How would you like to invest in immortality?

March 22, 2013
dmitry-itskov

Dmitry Itskov (credit: 2045 Initiative)

With his 2045 Initiative, Russian Internet mogul Dmitry Itskov is looking for backers for the world’s first immortality research center.

The new venture sells itself: invest in his new research and development interest and the payoff could be immortality, reports Fortune.

A new corporate entity that the Russian multi-millionaire will formally announce at an event in June will allow investors to bankroll research into neuroscience and human consciousness with the ultimate goal of transferring human minds into robots, extending human life indefinitely. Early investors will be first in line for the technology when it matures, something Itskov believes will happen in the 2040s.

Itskov outlined a rough roadmap for the future of his 2045 Initiative, a multi-decade research and development push to understand human consciousness and ultimately how to transfer it from human bodies into robotic avatars:

  • By 2020 scientists will figure out how to control robots via brain-machine interfaces (read: mind control).
  • By 2025 the goal is to place a human brain into a working robot and have that person’s consciousness (memories, personality, and everything else that makes up the “self”) transfer along with it.
  • By 2035, create robots with artificial brains to which human consciousness can be uploaded.

Itskov sees the 2045 Initiative as an engine for technological and economic development, one that will drive discovery in neuroscience, robotics, artificial intelligence — even spirituality.

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(Credit: 2045 Initiative)