Digital immortality: How crazy is this idea?

Who are you, Mr. Itskov?

Dmitry Tselikov, Compulenta based on the materials of the New York Times: This Man Is Not a Cyborg. Yet.

Photo by Jim Wilson / The New York Times

Dmitry Itskov is quiet and a little shy. If you get him to talk, he is expansive, but retains excellent manners and never gets angry, no matter what you ask.

"Are you crazy?" – the correspondent of the New York Times is interested.

"I am often asked this question," the 32–year-old multimillionaire answers with a smile. "And I remember the statements of Arthur C. Clarke and Gandhi: when people have new ideas, they are called crazy, but when everyone starts believing in an idea, no one remembers that it once seemed strange."

It is very difficult to imagine a day when the idea of the former Internet magnate will no longer look far-fetched and impossible. His project 2045 Initiative provides for the mass production of inexpensive computer avatars that will have all the personality traits of a real person. We are talking about a full–fledged digital copy capable of conscious activity: the "contents" of the human brain are loaded onto non-biological media, providing individuals with hundreds and thousands of years of life - until the power is turned off. "Immortality," Mr. Itskov calmly drops.

Yes, we've all seen it in the movies, and there it always somehow led to the rise of evil robots and the transformation of the Earth into smoldering ruins. It is quite possible that Mr. Itskov's plans are no less fantastic than similar films.

But he managed to attract the attention and support of august figures from Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Berkeley, etc., that is, leading scientists in such fields as molecular genetics, neuroprosthetics, etc. On the website 2045.com Sir Roger Penrose from Oxford talks about the quantum nature of consciousness, and George Church from Harvard talks about the possibility of increasing the healthy life span of the brain.

About 30 speakers representing these disciplines and scientific fields, the existence of which you do not suspect, will ascend to the podium of the second annual event 2045 Global Future Congress, which will be held on June 15-16 in Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center in Manhattan. This is called a congress, but it looks more like an exhibition-conference for those who want to buy a ticket for $ 750 (about 400 pieces have been sold so far – about half).

Probably, the favor of scientists to the initiative of Mr. Itskov is due not only to big money, but also to the interest in the issue of the merger of man and machine, which is now gradually seizing the most serious people. For example, futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, now the technical director of Google Corporation, in the book "The Singularity is already Close" (2005) predicted that, since technology is developing exponentially, human life will sooner or later be irreversibly transformed, and there will be no difference between man and machine, physical and virtual reality.

You will not be mistaken if you assume that this is not just a fantasy of one individual madman, but a reflection of conversations in scientific and intellectual circles. And indeed – take a look at what happened eight years after the publication of this book: IBM Corporation's Watson supercomputer defeated human opponents in the Jeopardy TV quiz (an analogue of "Its Game"), a technology for tracking the emotional state of a video game player by heartbeat (the new Kinect) has been developed, people with disabilities are learning to control robotic equipment by the power of thought.

But in most cases it is a favor – and that's all. On the way to the goal proposed by Mr. Itskov, many useful discoveries can be made, but the idea of loading our minds into cyberspace does not seem very real to scientists. "Maybe" is the most optimistic assessment of this proposal. "I have a rule: I don't use the word "impossible" unless something is forbidden by the laws of physics," Mr. Church notes, "but there are a lot of incoherences in his plan. It won't be able to serve as a good roadmap."

However, there are also such as Martina Rotblatt, the founder of the biotech company United Therapeutics. She believes that Mr. Itskov's idea sounds no more wild today than it did more than fifty years ago - the promise of liver and kidney transplants. It also seemed crazy at the time. And remember the dreams of computers and the Internet...

According to Mr. Itskov himself, avatars will allow you to build a new, wonderful world in which there will be no hunger (food is not needed in virtual reality) and diseases. Mr. Itskov dreams (yes, he is a dreamer) of an era of high spirituality, when people will get rid of everyday worries and will be able to devote eternal life to the knowledge of the brain, life, consciousness, the universe.

But these are his own thoughts, and no one really knows what will come out of the project. Mr. Itskov only plays the role of a producer, as in Hollywood: guarantees production, participates in the discussion of the script, provides advertising. By the end of the second congress, he will have spent $ 3 million out of his own pocket on the project, but for now he admits that he is ready to give more, although rumors about the size of his fortune are exaggerated.

The main item of expenditure is plane tickets. He travels all over the world, presenting himself as a scientist and scientists to each other. Here is his typical schedule for two weeks: an interview in New York, an attempt to enlist the support of famous yogis in India, home to Moscow, a meeting with scientists in Berkeley, Moscow again, a meeting with a potential investor in Shanghai...

The rest of the time he leads the life of an ascetic – sometimes he spends whole days in "meditations in a quiet Russian village." He is unmarried and childless and does not like when his personal life is discussed. The last thing he wants is to be seen as an eccentric weirdo.

He wears Borelli blazers and a rose gold Audemars Piguet watch. Both now seem to him an unnecessary luxury. Rubles spent not on the project, he considers as wasted. "Once I had a collection of watches, I almost gave them all away, and I don't buy anything like that anymore," he says.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Itskov visited the University of California at Berkeley, where he was told about a secret project related to the study of the brain, and Peter Ledohovich from Swarm Lab demonstrated a minimally invasive implant that can read a person's intentions from the surface of the brain. So far, experiments are being conducted on rats, but in the future, the development will allow paralyzed people to communicate and control a robot manipulator, a wheelchair and even a car.

Mr. Ledokhovich has no illusions that Mr. Itskov will suddenly invest money in his project. It's just a typical example of research being conducted in this area and desperately in need of sponsors. "I talked to venture capitalists," says the scientist. – They are spoiled by Silicon Valley, where six guys can promote a social network in six months. And we will be able to enter the market no earlier than 2021..."

Mr. Itskov is one of the very few who understands what the actual deadlines for such projects are, but he is also interested in immediate progress. During the tour of the laboratories at Berkeley, he said almost nothing, only asked: "When will it be done?"

Dmitry Itskov was born in Bryansk in the family of a musical theater director and a schoolteacher. At the Russian University of Economics named after He met his first business partner, Konstantin Rykov, who launched an online magazine in 1998. Fuck.ru , which became the cradle of the Russian network culture with its "boas", "themes" and "Mr. Parkers".

The following year, Mr. Itskov joined the project, and the duo set about creating a whole network of websites under the wing of Goodoo Media. Blogs, Internet tabloids, gaming resources were followed by a glossy magazine, a book publishing house and Internet television. So the media empire was born. Mr. Rykov stopped pretending to be a counterculturist and became a devoted friend of the Kremlin. The company, renamed New Media Stars, engaged in the promotion of "United Russia" and the creation of sites like ZaPutina.ru .

It was 2005. Mr. Itskov, who was responsible for business development, was beginning to realize that he was not interested in spending his life on increasing capital. As if on purpose, he was offered to sell part of the stake in the company at a very good price, and he realized that this money would last him for the rest of his life. Mr. Itskov (and he was only 25) suddenly regretted that he had not learned music, had not read such and such books - a typical midlife crisis. In search of the meaning of life, he went through all the religions of the world. And the more he got to know the world, the worse it became in his soul.

Mr. Itskov opens his laptop and launches a slide show: almost a billion people are starving, forty-nine countries are involved in military conflicts, 10% of people are disabled...

"This is the world we have created," he says. – This is what kind of world our way of thinking, our set of values, our selfishness, our aggression have created. Adults shouldn't behave like that. We are killing both the planet and ourselves."

Humanity needs to "evolve" (Mr. Itskov loves this word very much), but first it is necessary to develop a new understanding of what it means to be human. And to do this, we will have to make sure that people stop worrying about the issue of survival.

Such reasoning led him to the avatars. At first, they will be available only to super-rich people, but gradually the cost will decrease. And the charitable organizations that feed, clothe and treat the poor today will begin to create and distribute cheap artificial organs. And man will gradually turn into a machine.

At the congress at Lincoln Center, what Mr. Itskov calls the most complex mechanical head in history will be presented. David Hanson and his company Hanson Robotics from Texas have made a mask of Mr. Itskov, which is controlled by 36 motors – a world record. At the presentation, the millionaire will be sitting in another room in front of sensors that register his facial expressions and movements, and an artificial head will try to reproduce all this exactly.

Photo by Brandon Thibodeaux / The New York Times.)

"One of the biggest problems of humanity is that we do not plan our future," says Mr. Itskov. – Our leaders are fixated on stability. We don't have an idea that would unite humanity. We need a common strategy, and this strategy is already being developed by scientists."

People used to be afraid of the "technological Eden" after watching Hollywood movies like "Avatar" or "Surrogates". Therefore, Mr. Itskov needs the support of spiritual leaders. But not all of those religious figures who will attend the aforementioned congress will pat the enthusiast on the head. For example, Lazar Pukhalo, a former archbishop of the Orthodox Church in America, who studied physics and neuroscience at his leisure, notes that avatars can indeed become an inevitability in the future, and this future fills him with horror. "The creators of "other people" are not alien to fears and prejudices," he says. – These fears and prejudices will be reproduced by robots. What a horror!"

At the congress, Mr. Pukhalo is going to raise his voice in support of the person. In his opinion, our imperfections make us human. And the dispassion of immortal avatars, absorbed in questions of knowledge, frightens him.

Mr. Itskov promises that all this can be avoided – it is not necessary to live in cyberspace, you can make artificial bodies that will allow you to enjoy life in the same way as ordinary people do, and even have sex.

But these and other concerns pale before the most important questions. Is it possible to transfer consciousness to non-biological carriers? And even if it is possible – will it be my mind when the computer is turned on? Will a person want to live forever? How will his mind change if he exists for hundreds or thousands of years?

We don't know what consciousness is. Philosophy has made great strides in describing the work of consciousness, but from a physical point of view, absolutely nothing is known about consciousness. Is it possible to work with what we desperately don't understand?

Maybe the upcoming congress will help clarify the question at least a little: isn't Mr. Itskov a visionary? Is it worth taking it seriously?

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru04.06.2013