are independent entities. No other culture believes this. Japan is investing in robot developement rather than import Koreans for jobs the Japanese “don’t want to do.”
by garyb
The difference is that the west is open source. In the end such culture might be immortal.
by BB
“I don’t get the point of “Avatar C”. Why would anyone want to create a double of themselves?”
Why, to continue to manifest one’s will of course. Do you think the current goals and interests of The Ford Foundation are anything like what they would be if “Henry Ford” was still in charge of it?
by Noah
Yeah. Avatar C is like the perfect Will and great source for knowledge and education. Imagine if we had perfect robotic replicas of some of the worlds greatest minds and historical figures. They can continue to benefit and teach mankind many years after their death. It doesn’t really keep the original person alive, but from an overall standpoint, a great part of them still exists for the people here. It’s also an interesting idea that we die so our future robotic selves might live. It almost has that same feeling of leaving behind children.
by rob falgiano
A lot of variations seem possible. There may be many different lifeforms: completely nonbiological “copies” of people, completely biological but genetic altered humans who do not effectively age, cyborgs (mix of biological and tech parts), and non-biological artificial intelligences that do not have any past existence as humans. There’s even more I’m sure. I don’t think anyone could predict with much certainty now.
by melajara
For years I’ve thought and even prepared some drafts targeting very wealthy people as it is all too clear that there is no interest from the general public or even less inclination for spending on this topic from public research (public debt riddled governments untold ideal would be on the contrary to “engineer” people passing away the day of their retirement).
Now I think that Itskov is showing up an all too freaky scenario.
Why not push instead for aggressive rejuvenation therapies through generalized stem cells supplementation?
Then, at a more fundamental level, evidence suggests that aging is more the progressive unravelling of a genetic program (aiming at the optimization of a gene pool rather than of any individual of a given species) punctuated by milestones (e.g. axons myelination circa 7 years old people, puberty, menopause, andropause, etc) rather than just a plain and stupid wear and tear process like Aubrey de Grey is emphasizing it.
If so, we should strive to understand what are the gene expression regulatory events promoting and triggering those milestones, in order to change them to delay or even suppress some of the most unfortunate aging events (e.g. andropause!), ultimately postponing death itself.
I think such a line of research would be much more acceptable to conservative people (as usually billionaires are) rather than to make them have nightmares of brain transplantation in a robotic body!!!
Remember, the aim is to have them to fund the research, not rebuke it!
by matthew
there is a lot of expert disagreement. It’s nice to know that some rich folks are trying different paths to the same goal (life extension beyond 120 years). However, it would be better if the different viewpoints could be brought together and synthesized. The truth is that more research that is very deep needs to be done. Sure, given current knowledge some paths are better than others, but this is more like engineering than basic science. The path to the goal will likely change in the decades to come.
by trakk
become immortal and then what? become slaves to a superintelligence for eternity? :)
by melajara
This is an all too easy argument, like the “oh so boring eternity”.
Just let us have the CHOICE. If we get too bored, or right before been enslaved (why for btw), then just commit suicide, period.
by trakk
I know…i was just kidding :)
by BB
“then just commit suicide, period”
Assuming the superintelligence lets/allows you to commit suicide. See Harlan Ellison’s, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” You could be in for a literal implementation of eternal damnation.
by Gorden Russell
I love Harlan Ellison, have many of his books, but sometimes…I have no mouth and I must puke.
by C
Not me. I’m looking to become immortal so I can become super-intelligent and enslave everyone ;)
by matthew
if avatar A is achieved by 2030, singularity, here we come!