32-year-old American entrepreneur and high-tech specialist Sam Altman paid 10 thousand dollars for scientists to mortify the body and remove its brain. The fact is that the unusual startup "Nectome" promises to save the brains of its customers in order to subsequently load them into supercomputers. Thus, the consciousness of Altman and other volunteers can, in theory, exist indefinitely. Of course, no one is planning to kill the billionaire yet, but in the foreseeable future he is really ready to say goodbye to his mortal shell in order to achieve digital immortality of the mind.
Nectome officials say their method is 100% fatal, but chances are that the human brain will be digitized and loaded into a powerful computer. When technology will reach this level, it is difficult to say, but Sam himself is convinced that this will happen during his lifetime. This approach resembles cryogenic freezing, when the human brain is cooled to extremely low temperatures in the hope that someday advanced technologies will allow it to be brought back to life and transplanted into a donor body. Altman longs to have his mind placed in a kind of "digital cloud" where he can develop exponentially.
A new "fashion" in search of immortality?
The American wealthy is not the only one who desires such immortality. 24 other individuals also paid the scientists a pretty big sum for the service. It is assumed that the heads of each of these "lucky ones" will be cut open while they are still alive, and their brains will be extracted, then connected to a complex electronic system. So far this is pure fantasy, but Nectome employees assure their clients that such technologies will become a reality relatively soon. The startup has already received federal funding, that is, real money from American taxpayers was allocated for such a dubious undertaking. And some naive ordinary people and even politicians assert that in the West, officials do not "cut" the budget …
One way or another, experts from Nectome, who received an impressive grant from the authorities, have already figured out the ethical side of this issue. The fact is that suicide with medical help is legal in 5 American states, and it is under this sauce that a hypothetical procedure for transplanting consciousness into a computer will be presented. The company is assisted by the eminent neuroscientist and bioengineer Edward Boyden, who managed to preserve the pig's brain so well that every neuron and synapse can be examined in it under a powerful microscope. Boyden is confident that the central section of the human nervous system can also be preserved until better times (at least), when technological innovations will give digital immortality to the mind that it contains.