[Spartacus]

[SIZE=14px]If Dmitry Itskov's [/SIZE][SIZE=14px]2045 initiative[/SIZE][SIZE=14px]plays out as planned, humans will have the option of living forever with the help of machines in only 33 years.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]It may sound ridiculous, but the 31-year-old Russian mogul is dead serious about neuroscience, android robotics, and cybernetic immortality. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]He has already pulled together a team of leading Russian scientists intent on creating fully functional holographic human avatars that house artificial brains which contain a person's complete consciousness - in other words, a humanoid robot. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]Together, they've laid out an [/SIZE][SIZE=14px]ambitious course of action[/SIZE][SIZE=14px] that would see the team transplant a human brain into an artificial body (or 'avatar') in as little as seven years time.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]Now, Itskov is asking the world's richest people for help in financing the project. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]In exchange, he's offered to coordinate their own personal immortality projects for free.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]"I urge you to take note of the vital importance of funding scientific development in the field of cybernetic immortality and the artificial body," he [/SIZE][SIZE=14px]writes in an open letter[/SIZE][SIZE=14px] to members of the Forbes World's Billionaires List. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]"Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death."[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]Itskov goes on to offer skeptics a meeting with "a team of the world's leading scientists working in this field " to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]And while many are skeptical that such a plan could ever come to fruition, Popular [/SIZE]
[SIZE=14px]Science Magazine points that phase one -- creating a robot controlled by a human brain -- is already well within reach. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]"DARPA is already working on it via a program called "Avatar" (which, incidentally, is also the name of Itskov's project) through which the Pentagon hopes to create a brain-machine interface that will allow soldiers to control bipedal human surrogate machines remotely with their minds," writes PopSci's Clay Dillow.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]"And of course there are all the ongoing medical prosthesis projects that have shown that the human nervous system can interface with prosthetic enhancements, manipulating them via thought. Itskov draws a clear arc from what we have now to the consciousness-containing holograms that he envisions. All we have to do is attack the technological obstacles in between, one at a time, until we get there."[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]Discovery's Alyssa Danigelis takes an opposing stance to the very idea.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]"There's a world of difference between pursuing a brain-controlled exoskeleton to help paraplegics regain control and wanting to essentially upload a human brain into an artificial body," [/SIZE][SIZE=14px]she writes[/SIZE][SIZE=14px]. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14px]"I read a sci-fi novel involving disembodied live brains once. It didn't turn out well"[/SIZE]

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