News

Sport

Weather

Shop

Earth

Travel

ADVERTISEME

Magazine

The immortalist: Uploading the mind to a computer

14 March 2016

Magazine

While many tech moguls dream of changing the way we live with new smart devices
or social media apps, one Russian internet millionaire is trying to change nothing
less than our destiny, by making it possible to upload a human brain to a computer,
reports Tristan Quinn.
"Within the next 30 years," promises Dmitry Itskov, "I am going to make sure that we can
all live forever."

It sounds preposterous, but there is no doubting the seriousness of this softly spoken 35year-old, who says he left the business world to devote himself to something more useful
to humanity. "I'm 100% confident it will happen. Otherwise I wouldn't have started it," he
says.
It is a breathtaking ambition, but could it actually be done? Itskov doesn't have too much
time to find out.
"If there is no immortality technology, I'll be dead in the next 35 years," he laments. Death
is inevitable - currently at least - because as we get older the cells that make up our
bodies lose their ability to repair themselves, making us vulnerable to cardiovascular
disease and other age-related conditions that kill about two-thirds of us.
ADVERTISEMENT

So Itskov is putting a slice of his fortune in to a bold plan he has devised to bypass ageing.
He wants to use cutting-edge science to unlock the secrets of the human brain and then
upload an individual's mind to a computer, freeing them from the biological constraints of
the body.
"The ultimate goal of my plan is to transfer someone's personality into a completely new
body," he says.
Itskov's interest in making the impossible possible began as a child in the Soviet Union in
the 1980s. "My biggest dream was to be a cosmonaut, to fly in to outer space," he says.
One science fiction novel made a lasting impression: "The hero took some immortality pill
and he ended up flying the orbit of Earth. I remember myself questioning what I was going
to do if I'm immortal."
But does his plan to allow us all to upload our minds to computers amount to anything
more than sci-fi? The scientific director of Itskov's 2045 Initiative, Dr Randal Koene - a
neuroscientist who worked as a research professor at Boston University's Center for
Memory and Brain - laughs off any suggestion Itskov might have lost touch with reality.

"All of the evidence seems to say in theory it's possible - it's extremely difficult, but it's
possible," he says. "So then you could say someone like that is visionary, but not mad
because that implies you're thinking of something that's just impossible, and that's not the
case."
The theoretical possibility Randal refers to is rooted in questions about how our brains
work that neuroscience has yet to answer. Our brains are made up of about 86 billion
neurons, connected cells that send information to each other by firing electrical charges
that propagate through this organ in our skulls like waves.
But exactly how the brain generates our mind is a mystery like no other in science,
according to the neurobiologist Prof Rafael Yuste of Columbia University. "The challenge
is precisely how to go from a physical substrate of cells that are connected inside this
organ, to our mental world, our thoughts, our memories, our feelings," he says.
Find out more

Horizon: The Immortalist, produced and directed by Tristan Quinn, will be shown on BBC
2 at 20:00 on Wednesday 16 March 2016 - viewers in the UK can catch up later on the
BBC iPlayer
To try to unlock its workings, many neuroscientists approach the brain as if it were a
computer. In this analogy the brain turns inputs, sensory data, into outputs, our behaviour,
through computations. This is where the theoretical argument for mind uploading starts. If
this process could be mapped, the brain could perhaps be copied in a computer, along
with the individual mind it gives rise to.
That's the view of Dr Ken Hayworth, a neuroscientist who maps slivers of mouse brain at
the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia by day, and by night grapples with the problem
of how to upload his mind. Ken believes mapping the connectome - the complex
connections of all the neurons in a brain - holds the key, because he believes it encodes
all the information that makes us who we are, though this is not proven. "In the same
sense that my computer is really just the ones and zeros on my hard drive, and I don't
care what happens as long as those ones and zeros make it to the next computer it should
be the same thing with me," he says, "I don't care if my connectome is implemented in this
physical body or a computer simulation controlling a robotic body."

But Ken is a realist. "We are pitifully far away from mapping a human connectome," he
acknowledges. "To put it in perspective, to image a whole fly brain it is going to take us
approximately one to two years. The idea of mapping a whole human brain with the
existing technology that we have today is simply impossible." And there's another
theoretical challenge. Even if we could create the wiring diagram of a human brain, mind
uploading would also most likely require reading the constant activity of all its neurons too.
Here Itskov might get some unexpected help, according to Yuste - who helped bring about
the world's biggest neuroscience research project, the Brain Initiative. As part of this $6bn
American programme aimed at solving the mysteries of brain disorders like Alzheimer's,
he is hoping to map the continual interaction of neurons - the patterns of firing - in the
brain over time, "We want to measure every spike from all the neurons at once
simultaneously. Many people said it's just impossible."
It is an approach that does not rely on mapping the connectome first. In research yet to be
published, Yuste has for the first time imaged over time the hypnotic electrical flashes that
make up the activity of nearly all the neurons - up to several thousand - in one of the
simplest nervous systems in evolution, a tiny invertebrate called a hydra. "It was very
exciting," he says. But "today we just cannot tell you what these patterns mean. So it's a
bit like listening in on a conversation in a foreign language that you don't understand."

Within 15 years Yuste hopes to map - and interpret - the activity of all the neurons in a
mouse cortex. But the ultimate aim is to read the activity of the human brain.
"If the brain were a digital computer, if you wanted to upload the mind you need to be able
to decipher it or download it first. So I think the Brain Initiative is a step that is necessary
for this uploading to happen."
But Itskov is far from home and dry. At Duke University, one leading neuroscientist argues
that the brain's dynamic complexity - from which the human condition emerges - cannot be
replicated. "You cannot code intuition; you cannot code aesthetic beauty; you cannot code
love or hate," says Dr Miguel Nicolelis, who is developing a mind-controlled exoskeleton
aimed at helping the paralysed walk. "There is no way you will ever see a human brain
reduced to a digital medium. It's simply impossible to reduce that complexity to the kind of
algorithmic process that you will have to have to do that."
Yuste is also very far from certain the brain works like a computer and could ever be
copied in a machine. But because neuroscience cannot yet explain how exactly the brain
gives rise to us and prove that mind uploading is impossible, he believes society should
start considering what the consequences might be if Itskov succeeded in his ambition.
"The pathway that leads with the new neural technologies to our understanding of the
brain is the same pathway that could lead, theoretically, to the possibility of mind
uploading," says Yuste. "Scientists that are involved in these methods have the
responsibility to think ahead."

Mind uploading would usher in a world fraught with risks.

"If you could replicate the mind and upload it into a different material, you can in principle
clone minds," says Yuste. "These are complicated issues because they deal with the core
of defining what is a person."
Itskov is more sanguine: "I will answer you to the question of ethics by the opinion which
was given to me by his holiness the Dalai Llama when I visited him in 2013. His point was
that you can do everything if your motivation is to help people."
But this assurance is not enough for Yuste, who sits on the Brain Initiative's ethics panel:
"I would put mind uploading in the list of the topics that should be very carefully discussed
and thought through."
Itskov is already planning his endless life. "For the next few centuries I envision having
multiple bodies, one somewhere in space, another hologram-like, my consciousness just
moving from one to another."
It is estimated that 107 billion people have died before us. As our understanding of the
brain advances in the decades ahead it will become clear whether Itskov is really the
momentous visionary he claims to be, or merely the latest dreamer of impossible dreams.
Tristan Quinn produced and directed Horizon: The Immortalist, which will be shown on
BBC 2 Wednesday at 20:00 on 16 March 2016 - viewers in the UK can catch up later on
the BBC iPlayer
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your
inbox.

Share this story Aboutsharing

In today's Magazine
Actor's Gang: How Tim Robbins has cut reoffending rates
14 March 2016

Magazine
Actor's Gang: How Tim Robbins has cut reoffending rates
14 March 2016

Magazine

The mothers who set up a radiation lab

13 March 2016

Magazine

Children of war
13 March 2016

Magazine

More Videos from the BBC

RecommendedbyOutbrain

What life is like rowing

across the Atlantic

Shock over adult film shot

in daytime in Sutton

Moscow nanny accused

of child beheading
appears in court

New drone technology

shown off at Llanbedr
airfield

How Kenya's 'gay love'

video ban backfired

The Putin parody going

viral in Eastern Europe

Elsewhere on BBC
RecommendedbyOutbrain

BBC News

BBC Future

US election 2016: Barack Obama says

'don't blame me for Donald Trump'

The surprising benefits of swearing

BBC News

BBC Travel

Claudia Lawrence: Men will not face

murder charges

A crazy sport created by isolation

BREAKING
President Putin orders Russian military to start withdrawing "main part" of forces
in Syria, saying goals achieved

BBC News

BBC Autos

Sex and money

Why navigation apps have a gender

issue

Top Stories

Putin orders most troops out of Syria

Turkey strikes PKK after Ankara bomb
Migrants break through Macedonia border

Features & Analysis

Tragic missive

Immortal mind

How a father's final letter exhumed Taiwan's

dark past

Could you upload your brain to a computer?

If the baby had cried

'A miracle'

How beach attack mother hid in the toilet as

gunmen roamed

How I met my mother - after 42 years

Women who excel

Actor's gang

From teenage mother to Olympic medallist

How Tim Robbins has cut prison reoffending

rates

Summing up

Wiki warrior

Why is maths education a huge political issue

in America?

Harassed scientist channels her rage online

'Made in Nigeria'
Could clothes factories revive Africa's biggest
economy?

Most Popular
Read

Watched

Top Gear 'will not show' Cenotaph film

Turkey strikes PKK after Ankara bomb

Mission heads for Mars on methane quest

UAE pilots killed in Yemen jet crash

Thai bank chemical accident kills eight

Trump rally violence sparks 'liar' row

The immortalist: Uploading the mind to a computer

Merkel suffers regional election setbacks

Deadly explosion hits central Ankara

Japanese region seeks ninja staff

10

From Around the Web

PromotedcontentbyOutbrain

Discover Who Are The Richest People On Earth, Number 2 Will

Amaze you!
Infowat

What A Million Dollars Can Buy You Around the World

Mansion Global by Dow

You Must See These Crazy Japanese Inventions

Buzzamin

Interview: JGC looking to land plant contracts in Iran this year

Nikkei Asian Review

6 unique types of vodka that will raise your spirits

From the Grapevine

Drone photographs incredible hobbit home on the Mediterranean

From the Grapevine

Ads by Google
Expat Living In Brazil?
50k-1m Savings? Free Review To Get You The Best Savings Rates!
expatsavingsreview.com

British Expat In Brazil?

Avoid Losing 55% Of 70k+ Pensions Download A Free Expat Pension Guide
your.expatpensionreview.com

Free TOEFL Practice Tests

Listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Learn your score now.
www.testden.com

BBC News Services

On your mobile

On your connected tv

Get news alerts

Contact BBC News

ExploretheBBC
News

Sport

Weather

Shop

Earth

Travel

Capital

Culture

Autos

Future

TV

Radio

CBBC

CBeebies

Food

iWonder

Bitesize

Music

Arts

MakeItDigital

Taster

Nature

Local

TermsofUse

AbouttheBBC

PrivacyPolicy

Cookies

AccessibilityHelp

ParentalGuidance

ContacttheBBC

Advertisewithus

Adchoices

Copyright2016BBC.TheBBCisnotresponsibleforthecontentofexternalsites.Readaboutourapproach
toexternallinking.