Immortality for Humans by 2045

Analysis by Alyssa Danigelis

A Russian mogul wants to achieve cybernetic immortality for humans within the next 33 years. He's pulled together a team intent on creating fully functional holographic human avatars that house our artificial brains. Now he's asking billionaires to help fund the advancements needed along the way.

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The man behind the 2045 Initiative, described as a nonprofit organization, is a Russian named Dmitry Itskov. The ambitious timeline he's laid out involves creating different avatars. First a robotic copy that's controlled remotely through a brain interface. Then one in which a human brain can be transplanted at the end of life. The next could house an artificial human brain, and finally we'd have holographic avatars containing our intelligence much like the movie "Surrogates."

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Gizmag's Dario Borghino wisely warned that "one must be careful not to believe that improbable technological advances automatically become more likely simply by looking further away in the future." And in the grand scheme of things, 2045 is not that far away. So just how likely is it that this project will succeed? For more insight, let's check in with Ted Williams. Oh, wait.

Recently Itskov published an open letterto the Forbes world's billionaires list telling them that they have the ability to finance the extension of their own lives up to immortality. He writes that he can prove the concept's viability to anyone who's skeptical and will coordinate their personal immortality projects for free. PopSci's Clay Dillowdescribed Itskov in March as a 31-year-old media mogul, but I couldn't find a detailed biography for him.

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The project's ultimate goal is to save people from suffering and death. While there are smart experts involved, that's no guarantee that human immortality is even a goal worth pursuing. Anyone caught up in the vampire mania that's punctured popular culture has pondered whether, given a choice, you'd actually want to live forever.

For me, 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. I read a sci-fi novel involving disembodied live brains once. It didn't turn out well.

Image Credit: 2045 Initiative Group