Dmitry Itskov Wants To Help You Live Forever Via an Android Avatar

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Dmitry Itskov Wants To Help You Live Forever Via an Android Avatar

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 12, 2013 @04:32PM from the brand-new-body dept.

trendspotter writes in with the latest news about the 2045 Project. "If Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov has his way, the human lifespan will soon no longer depend on the limitations of the human body. Itskov, a Russian tycoon and former media mogul, is the founder of the 2045 Project — a venture that seeks to replace flesh-and-blood bodies with robotic avatars, each one uploaded with the contents of a human brain. The goal: to extend human lives by hundreds or thousands of years, if not indefinitely."

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I agree with Lewis Black by AbsoluteXyro · 2013-06-12 16:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Death is not a bug, it's a feature. It's the only way we get rid of old assholes.
1. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-12 16:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  And also the young ones. Being an asshole has nothing to do with age!
2. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-06-12 17:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Death is not a bug, it's a feature. It's the only way we get rid of old assholes.
  Hypothetically, if we were implementing immortality-by-simulation, couldn't we resort to Instance dungeons? No reason why all the avatars have to coexist in one self-consistent reality, when we could instead fork the annoying ones off into an eternal 'The Good Old Days' where they can live out their crabbed fantasies in fuzzy black and white forever...
  (Of course, if somebody's reality is dependent on simulation, and the requirement of self-consistency across all the simulants is dropped, you could could also theoretically cut the priority of everyone within a given instance, and run the in-sim passage of time at less than real time. As long as they don't have access to external timebases, they shouldn't even be able to tell.
3. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-12 17:14 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  What would that mean and is there any reason why both goals are mutually exclusive? Certainly not every great rocket scientist would be great at psychology or ethics. The good thing about living forever is that you have a lot more time to fix the problems.
  I just hate this "we aren't worthy" atitude. We sure haven't done everything right. Far from. But life has only become more peaceful and in general a lot has improved. Many deaths in the stone age were actually from tribal wars. We no longer solve our problems through violence as often as we used to do. It has however become much more public. We will hopefully continue to improve.
4. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by Cryacin · 2013-06-12 17:35 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The matrix is just part of a bigger matrix.
  
  --
  Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
5. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by TemperedAlchemist · 2013-06-12 18:27 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  In a somewhat inspirational essay This is Water, David Foster Wallace deconstructs this kind of thinking into what it really is: a limited and narrow worldview where only you are the focus and others are "in your way".
  Humorously, xkcd points out that everyone else tends to think the exact same thing. That they're the brilliant, smart one and everyone else is a stupid and mindless automaton. It can only stem from a complete lack of empathy. Perhaps that driver who is going ten mph below the speed limit has general anxiety disorder and is only trying to get to work to the best of his ability.
  Everyone else is stupid and you're the brilliant one... Except you're not.
  Sir Ken Robinson lays out a pretty convincing reason why. Or I can simply fall back on an old Einstein quote about judging fish climbing trees.
6. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by Hognoxious · 2013-06-12 19:32 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You verbed stylish!?!?
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
7. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-12 19:48 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You're next granddad.
8. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2013-06-12 20:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  According to who? Will you be the judge of this worthiness? Have you figured out objective good and bad then? Marvellous.
  I'm really growing weary of smug misanthropic assholes who quite comfortably apply negative attributes to billions of unique individuals to either excuse their own shortcomings or justify a vague sense of superiority. You know who's "worthy" to explore the universe and live forever? People who explore the universe and live forever.
9. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by stenvar · 2013-06-12 20:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  what fairytale are you living in? humanity is just as bad as it always has been.
  What fairytale are you living in? Humanity has become much less violent, much more intelligent, and much more productive over the last few centuries.
  
  developing genetic technology to eliminate negative human psychological traits (such as the seven sins) will create a much more cooperative and productive society to achieve goals like space exploration much more efficiently
  What you call "the seven sins" has important biological and social functions. And competition and self-interest are as important as cooperation for progress. The kind of people you are trying to design would be less efficient than what we currently have.
  
  but that also introduces the possibility that we aren't really fit at all if we are stupid enough to engineer ourselves with unintended consequences that ultimately lead to our premature extinction.
  Indeed. And you just gave a splendid example of that, because the way you think of human evolution and enhancement is like the old eugenicists.
10. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by stenvar · 2013-06-12 20:59 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  couldn't we resort to Instance dungeons [wikipedia.org]? No reason why all the avatars have to coexist in one self-consistent reality
  Where do you think you are?
11. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by ultranova · 2013-06-12 22:56 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Personally, I think that being happy about your own mortality is the most triumphant example of Stockholm Syndrome.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
12. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by dcw3 · 2013-06-12 23:51 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  When you're an old asshole, you'll learn to understand why we all get that way. At 54, there are physically a lot of things I just can't do nearly as well as only a few years ago. Most of us end up in some sort of chronic pain...knee and shoulder for me. We're pissed off that the inevitable end is nearing. And, we have to put up with young assholes, who think they know everything, when they've had very little life experience.
  Now, get the fuck off my lawn.
  
  --
  Just another day in Paradise
13. Re:I agree with Lewis Black by AgentSmith · 2013-06-13 00:21 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The matrix is just part of a bigger matrix.
  Hey! You are not authorized to know that!
  [talks in wrist microphone]
  Spawn another agent to take care of this.
Ok, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-12 16:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

Unless you can transfer your consciousness you're still going to be dead.
1. Re:Ok, but... by bondiblueos9 · 2013-06-12 16:47 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Perhaps your consciousness could be transferred into an electronic brain the same way it was transferred from your brain several years ago to your current brain: cell by cell. If you could design an electronic brain that was identical to a biological brain and could replace it piece by piece and continue to function in the same way, then presumably you would never notice the transition.
  
  --
  Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined that Sigs are Dangerous to Your Health
2. Re:Ok, but... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-06-12 16:49 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Unless you can transfer your consciousness you're still going to be dead.
  Spending your waning years of weakness, decay, and degradation, plagued by the constant cruel mockery of your ageless immortal doppelganger is just a fun extra feature!
3. Re:Ok, but... by Black+Parrot · 2013-06-12 17:01 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Perhaps your consciousness could be transferred into an electronic brain the same way it was transferred from your brain several years ago to your current brain: cell by cell.
  FYI, brains don't progressively replace themselves like some organs do. You have almost all the neurons you'll ever have when you're born. There was a story here a few days ago about the discovery of a small region of the hippocampus that does generate new cells, unlike most of the rest of the brain.
  Your post also brings up another interesting thought, a question raised by ancient philosophers. Suppose Jason comes home on the Argo and props it up on blocks to keep for a souvenir. As the years go by, whenever a plank rots he replaces it with a new one. Does it stop being the Argo at some point?
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Copies are not you! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-06-12 16:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

Another idiot that doesn't realize the difference between a copy and themself.
1. Re:Copies are not you! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-06-12 16:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Another idiot that doesn't realize the difference between a copy and themself.
  What if you implemented the copy by gradual replacement?
2. Re:Copies are not you! by Bremic · 2013-06-12 17:28 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  More than this, if you copy yourself to a different vessel, your memories get copied. This will include the movies and television you have seen and the music you have listened to.
  Copying of movies, television and music in any format is big bad evil according to the wonderful US legislators who take lots of money from record companies and movie studios - so backing yourself up is a copyright violation.
  This will be important to remember when the uber wealthy (probably the executives of the same record companies and movie studios) back themselves up. Because then we charge them with illegal copyright violations and get them to vacate their new bodies. Of course by then they will give each other free distribution rights and use it as a hammer to stop the "irrelevant plebs" from ever being able to save themselves.
3. Re:Copies are not you! by Dexter+Herbivore · 2013-06-12 19:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Another idiot that doesn't realize the difference between a copy and themself.
  Define "self".
4. Re:Copies are not you! by dinfinity · 2013-06-12 20:49 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  This is the only truly insightful comment in this thread.
  Everybody is so hung up on the pervasive illusion of a spatiotemporally continuous consciousness that they forget that nothing on any reasonable macro level even exists without a definition.
  For some definitions of 'you', you didn't exist a minute ago. For others, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that there are multiple instances of 'you'. It just happens that those definitions are not as useful to work with in daily life. It is more effective for an organism to have any instance of consciousness feel responsible for the next one that may arise in it and the ones that previously arose in it. We can't prove that our current consciousness is 'the same' as it was yesterday. We can only define that it is.
  Which leads to the only reasonable conclusion: You define whether 'you' die in copy/teleportation thought experiments.
Any guesses? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-06-12 17:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

How long before existing ransomware is adapted to these bold robotic avatars, and the infected get the exciting opportunity to not have the sensation of full-body chemical burns replayed on loop in exchange for a modest and reasonable payment by Western Union?
Transporters by Black+Parrot · 2013-06-12 17:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

ISTM that Star Trek transporters are a type of 3D scanner/printer. But somehow they have to get your hundred-trillion synapses to connect the right cells, and at the right connection strength. Possibly even the current neural firing patterns, since when you get 'printed' you immediately have all your facilities and remember what you were up to when you got into the transporter.
I don't think that's ever going to be possible. But if it was, would the end result still be you, or just an artificial twin?
If transporter technology was feasible, they should be able to keep the original and print the copy using the contents of the refrigerator. I suppose that, like forking a process, it wouldn't be easy for the participants to tell who is the original and who is the copy, but I wouldn't expect them to share a common consciousness.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:22 posts... by Black+Parrot · 2013-06-12 17:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

...and not one question about how long it would take the NSA to get a court order allowing them to copy your memories from whatever system you have them coppied to?
Apparently they don't need to get a court order anymore. (Some people are saying that *that* is the real scandal.)

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:Android avatar, really? by cripkd · 2013-06-12 18:59 · Score: 3, Funny

Especially with today's smartphone battery life.

--
Curiously yours, crip.
Re:Hmmm... by wonkey_monkey · 2013-06-12 19:18 · Score: 4, Funny

That's pretty derp for Slashdot.
FTFY.

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Re:Hmmm... by SuperGus · 2013-06-12 20:08 · Score: 3, Funny

Onsciousnesscay isway alreadyway immortalway. Eway areway ethay universeway itselfway, elievingbay otherwiseway isway elievingbay inway ethay illusionway ofway eparatenesssay.
Re:thats the idea.. by lxs · 2013-06-12 21:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

Despite Dan Dennett handwaving the whole matter and declaring that consciousness in an illusion (but fails to define who or what is falling for that illusion), nobody has the faintest clue what consciousness is, which makes it more than an engineering problem.
Re:thats the idea.. by The+Cat · 2013-06-13 00:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

There's nothing more entertaining than a random collection of chemicals that, according to itself, crawled out of the muck 5 minutes ago in cosmic terms and is now going to lecture the universe on how things are.
You don't know dick. In cosmic terms, the human race is a toddler that has just now learned the lights go on when the switch is up, and off when the switch is down. Our "engineers" are the toddler that flips the light on and off repeatedly while making a noise like "huhuHUHUHuHuHuHUUhuUHUHUhuuH"
Any scientific pronouncements uttered by humanity are chuckled at by the cosmos and the various advanced beings in it the same way adults chuckle at a toddler who marches around the house wearing a pasta strainer on their head.
The human race can't even feed itself and wipe its own ass yet. Get the fuck over yourself.