Do you want to live forever in a robotic body? If Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov is to be believed he already has plans that will allow humans to inhabit robots in the next ten years.
Itskov, a 31-year-old Russian media entrepreneur already claims he has already hired 30 scientists to make his dream of human immortality come true.
“This project is leading down the road to immortality,” Itskov, who founded New Media Stars, a Russian company that runs several online news outlets, told Wired. “A person with a perfect Avatar will be able to remain part of society. People don’t want to die.”
Itskov’s project “Avatar” is similar to the Pentagon’s own project “Avatar” which envisions surgically transplanting human consciousness to a robot body. Itskov hopes to upload human minds without surgery leaving the human bodies empty while the human owners live on inside robots. Itskov’s and the U.S. project are named after the James Cameron movie, “Avatar” where human soldiers can transfer their consciousness into genetically made alien hybrids to live amongst an alien species in a distant world.
Itskov’s actually launched his project “Avatar” a year ago but only revealed more details to a group of futurists at a three-day conference called Global Future 2045 in Moscow. Itskov now has plans to involve more scientists in the initiative.
“I want to collaborate with scientists from around the world,” he said. “This is a new strategy for the future; for humanity.”
The project will develop in different stages. The first phase will involve creating the new body for the human being to inhabit.
“It will have a perfect brain-machine interface to allow control and a human brain life support system so the brain can survive outside the body.”
After the first phase, Itskov anticipates transplanting a human mind into the robot body. And within the next 30 years Itskov plans to create hologram-type bodies that can host human consciousness.
“Holograms give plenty of advantages. You can walk through walls, move at the speed of light,” he said. “Remember in “Star Wars”, Obi-Wan’s hologram? That was pretty amazing.”
Itskov acknowledges that the project is audacious and certainly not easy but he dismisses the notion that it might not even be scientifically feasible.
“I understand these are some very big challenges for scientists,” Itskov admits. “But I believe in something you call ‘The American Dream.’ If you put all your energy and time into something, you can make it a reality.”
Regardless of what they try and achieve will the new form be able to retain humanity such as feelings, morals and compassion etc? If we do not then I suggest we will simply become monotonous machines?
It really does remind me of the Terminator film……