Immortality by 2045

A Russian research project aims to bring immortality to humans by the year 2045, and a team of 30 scientists are working on the project called Avatar with hopes to transplant brains into robot bodies.
”This project is leading to immortality,” says Dmitry Itskov, the Russian entrepreneur who heads the hi-tech ‘Avatar research project.
“You have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it’s not a sciencefiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime,” Itskov told Forbes magazine.
He has contacted a list of billionaires with a proposal for funding his quest for immortality – which Itskov refers to as “cybernetic immortality” and the “artificial body.”
The initiative is opening its San Francisco office this summer, and will be launching a social media project connecting scientists around the world.
“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,” Itskov stated. “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.”
Itskov envisages surgically ‘transplanting’ a human consciousness into a robot body within 10 years.
He hopes to then ‘upload’ minds without surgery, leaving human bodies as empty husks as their owners ‘live on’ inside robots.
The project is called Avatar after the James Cameron movie, set far in the future, where human soldiers use mind control to inhabit the bodies of human alien hybrids as they carry out a war against the inhabitants of distant world.

What's the Latest Development?

Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov is courting the world's richest individuals to help him in conquering death. Itskov, a 33 year-old, can afford to wait but the billionaires he approaches have an average age of 66, meaning they may be looking for shorter-term solutions to living longer—much longer. "Itskov expects the first fruits in about a dozen years, when a human brain is to be transplanted into a robot body. The resulting 'avatar,' as he calls it, will 'save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged.'" Called the 2045 Initiative, it recently held a meeting in Moscow and opened office space in San Francisco.

What's the Big Idea?

Preserving the brain and placing it in a host container, so that the spark of consciousness could outlive the body's organ failure, may be "just a way station to Nirvana, which would ultimately involve downloading the brain’s contents into a computer." The concept of melding man and machine, and thereby preserving consciousness past physical death is known as the Singularity. "A brand new body can get crushed by a 500-pound anvil that may fall on it, as anvils are wont to do. Once it’s downloaded into a computer, your mind is safe from anvils, pandemics, and even planet-destroying asteroids (as soon as its mirrored onto interplanetary networks)."

2045 Initiative's Vision for Further Development of Humankind

The world is on the verge of global change. The rate of globally significant events, and that of discoveries and crises, is growing exponentially. We are facing the choice: To fall into a new Dark Age -- into affliction and degradation – or to find a new model for human development and create not simply a new civilization, but a new mankind.


Sources:
http://bigthink.com
http://2045.com
http://www.newsoxy.com