Moscow Billionaire Seeks Immortality As Robot

[finehoe]

Money can buy you immortality, according to the Russian internet multi-millionaire who is ploughing a fortune into a project to create a human that never dies.

Web entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov is behind the "2045 Initiative", an ambitious experiment to bring about immortality within the next 30 years by creating a robot capable of storing human personalities.

The group of neuroscientists, robot builders and consciousness researchers say they can create an android that is capable of uploading someone's personality.

Mr Itskov, who has made a reported £1bn from his Moscow-based news publishing company, is the project's financial backer.

"Different scientists call it uploading or they call it mind transfer. I prefer to call it personality transfer" - Dmitry Itskov​

They believe that robots can store a person's thoughts and feelings because brains function in the same way as a computer.

It would work by uploading a digital version of a human brain to an android – effectively rebooting a person's mind – which would take the form of a robotic copy of a human body or, once technology has developed, a hologram with a full human personality.

Mr Itskov, who at 35 has amassed a fortune from his internet media firm New Media Stars, says he is "100pc sure it will happen".

He told BBC Horizon in a documentary that airs Wednesday: "If there is no immortality technology, I'll be dead in the next 35 years."

The project's first step is to create a robot that can be controlled using the mind.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/13/media-mogul-dmitry-itskov-plans-to-live-forever-by-uploading-his/

[TheCat]

What's interesting, less about the immortality and more about creating "robotic" clones of yourself. Then, of course, networking all of "brains" together so that they operate as one.

[finehoe]

What's interesting, less about the immortality and more about creating "robotic" clones of yourself. Then, of course, networking all of "brains" together so that they operate as one.

[Kerry]

I enjoyed the episode of Adam Ruins Everything: Death, where he discussed this subject.  What a waste of resources.

[spuwho]

Impressing his memory ingrams into an artificial device may extend his way of thinking for a period of time, but it may cause him to lose self awareness or a sense of conscience.

With no relationship to a central nervous system, an inability to sweat, use adrenaline,  experience pain, his mechanical mind will atrophy and probably go ( in human terms ) insane.

His money would probably have better returns if he uses it to perfect cloning himself without the problems of genetic drift. That way he can extend his life without reliance of a mechanical device.