The 2045 Initiative is bringing together the world’s leading scientists in its bid to attain a means to cybernetic immortality by 2045. Now it’s reaching out to Forbes’ billionaires for funding, promising them their own personal immortality care package in return. That means you need to keep yourself alive for 33 more years, so no more parasailing off your speedboat clutching a bottle of bubbly.
The 2045 Initiative seeks to transplant individual human consciousness and memory into an artificial human body, reminiscent of the androids in Surrogates. They call it Avatar: The image above shows their milestones, and this is their roadmap. So, we know they’re being perfectly serious here.
Founder Dmitry Itskov addressed an open letter to the “Honorable Members of Forbes World’s Billionaires List,” saying:
Currently you invest in business projects that will bring you yet another billion. You also have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it’s not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime.
For anyone interested, but skeptical, I am ready to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality by arranging an expert discussion with a team of the world’s leading scientist working in this field.
I will also be willing to coordinate your personal immortality project entirely free of charge for the sake of speeding up the development of these technologies.
Obviously they have no use for inferiorly financed people throwing spare change at them. How do I know? They don’t have a Kickstarter, which is how most projects are funded these days. But seriously, why don’t they have a Kickstarter? A lot of people are going to be all
A lot of people are also going to be skeptical, and skeptical people ask a lot of questions. Questions which I think do not yet have answers. So maybe they just want a few very rich people to explain their (currently) ambitious pseudoscience to, instead of a mob of easily-angered pseudochildren demanding T-shirts before they even listen to anything.
Then again, why would you give them your money? It’s 33 years down the road, and who knows if you want to be immortal by then? Maybe by 2045, you’d have found love, and you don’t believe in life after.
Maybe it’ll take way longer.
Relevant xkcd image:
In all honesty though, we keep telling ourselves it’s crazy-talk, but we know we kinda want them to make it happen. So best of luck with them billionaires, bro.
(via Reddit)
