The idea of digitally downloading human consciousness into a computer, which will allow people to exist without a physical body, is very popular with futurists, neuroscientists, and those who want to live forever.
The search for immortality was already in the spotlight earlier this month, thanks in no small part to Google's new, far-reaching Calico project that aims to focus on studying the aging process - and how to stop it.
Larry Page is just one of the many powerful and wealthy people who have poured millions of dollars into immortality research lately.
But while Calico aims to slow down our physical decline, many futurists believe that the key to prolonging human life is not in the body, but in the brain.
Such masters of thought in the field of cybernetics gathered this summer in New York for the Global International Congress "Future 2045", organized by the Russian multimillionaire Dmitry Itskov.
Itskov attracted the attention of all the newspapers in the world with the statement that he intends to provide humanity with a digital download of consciousness into robotic avatars by 2045.
One of the most famous futurists and transhumanists in the world, Ray Kurzweil, expressed his opinion at the congress that we can learn how to download a whole human consciousness into a computer within the next forty years. “Based on conservative calculations of the amount of computation required to functionally simulate the human brain, we can multiply our intelligence a million times,” Kurzweil said at the conference.
Indeed, the continuing advances in cybernetics make one think that it is in mind transference that the key to the immortality of the human race lies. Huge supercomputers are learning to better simulate the human brain. Artificial intelligence experts are developing ever smarter machines that can reason, think, and learn by mimicking the workings of the cerebral cortex. And in addition, human-machine interfaces - that is, in fact, computers that can read your mind - are evolving at a rapid pace.
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However, it should be emphasized that the concept of digital preservation of the human mind is based on what is theoretically possible, and not on an accurate turn-based map.
One of the main gaps in theory (and there are quite a few of them) is more philosophical than scientific: can consciousness survive its digital migration, while maintaining its integrity? And what will become of your soul, or what makes you exactly you, and what goes beyond the sum of the biological building blocks of your being? And can emotions be loaded into a computer? And if not, is such digital immortality worth its price?