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Meet the Russian Man Who Would Build Your Avatar
Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov says he wants to push the boundaries of human evolution, and living hundreds of years longer is just for starters. Itskov’s 2045 Initiative is launching its second Global Future 2045 International Congress in June in New York with a who’s-who of futurists and academics tasked with expanding our consciousness into non-biological forms.
Thirty-two-year-old Dmitry Itskov made a dot-com fortune in Russia, founding what eventually became the online media company New Media Stars. And now that's he's part of the one percent, he aims to give back to humanity in a big way. In 2011, he announced his 2045 Initiative for taking humanity to the next evolutionary level. The Initiative's goals include extending the human life span, augmenting our native intelligence, and extending our minds into machines.
In a conference call with reporters today, Itskov outlined those plans for advancing humanity's physical, mental, and spiritual evolution and previewed the upcoming Global Future 2045 International Congress, set to take place at New York's Lincoln Center June 15 and 16. Itskov says that the major focus of his organization is to develop the technologies for extending human consciousness into robotic avatars, the kind familiar to fans of sci-fi movies like Surrogates and James Cameron's epic Avatar.
"By the date of 2045," Itskov says, "the artificial body will be superior to the biological body in terms of its abilities. You will look and feel and act like a human." He anticipates people coming to prefer using the avatars to staying in their own bodies. "Eventually I think everybody will realize that it's better to continue living in an artificial body than to die in the biological one, when the original biological body is exhausted."
The next order of business for the 2045 Initiative: establish a research center for advancing the work of figuring out what exactly consciousness is, and how it could be transferred into a robot. "I actually sent a proposal with the structure for such a research center to the Russian government," Itskov says. "But my ideal vision is to have an international collaboration." Ultimately he envisions a friendly international competition between centers not only in Russia, but also in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, Brazil, and elsewhere.
Why put all this energy into pushing beyond humanity's limitations? Itskov says that, along the way to becoming a business success, he began to question the meaning of his own life and that of those around him. "I wanted to understand—what is consciousness and what is the potential of its development?" he says. Itskov says that asking these questions led him to want to "do something important for humanity, to help keep people from physical and psychological and suffering, to overcome their limitations." That led him into his own investigations into life-extension technologies, and eventually to the avatar project.
When we asked how much he planned to kick into the effort himself, Itskov declined say, or even to reveal how much he personally is worth. "It's interesting that I was called billionaire in the media," he says, "and actually I have never told the media anything like that." He called that characterization an exaggeration, but said that after founding two successful businesses he has enough money to fund the 2045 organization along with several research projects. "I will be announcing some startups in this field during the congress," he said.
The lineup of speakers at the Global Future 2045 International Congress reads like a who's who in anthropomorphic robotics researchers and big thinkers about consciousness. These include Ray Kurzweil, prophet of the "singularity," in which humans will merge inseparably with our machines; MIT artificial intelligence scientist Marvin Minsky; quantum physicist Sir Roger Penrose; University of Southern California neuroprosthetics researcher Theodore Berger; and roboticists Hiroshi Ishiguro and David Hanson. An assortment of religious leaders and philosophers will attend Itskov's meeting, too.
"We have to move to a higher stage of development through scientific revolution and through significant spiritual changes," Itskov says. "Natural selection doesn't work nowadays because of the development of medicine and technology."
Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/prosthetics/meet-the-russian-man-who-would-build-your-avatar-15218398
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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