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While many tech moguls dream of changing the way we live with new smart devices or social media apps, one Russian internet millionaire is trying to change nothing less than our destiny, by making it possible to upload a human brain to a computer, reports Tristan Quinn. "Within the next 30 years," promises Dmitry Itskov, "I am going to make sure that we can all live forever."
It sounds preposterous, but there is no doubting the seriousness of this softly spoken 35-year-old, who says he left the business world to devote himself to something more useful to humanity. "I'm 100% confident it will happen. Otherwise I wouldn't have started it," he says. It is a breathtaking ambition, but could it actually be done? Itskov doesn't have too much time to find out.
"If there is no immortality technology, I'll be dead in the next 35 years," he laments. Death is inevitable - currently at least - because as we get older the cells that make up our bodies lose their ability to repair themselves, making us vulnerable to cardiovascular disease and other age-related conditions that kill about two-thirds of us.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35786771
Horizon: The Immortalist, produced and directed by Tristan Quinn, will be shown on BBC 2 at 20:00 on Wednesday 16 March 2016 - viewers in the UK can catch up later on the BBC iPlayer
Dmitry Itskov, Founder of 2045 Initiative
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday March 16 2016, @09:10PM
I suspect this too. The consciousness is unique to the specific instance of space-time. Because the instant that a perfect copy is made, differences in entropy over space will make the brains differ. And if not, it most likely will be like a super twin not yourself.
So there may be a perfect copy but not a transfer. And if the simulation isn't good enough. You might become a total psychotic. No limbic response = psychopath.
Simulations is also hard because it supposedly requires 36.8×10^15 instructions per second for real-time performance. However another researcher estimates that every neuron would need 10^15 instructions per second. Thus a requirement of 36.8×10^30 instructions per second. Not many computers can handle that. If there's any sufficient software to do it at all and scanning procedures exist.
But the Chinese Tianhe-2 at 33.86×10^15 at least has brain simulation within theoretical reach if the simpler model is feasible!
Current brains simulation paradigm seems to be assume that with enough computational capability a human brain simulation is possible. But if it's a mix of room temperature quantum phenomena and computational capability. Then any plain computational simulation will most likely fail hard. Photosynthesis is already observed to use quantum phenomena to work. So nature has harnessed this while humans have not.