The Immortalist Horizon


The Immortalist

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In 2013,

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a Russian internet millionaire funded a conference in New York

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with an extraordinary aim -

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to see if a system could be created

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that would allow him to live for ever.

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If there is no immortality technology,

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I'll be dead in the next 35 years.

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Top neuroscientists,

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robot builders and researchers were invited.

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How long you live really does matter.

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How could you increase what we're able to do?

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-Konichiwa.

-Konichiwa.

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The ambition was to unlock the human brain,

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extract the mind

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and upload it to a computer.

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The ultimate goal of my plan

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is to transfer someone's personality

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into a completely new body.

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It is possible to preserve memory and personality,

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for thousands of years, in storage.

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Look at that cerebellum right there. Isn't that neat?

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Frozen in time.

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Meet the immortalist.

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My name is Dmitry Itskov.

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Within the next 30 years,

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I am going to make sure that we can all live for ever.

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It's too stupid.

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It simply cannot be done.

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A waste of time,

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a waste of money,

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and it's a waste of our humanity.

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As our ability to connect brains to technology grows,

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is it so crazy to think we could live for ever in machines?

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I am 100% confident it will happen...

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..otherwise I wouldn't have started it.

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Trying to make the impossible possible starts in the imagination.

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My biggest dream when I grew up was to be a cosmonaut -

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to fly into outer space

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and to explore new planets.

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That sort of dream has always been with me.

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There was an interesting book

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and the main hero took some immortality pill,

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and he ended up flying on the orbit of Earth.

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I remember myself questioning what I was going to do if I'm immortal.

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When he grew up, Dmitry Itskov became an internet mogul.

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He says he now spends part of his fortune

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trying to bring about immortality.

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Not everything can be disclosed at the moment but, yes,

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I have been funding this science with my own money.

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We are talking about millions of dollars.

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Dmitry is one of a growing number of the mega-rich

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who are funding their own scientific projects.

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He is fascinated by signs of a coming world.

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Osaka, Japan -

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where technology is changing what it is to be alive...

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and what it is to die.

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Where science fiction is being made real.

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The descending scientist

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is a builder of robots that look like us...

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..and a thinker of seemingly impossible thoughts.

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Prof Hiroshi Ishiguro went to Dmitry's conference in 2013.

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His ambition is to make his machines

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as human-like as possible.

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Hiroshi's latest creation eclipses all his others.

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This is Erica.

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Konichiwa!

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Konichiwa!

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TRANSLATION:

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Ishiguro.

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Erica is powered by artificial intelligence -

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a database of conversations,

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behaviours,

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even emotions.

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As Hiroshi improves Erica's autonomy,

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telling the machine and the human apart

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could become increasingly difficult.

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Hiroshi's newest machine

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is inspiring a dream

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of endless life of a kind.

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Death is to disappear from this world, right?

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Androids like Erica are changing what it might be to die.

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Erica is not based on any actual person

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but, in the future,

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Hiroshi could build android replicas of real people,

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powered by databases of real memories and behaviours.

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It's a vision of the future some may find unsettling,

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to see dead loved ones living on as robot replicas.

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Imagine a world where there are no graves to dig...

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..a world of mind-spinning possibility...

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..home to Dmitry Itskov.

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His ambition soars beyond

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leaving behind a robot copy of himself when he dies.

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The immortality of memories is useless for the individual.

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Real immortality is the extension of your journey in this life.

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All the rest is just useless

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for someone whose world is dying with him,

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and real immortality technology should create

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something to avoid this death.

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Is this just a fantasy of the super-rich?

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Because to try to defeat death is to challenge time itself.

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Our DNA goes through millions of damaging events per day.

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Our cells have the machinery to repair that damage

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and we have that machinery throughout life

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but unfortunately it gets a little less efficient as we age.

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Cardiovascular disease

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and other age-related conditions

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kill around two-thirds of us.

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Unfortunately, you know, ageing is an inevitable process.

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We would love to find some elixir,

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fountain of youth, that can prolong life for ever

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but that's just not how it works.

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You know, we're going to die at some point.

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The oldest person ever recorded died after 122 years.

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But Dmitry has a plan to bypass ageing.

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The problem now is that our biological body ages.

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That's why I decided to develop a completely new body,

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and that would extend the life almost endlessly.

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We have long been fascinated

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by building mechanical copies of ourselves.

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Half a century ago,

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it was even predicted we would one day merge

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with the machines we make.

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We may have a society in which robots will drift away

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from total metal toward the organic,

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and human beings will drift away from the total organic

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toward the metal and plastic,

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and that somewhere in the middle they may eventually meet.

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The first stage of Dmitry's grand plan

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echoes Asimov's prophecy.

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He wants to control a new robot body using just the power of his mind.

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How do we control our physical, biological body?

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We just think of doing an action.

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We just think of, let's say, moving an arm

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and it moves.

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So what is important is to create that sort of experience

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with the artificial body -

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that you just start perceiving that body as a natural one,

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in a way that the new body becomes a part of your personality.

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The power of our thoughts is already being harnessed

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using knowledge gleaned more than a century ago.

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Prof Rafael Yuste is one of the scientists

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behind a 6 billion project

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to try to map the entire activity of the human brain.

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My own personal dream

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is to understand how one thought is generated.

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Rafael is inspired by the Spanish pathologist Santiago Ramon Cajal,

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who discovered the basic building blocks of the brain

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in the late 1880s.

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Cajal in a way was a cartographer.

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He's the cartographer of the mind.

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By studying brain tissue, Cajal found that individual cells,

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neurons, were connected in circuits.

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So these are original drawings from Cajal.

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Neurons look like little trees, maybe,

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that have branches,

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which are the part of the brain

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that receives the input from other neurons.

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And then they have roots that send information to other neurons.

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The human brain is made up of around 86 billion neurons.

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These cells communicate information

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by sending electrical charges to each other.

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So just like little computers

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that use zeros and ones to transmit information,

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neurons fire these little sparks.

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So it's a system of interconnected cells,

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and you have to imagine them as flashes of light,

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which are actually voltages,

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that are propagating like waves through the brain.

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The way neurons fire is a complex interaction

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of biochemistry, anatomy and physiology.

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But scientists can now tap into these electrical signals

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and use the power of our thoughts in life-changing ways.

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At Rancho Los Amigos Hospital in Los Angeles,

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researchers are merging the human and the robot more than ever before.

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Meet Erik Sorto.

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Deep inside his brain are two arrays of electrodes.

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In the beginning, I was very conscious of them.

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Now I completely forget they're there

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until somebody reminds me, like, "What's that on your head?"

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I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's right.

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"I have two pedestals sticking out of my head."

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Erik's life changed when he was 21 and a member of a gang.

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I was lost.

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I was lost, confused, young and wild.

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On January 2nd 2002, I suffered a gunshot

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which left me paralysed from the shoulders down.

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Erik's spinal cord was severed,

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stopping the signals from his brain that control movement

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reaching his limbs.

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I'm a C3-C4 complete quadriplegic complete.

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To try to restore movement he has lost,

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Erik is part of a trial to merge his brain with a robot arm.

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-Hi, Spencer!

-Hey!

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A typical working day for Erik starts like this.

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Scientists from Caltech

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are connecting Erik's brain to computers

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which will decode what he is thinking.

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I think this is all good.

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Can you move your head?

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-Everything good?

-Yeah.

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Right, I think you are ready to go.

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All right.

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The team check they are recording the activity

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of a tiny number of individual neurons

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out of the 86 billion that make up his brain.

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Erik, I'll show you a couple of your units.

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So this is channel 64.

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64 is looking nice, huh?

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Looking very nice, actually. Has a nice high firing rate.

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What are you thinking about?

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Recording the firing of individual neurons is only possible

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because Erik agreed to take a risk others might not.

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The most challenging part was the brain surgery.

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You ask all the questions

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but you never know what can happen during surgery.

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We create a window in the skull by cutting out a window of bone.

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Surgeons implanted two arrays of 96 electrodes,

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about four millimetres long, into Erik's brain.

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The ability to record at the single cell level

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requires that we do these types of invasive procedures.

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The bone filters out quite a lot of the information.

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On a given day, the electrodes might pick up around 60 neurons.

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They are not always the same ones,

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probably because the arrays move slightly.

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So Erik has had to train hard

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to activate neurons to calibrate the computers.

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I have a neuron that, to make it fire,

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I have to envision my arm doing a windmill.

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I have a neuron that likes to punch

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so to get it firing, I pretend I'm jabbing.

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-All right, let's get to work.

-So, let's do some training.

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To control the robot arm,

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Erik must complete two mental tasks

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in response to colours appearing on the screen in front of him.

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Green is going to be, "Bring your hand to your mouth."

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And red will be subtracting,

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you're going to start at 100 and count down by six.

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As he thinks each thought,

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the computers record which neurons fire in his brain.

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The green thought will be used to start the robot,

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the red to stop it.

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This attempt to merge the human and machine

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relies on understanding how the brain controls movement.

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For three decades,

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Prof Richard Andersen has been investigating the workings

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of one particular region of the brain.

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So we're interested in the posterior parietal cortex.

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It's located about here,

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this is the back of Erik's head.

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We implanted an area around here.

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This area forms the intent or early plans to make movement.

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Say I want to punch a key on the computer,

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it codes that goal rather than the exact way to get there.

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The robotic system is crucial

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to the way this brain machine interface works.

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The idea is, if we can interpret the intent of the subject,

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that many of the fine details of the movement

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can then be done with a smart robot.

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Now Erik is ready to try to pick up a bottle of beer,

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using just his thoughts.

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-It's the big moment.

-Let's do it.

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-You ready?

-All right.

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OK, here we go.

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He thinks only of the goal of the movement -

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bring hand to mouth -

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and the robot arm works out the rest.

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There you go.

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First step done.

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When you go to reach for something,

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you don't walk it step by step.

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You just do it.

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Once the arm has grasped the bottle,

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Erik thinks, "Bring hand to mouth," again.

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But just as Erik is supposed to think his stop thought...

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And then can you switch over to the arithmetic, do the subtraction?

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..there's a problem,

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and the arm is stopped automatically.

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I think what's happened is that the neural activity has changed

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a little bit since we waited a few minutes to do the testing.

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The arithmetic changed a little bit.

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On other occasions,

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Erik has succeeded in drinking a bottle of beer using just his mind.

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All right!

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Have you finished that thing off? That's good.

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His progress in this extraordinary trial

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has extended what it is to be human.

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-Yeah!

-There you go.

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In the beginning it was my brain, my arm and the robotic arm.

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Now when I go in there, it's my brain and the arm.

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We are one, and it feels like my arm.

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I think the brain is...

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It's a part of us that is ready to use any tool available

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to keep on... to keep us moving forward

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and helping us live a better life.

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In Dmitry Itskov's imagination,

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the day will come when we all use our minds to control robots.

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It won't just be arms but entire bodies,

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the first step in his grand plan to achieve immortality.

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It now exists in this medical sphere

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but organically, naturally,

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the transition towards healthy people will be made...

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will be made soon.

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A healthy person could get an implant like this

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but then they'd be up against

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having to have a surgical procedure.

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So I think that seems to be much too high a hurdle.

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In the future, you can imagine, you know,

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many scenarios and interesting things

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but I think what we're doing now,

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it's purely a medical application.

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These scientific advances are fuelling grand dreams

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of changing humanity's destiny.

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But is it ever really going to be possible

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to replace our biological bodies with machines?

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If there is a way,

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the answer lies in understanding far more

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about how the human brain generates thoughts,

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because Dmitry's plan isn't just to connect a brain with a robot

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but to extract thoughts

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and implant them into a computer.

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The ultimate goal of my plan

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is to transfer someone's personality into the new artificial carrier.

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Different scientists call it uploading

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or they call it mind transfer.

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I prefer to call it the personality transfer.

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It's an ambition so audacious

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Dmitry Itskov has a team to advise him.

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His scientific director manages the details of this plan

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to escape the ravages of time.

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Dr Randal Koene makes it his business

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to stay across the work of key neuroscientists.

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I travel to their labs all the time.

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I keep up with the latest work,

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make sure that I know what's cutting edge,

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and try to figure out how things fit together well.

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He won't reveal which work they are funding

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or for how much.

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Like Dmitry, Randal's passion to free himself from time

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is a lifelong dream.

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As a teenager, you want to be many things.

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You want to be an astronaut but you want to be a mountain climber.

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You want to be a writer and you want to be a scientist and an engineer.

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There's too little time to do that

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so how long you live, that really does matter.

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Randal was formerly a research professor

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at Boston University's Center for Memory and Brain

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before leaving to pursue his fantastical vision

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of humanity's future.

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How could you increase what we're able to do?

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How could you experience things

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that right now only our machines can experience?

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We send robots to the planets

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because we can't really live in space.

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But imagine if we could!

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Randal draws on neuroscience

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which has predominantly approached the brain

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as if it worked like a computer.

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In this analogy,

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the brain turns inputs - sensory information -

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into outputs - our behaviour -

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through computations.

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That which is us - yourself, your awareness, your memories -

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all of that is expressed in terms of information.

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Now Randal makes a leap in the dark.

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Information can be copied, information can be archived.

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It can be extended.

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So if you can deal with it as information,

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then the sky's the limit.

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Randal has devised a road map

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for how to go about actually transferring a person's mind

0:27:310:27:34

to a machine.

0:27:340:27:36

I like to think of it as an area

0:27:380:27:40

that has four main types of problems.

0:27:400:27:44

What we need to understand is the structure of the brain.

0:27:440:27:48

But that's not enough.

0:27:480:27:50

So the other part of the problem is what we call function.

0:27:500:27:55

Something goes in and something comes out.

0:27:550:27:58

Then there's the question,

0:27:580:27:59

what do you do with all that structure and function data?

0:27:590:28:01

How do you express this as math, as models?

0:28:010:28:04

And finally,

0:28:040:28:06

you need something like a bunch of chips

0:28:060:28:10

or something else that is your implementation.

0:28:100:28:13

Those are the four parts of the road map.

0:28:130:28:15

The road map seems clear

0:28:170:28:21

but could we ever reach its destination?

0:28:210:28:24

Any plan to upload the mind

0:28:300:28:32

relies on understanding the deepest workings of the brain.

0:28:320:28:37

But cracking this extraordinary organ

0:28:370:28:40

is proving to be a challenge like no other in science.

0:28:400:28:45

The brain generates all of our behaviour

0:28:490:28:51

but also, it generates all of our mental world.

0:28:510:28:54

It generates our mind and now the challenge is precisely to...

0:28:540:28:57

how to go from a physical substrate of cells

0:28:570:29:01

that are connected and all together inside this organ,

0:29:010:29:05

to our mental world -

0:29:050:29:08

to our thoughts, to our memories, to our feelings.

0:29:080:29:12

How the neurons that make up the brain

0:29:130:29:16

give rise to every aspect of us

0:29:160:29:18

is a mystery that has endured since the days

0:29:180:29:22

of Santiago Ramon Cajal,

0:29:220:29:24

the founding father of neuroscience.

0:29:240:29:27

Actually, he has a beautiful quote here in Spanish

0:29:280:29:30

precisely about this topic.

0:29:300:29:32

TRANSLATION:

0:29:340:29:36

For all that has been learned

0:30:010:30:02

in the decades since those lines were written

0:30:020:30:05

about the complex anatomy and physiology of neural firing,

0:30:050:30:09

how our brains give rise to our consciousness remains opaque.

0:30:090:30:14

Right now, it's still mostly mysterious.

0:30:140:30:17

It's still... We are still in the times of Cajal, of talking,

0:30:170:30:20

thinking about these mysterious butterflies of the soul, no?

0:30:200:30:24

Given the mystery that shrouds the workings of the brain,

0:30:250:30:29

is Dmitry Itskov right to even dream of uploading his mind to a machine?

0:30:290:30:34

In all politeness, I mean, other people might say he's mad.

0:30:370:30:40

Yeah, I guess all of the evidence seems to say, well,

0:30:420:30:45

in theory, it's possible.

0:30:450:30:47

It's extremely difficult but it's possible.

0:30:470:30:49

So then you could say someone like that is ambitious, is visionary,

0:30:490:30:53

forward-thinking, maybe a little ahead of their time.

0:30:530:30:56

But not mad,

0:30:560:30:58

because being mad sort of implies that you're crazy,

0:30:580:31:02

that you're thinking of something that's just impossible,

0:31:020:31:05

and that's not the case.

0:31:050:31:06

So how far have the immortalists got?

0:31:150:31:18

One answer lies in the edge lands of Los Angeles.

0:31:210:31:24

On the border between the known and the unknown,

0:31:300:31:34

a neuroscientist who by day maps the structure of the brain

0:31:340:31:37

at a respected research institute

0:31:370:31:41

and by night works on uploading his mind to a computer.

0:31:410:31:45

I wouldn't have known how to play it safe even if I tried.

0:31:470:31:51

Dr Ken Hayworth has been fascinated by the potential of the brain

0:31:590:32:03

since childhood.

0:32:030:32:05

When I was a kid, I very much wanted to go into space.

0:32:080:32:12

How can I, myself, get to another star?

0:32:190:32:24

Is that possible?

0:32:240:32:25

This was in high school,

0:32:250:32:27

I was reading neural network books at the time.

0:32:270:32:29

And at some point, it dawned on me - we are just information.

0:32:290:32:34

We could be encoded as ones and zeros,

0:32:340:32:37

and we could transmit ourselves at the speed of light

0:32:370:32:41

to the nearest star.

0:32:410:32:42

Ken approaches the brain as if it were a computer,

0:32:480:32:51

the analogy used by many mainstream neuroscientists.

0:32:510:32:55

The brain is a beautifully put-together, complex

0:32:570:33:01

computational device that gives rise to not only intelligence

0:33:010:33:06

but consciousness and emotions,

0:33:060:33:08

and it is scrutable.

0:33:080:33:11

It is understandable.

0:33:110:33:13

Ken uses an electron microscope to image tiny pieces of mouse brain.

0:33:150:33:20

He is trying to map the connectome,

0:33:230:33:26

the complex connections of all the neurons.

0:33:260:33:29

He's convinced this wiring diagram,

0:33:310:33:34

if it could be made for our brains,

0:33:340:33:36

holds the key to uploading the mind.

0:33:360:33:39

The connectome in our brain

0:33:400:33:43

is encoding all of our memories that make us "us"

0:33:430:33:48

and so, in the same sense that my computer

0:33:480:33:52

is really just the ones and zeros on my hard drive,

0:33:520:33:55

and I don't care what happens

0:33:550:33:57

as long as those ones and zeros make it to the next computer,

0:33:570:34:01

it should be the same thing with me.

0:34:010:34:04

I don't care if my connectome is implemented in this physical body.

0:34:040:34:10

What I care is if that connectome is implemented in any physical body,

0:34:100:34:16

whether it be a human body

0:34:160:34:18

or a computer simulation controlling a robotic body.

0:34:180:34:21

Plotting out the connectome would be the first step in Randal's road map.

0:34:220:34:26

But it is a vast, perhaps even impossible, undertaking.

0:34:280:34:33

We are pitifully far away from mapping a human connectome.

0:34:340:34:37

Every single synapse in the brain,

0:34:420:34:44

all trillions and trillions of them...

0:34:440:34:47

To put it in perspective, in order to image a whole fly brain,

0:34:470:34:53

it is going to take us approximately one to two years.

0:34:530:34:58

The idea of mapping a whole human brain

0:34:590:35:03

with the existing technology that we have today

0:35:030:35:06

is simply impossible.

0:35:060:35:10

Even if the connectome could be traced,

0:35:110:35:13

Ken believes the second stage of the road map -

0:35:130:35:16

understanding what the brain does, its physiology -

0:35:160:35:20

would also be needed.

0:35:200:35:22

If we were somehow given a structural synaptic diagram today

0:35:230:35:28

of a whole human brain,

0:35:280:35:30

we wouldn't be able to do much with it

0:35:300:35:32

because we still have all of that additional electrophysiology data

0:35:320:35:37

that has to be gathered as well.

0:35:370:35:39

These have to come together

0:35:390:35:41

to actually add up to a complete simulation of the brain.

0:35:410:35:44

Progress on the second stage of the road map -

0:35:480:35:51

what the brain does -

0:35:510:35:53

is being made.

0:35:530:35:54

In the centre of New York,

0:36:000:36:02

at Columbia University,

0:36:020:36:04

Prof Rafael Yuste is leading a bold effort

0:36:040:36:08

to map the constant activity of the brain.

0:36:080:36:11

It is a critical part of what is known as the Obama Brain Initiative.

0:36:130:36:17

The ambition of the world's biggest neuroscience project

0:36:170:36:21

was made clear to Rafael

0:36:210:36:23

at a crucial meeting at the White House.

0:36:230:36:26

It was the week after they landed the Rover in Mars.

0:36:260:36:30

And so the meeting started

0:36:370:36:38

with Tom Kalil from the White House opening the meeting

0:36:380:36:41

and saying, "This has been a good week for us.

0:36:410:36:43

"Now let's talk about the brain.

0:36:430:36:44

"If we can put this thing in Mars,

0:36:440:36:47

"how come we cannot solve schizophrenia?"

0:36:470:36:49

-OBAMA:

-The next great American project,

0:36:510:36:54

that's what we're calling The Brain Initiative.

0:36:540:36:56

6 billion has been pledged

0:36:580:37:00

to try to solve the mysteries of brain disorders

0:37:000:37:03

that affect millions of people.

0:37:030:37:05

One major strand of the initiative

0:37:070:37:09

is Rafael's ambitious plan

0:37:090:37:12

to map the constant interaction of neurons in the brain,

0:37:120:37:16

its physiology.

0:37:160:37:17

We want to measure every spark from all the neurons

0:37:190:37:22

at once, simultaneously.

0:37:220:37:24

Many people said it's just impossible.

0:37:260:37:29

As a start, Rafael is focusing on mapping the neural activity

0:37:330:37:37

of a tiny freshwater invertebrate.

0:37:370:37:39

Hydra is an example of an cnidarian

0:37:430:37:45

that has one of the simplest nervous systems in evolution.

0:37:450:37:50

So, in the tree of life,

0:37:500:37:52

cnidarians is the first time that animals have neurons.

0:37:520:37:56

The hydra has between 300

0:37:560:37:58

and a few thousand neurons

0:37:580:38:00

distributed in a network,

0:38:000:38:02

a tiny fraction of the 86 billion in the human brain.

0:38:020:38:07

Somehow this structure of neurons across the body of the animal

0:38:070:38:11

controls behaviour.

0:38:110:38:13

So it offers a golden opportunity

0:38:130:38:15

to understand how the activity of the entire nervous system

0:38:150:38:19

can generate behaviour.

0:38:190:38:22

One of the great challenges of neuroscience

0:38:220:38:24

is how to see the activity inside a brain as it happens.

0:38:240:38:29

In this case, Rafael solved it by genetically modifying the hydra.

0:38:300:38:35

We've made a transgenic animal

0:38:350:38:37

expressing a calcium indicator in every single neuron.

0:38:370:38:41

As a neuron fires,

0:38:410:38:43

calcium comes into the cell

0:38:430:38:45

and binds to a dye that can be tracked.

0:38:450:38:48

The little dots of light that you see in the screen

0:38:530:38:56

are the neurons of the animal.

0:38:560:38:58

And when the neurons are activated, they're flashing.

0:38:580:39:02

When it contracts, you can see how the neurons are flashing,

0:39:020:39:05

very likely because its neurons

0:39:050:39:07

are sort of controlling the muscle of the animal

0:39:070:39:09

and making it contract.

0:39:090:39:11

In this research, yet to be published,

0:39:110:39:14

Rafael and his team have imaged the activity

0:39:140:39:16

of close to every neuron in a brain for the first time.

0:39:160:39:20

It was very exciting. It's thrilling.

0:39:250:39:28

I'm still thrilled when I look at it.

0:39:280:39:29

On the other hand, at this point, today,

0:39:290:39:32

we just cannot tell you what these patterns mean.

0:39:320:39:35

So it's a little bit like listening in on a conversation

0:39:350:39:39

in a foreign language that you don't understand.

0:39:390:39:42

Decoding the complete patterns of neural activity of a brain

0:39:420:39:45

has never been done.

0:39:450:39:47

We should be able to do it.

0:39:470:39:48

I mean, after all, there is no magic here.

0:39:480:39:50

This is just a bunch of neurons firing together.

0:39:500:39:53

Rafael and his team have catalogued around 30 hydra behaviours.

0:40:000:40:05

The next task is to match these up

0:40:070:40:09

with the pattern of neuronal activity

0:40:090:40:12

to understand how the brain controls the organism's behaviour.

0:40:120:40:15

If we're successful,

0:40:180:40:19

we'll be reading the mind of this little cnidarian,

0:40:190:40:22

the little hydra.

0:40:220:40:24

We will be able to look at the activity

0:40:240:40:26

and know what it's thinking, so to speak.

0:40:260:40:29

The plan is to scale the research up.

0:40:290:40:32

Within 15 years,

0:40:320:40:34

new tools should allow every neuron in the mouse cortex to be imaged.

0:40:340:40:38

But the ultimate aim is to unlock the biggest brain of all - our own.

0:40:390:40:45

We should be able,

0:40:450:40:47

if science progresses correctly,

0:40:470:40:49

to decode that activity

0:40:490:40:51

and re-interpret that activity

0:40:510:40:54

in the same way that the brain itself interprets it.

0:40:540:40:57

So we will be able to essentially access the thought,

0:41:010:41:04

the mental processes that go on in animals or in a human.

0:41:040:41:08

If you call this downloading, or deciphering...

0:41:080:41:12

So that part, I think it's in our future.

0:41:120:41:15

If we could interpret the activity of the brain,

0:41:170:41:20

it could help solve diseases like Alzheimer's.

0:41:200:41:24

But it might also have an unintended consequence.

0:41:240:41:29

If the brain were a digital computer,

0:41:290:41:32

if you wanted to upload the mind,

0:41:320:41:36

you need to be able to decipher it or download it first,

0:41:360:41:40

so I think it's a necessary step.

0:41:400:41:42

The Brain Initiative, or the brain activity map,

0:41:420:41:46

is a step that is necessary for this uploading to happen.

0:41:460:41:52

The results of this research can't come soon enough for Dmitry Itskov.

0:41:590:42:04

He believes we are living in dangerous times...

0:42:070:42:11

..and immortality may be humanity's salvation.

0:42:130:42:17

We will be able to live in space.

0:42:180:42:20

And we could potentially move somewhere in the future

0:42:200:42:23

if this planet is in danger.

0:42:230:42:25

And you can apply this approach, I think, literally, to every threat.

0:42:250:42:31

But he shouldn't relax.

0:42:350:42:37

At Duke University in North Carolina,

0:42:410:42:44

evidence is emerging that challenges key assumptions

0:42:440:42:47

of the mind uploaders.

0:42:470:42:49

Prof Miguel Nicolelis is a brain-machine interface pioneer

0:42:500:42:55

who's developing an exoskeleton to help the paralysed walk.

0:42:550:43:00

He rejects the analogy used by many neuroscientists

0:43:000:43:04

that the brain works like a computer.

0:43:040:43:07

This is a common metaphor that has quite a lot of power

0:43:080:43:12

because computers have acquired a lot of power.

0:43:120:43:15

And they are the most complex things that, arguably, humans make.

0:43:150:43:20

But they don't even get close

0:43:220:43:24

to the level of complexity that a human brain

0:43:240:43:27

is capable of handling or generating.

0:43:270:43:29

After all, computers are just projections

0:43:290:43:32

from our abstract thinking

0:43:320:43:33

but they don't use neither the language nor the logic

0:43:330:43:38

that our brains actually utilise...

0:43:380:43:41

employ to actually produce these abstractions.

0:43:410:43:45

The brain is so complex because it is constantly changing.

0:43:460:43:51

The best analogy I have for the brain

0:43:510:43:53

is that the brain is like an orchestra.

0:43:530:43:55

That every time it composes or plays a tune,

0:43:550:44:00

the tune itself changes the instruments of the orchestra.

0:44:000:44:03

The way complexity emerges from, you know,

0:44:030:44:07

the biological matter that forms our brains

0:44:070:44:10

is very different from what you get from pieces of electronics.

0:44:100:44:14

Let's turn on the pre-amps.

0:44:170:44:19

Now we're connecting to a brain.

0:44:220:44:25

Miguel is running an experiment

0:44:250:44:27

to harness the ability of the brain to adapt

0:44:270:44:30

that could one day help blind people see.

0:44:300:44:33

We have it set up.

0:44:330:44:35

OK, she's doing it.

0:44:360:44:38

On the rat's head are four sensors.

0:44:380:44:41

When they detect infrared light,

0:44:410:44:43

they send electrical pulses to electrodes in her brain.

0:44:430:44:48

Eric implanted the tactile part of her cortex,

0:44:480:44:51

the part of the cortex, this surface of the brain here,

0:44:510:44:54

that processes information from the face -

0:44:540:44:56

more precisely, from the whiskers in the face.

0:44:560:44:59

Infrared light is fired randomly from different directions.

0:44:590:45:03

If the rat goes to its source, she gets a reward.

0:45:030:45:07

-Wow!

-She's doing almost 100% now.

0:45:070:45:11

Her reaction time is amazing.

0:45:110:45:13

She just jumps to the correct one.

0:45:130:45:15

If it was a visible light, it's as fast.

0:45:150:45:17

Yeah, look at that, she just jumped to that one.

0:45:170:45:21

The rat's performance is revealing something extraordinary.

0:45:210:45:24

She's going after the infrared beam just by sensing it,

0:45:240:45:29

feeling it, as if it was...

0:45:290:45:30

if it were a tactile stimulation to her body,

0:45:300:45:35

to her face, more specifically.

0:45:350:45:37

I would give a lot just to talk to this rat

0:45:370:45:40

and learn what she's feeling right now.

0:45:400:45:43

Must be a weird tactile sensation to touch light.

0:45:430:45:47

This work could lead to neuro-prosthetic devices

0:45:530:45:56

that give sight to the blind

0:45:560:45:59

and even extend it.

0:45:590:46:01

Most of the effort today is to put an implant in the retina

0:46:010:46:04

but that's very difficult.

0:46:040:46:05

Why not go to the visual cortex directly

0:46:050:46:08

and create not only regular vision

0:46:080:46:11

but also provide other types of inputs,

0:46:110:46:14

infrared or X-ray or whatever?

0:46:140:46:16

It may become useful.

0:46:160:46:18

By taking on a new sense,

0:46:200:46:22

this rat could also confound the mind uploaders.

0:46:220:46:25

It doesn't really support their argument.

0:46:250:46:28

It supports the fact that brains can learn new tricks.

0:46:310:46:34

That's what brains are good for.

0:46:340:46:36

It gets raw information and generates something out of it -

0:46:360:46:40

knowledge.

0:46:400:46:42

That transformation cannot be done in a machine like that.

0:46:420:46:44

You're never going to get a machine

0:46:440:46:46

to generate knowledge out of information.

0:46:460:46:49

Miguel believes the dynamic complexity of the brain,

0:46:490:46:52

from which the human condition emerges,

0:46:520:46:55

cannot be replicated.

0:46:550:46:57

You cannot code intuition. You cannot code aesthetic beauty.

0:47:000:47:05

You cannot code love or hate or prejudice.

0:47:070:47:11

There is no way you will ever see a human brain

0:47:110:47:15

reduced to a digital medium.

0:47:150:47:17

It's simply impossible to reduce the complexity

0:47:170:47:19

to the kind of algorithmic process

0:47:190:47:23

that you would have to have to do that.

0:47:230:47:25

If somebody is saying that the brain is not computational,

0:47:270:47:31

the question becomes, what is it, then?

0:47:310:47:35

Because computational is essentially another term for materialist,

0:47:370:47:44

that it obeys the laws of physics, of cause and effect.

0:47:440:47:48

Are we saying that the brain is not a device

0:47:480:47:52

that obeys the laws of cause and effect?

0:47:520:47:54

But could the brain obey the laws of physics

0:47:580:48:01

without being a computer?

0:48:010:48:03

At Columbia University, questions are being asked

0:48:050:48:08

about whether the brain could be a biological machine

0:48:080:48:12

that might be impossible to copy.

0:48:120:48:14

The idea that you can upload the mind

0:48:150:48:18

assumes that the mind is some sort of digital computer.

0:48:180:48:21

But the activity of one of the simplest brains in evolution

0:48:210:48:25

suggests it might work in a very different way.

0:48:250:48:29

What's really surprising is what happened, like, right here.

0:48:290:48:33

When there is activity going on

0:48:340:48:36

in the nervous system of the animal without any apparent movement,

0:48:360:48:41

without any apparent contraction,

0:48:410:48:43

this continuous pattern is like a flash.

0:48:430:48:46

It goes through the whole body of the animal

0:48:460:48:49

and it's really exciting.

0:48:490:48:51

It's... You know, scientists, we thrive on trying to understand

0:48:510:48:55

things that are mysteries or puzzles.

0:48:550:48:57

It is a puzzle because it can't be explained

0:48:570:49:00

by the traditional model of the brain used in neuroscience.

0:49:000:49:04

You can imagine that the mind or brain would be this box.

0:49:070:49:12

And this box reflects the sensory inputs

0:49:120:49:16

that are coming in from the outside, the sensory world,

0:49:160:49:21

and uses that information to generate a motor output.

0:49:210:49:26

And this is our behaviour.

0:49:260:49:27

So it's a very simple input/output machine,

0:49:270:49:31

just like a digital computer.

0:49:310:49:32

This model cannot explain the continual activity of the brain.

0:49:340:49:38

Why do the neurons in this animal fire spontaneously

0:49:400:49:43

when the animal is not doing anything?

0:49:430:49:45

What is it doing? Is it thinking?

0:49:450:49:48

Rafael is developing a theory that tries to explain

0:49:480:49:51

how the spontaneous activity in the brain is generated.

0:49:510:49:55

It's not that the brain reflects the world, is a copy of the world.

0:49:550:50:00

It's the opposite - that the brain generates the world.

0:50:000:50:03

The world is a copy of our brain.

0:50:030:50:05

What we perceive, what we see is not what's out there.

0:50:050:50:08

It's what we have inside.

0:50:080:50:10

There is activity going on here,

0:50:100:50:12

regardless of whether there's input or not.

0:50:120:50:15

The input and the output are not essential.

0:50:150:50:18

What's essential is actually this internal machine

0:50:180:50:21

and this may be very different from a digital computer.

0:50:210:50:24

It's not a machine that you can understand

0:50:240:50:26

by taking it step by step,

0:50:260:50:28

like you can with this machine.

0:50:280:50:30

The old model assumed each neuron had a specific job to do.

0:50:300:50:34

For several decades,

0:50:340:50:36

the focus of neuroscience has turned

0:50:360:50:38

to how vast groups of neurons work together.

0:50:380:50:41

Now Rafael is trying to develop the tools

0:50:420:50:45

to see the activity of all the neurons in a brain

0:50:450:50:48

at the same time.

0:50:480:50:49

So this is just like trying to watch a TV screen.

0:50:500:50:54

You're looking at a movie

0:50:540:50:55

and imagine trying to see that movie

0:50:550:50:57

if you can only see a single pixel of the screen.

0:50:570:50:59

You'd never understand what's playing.

0:50:590:51:01

So what if the function of the brain,

0:51:010:51:05

it's like that TV screen,

0:51:050:51:07

and each neuron is one pixel.

0:51:070:51:09

And the movie that's playing, the movie is an emerging property.

0:51:100:51:14

By definition, again, it's not present in the individual pixel.

0:51:140:51:17

You have to look at them all together.

0:51:170:51:20

Dmitry Itskov's dream of immortality

0:51:200:51:23

hangs in the balance

0:51:230:51:25

between two visions of how the brain might work.

0:51:250:51:28

If that's true, you may be able to download the mind of a person

0:51:290:51:34

because it would be downloading all the information

0:51:340:51:37

and then play it back.

0:51:370:51:39

But if this is the way the brain works,

0:51:390:51:43

then it's not obvious to me that you're going to be able to do this.

0:51:430:51:49

And it depends on this issue

0:51:490:51:51

of whether the brain's a computer or not.

0:51:510:51:54

For all the competing views

0:51:550:51:57

of how the brain might give rise to every aspect of us,

0:51:570:52:00

there is no scientific proof

0:52:000:52:03

that mind uploading could be done or not.

0:52:030:52:06

In its absence,

0:52:170:52:18

Dr Ken Hayworth is pressing on with his own plan to upload his mind.

0:52:180:52:23

I'm probably a very practical, brute-force-minded thinker.

0:52:250:52:32

Ken has come to 21st Century Medicine,

0:52:340:52:37

east of Los Angeles, to see a new prototype.

0:52:370:52:40

He hopes it will deliver the clever twist at the heart of his plan

0:52:400:52:44

to achieve immortality.

0:52:440:52:46

Let's find some way to just stop time.

0:52:470:52:50

All right!

0:52:540:52:55

Dr Robert McIntyre has devised a new way

0:52:560:52:59

to try to stop time's relentless motion.

0:52:590:53:03

All right, here are the samples.

0:53:030:53:05

All right, so here is the pig brain right there...

0:53:070:53:11

-..frozen in time.

-Wow!

0:53:130:53:16

This biomedical company

0:53:160:53:18

develops new preservation methods for entire organs.

0:53:180:53:22

Ken's aim is different.

0:53:230:53:25

He wants to preserve the information within a brain

0:53:250:53:28

until science can extract it.

0:53:280:53:30

This brain was profused with fixative, glutaraldehyde,

0:53:300:53:36

so that it literally solidifies without freezing?

0:53:360:53:39

-Yeah.

-Wow!

0:53:390:53:41

The fixing agent glutaraldehyde renders the brain dead.

0:53:440:53:48

It's basically saying let's not be scared of injecting somebody

0:53:490:53:55

with a completely deadly poison, glutaraldehyde,

0:53:550:53:58

because, after all, that is simply

0:53:580:54:01

gluing the molecular machinery in place,

0:54:010:54:04

which preserves its information.

0:54:040:54:06

Other immortalists preserve brains to try to revive them in the future.

0:54:090:54:14

Ken's plan relies on trying to preserve the information

0:54:140:54:17

he believes lies in the connectome.

0:54:170:54:20

If I am looking down at these electron micrographs

0:54:220:54:26

and I see that basic connectivity,

0:54:260:54:29

the synaptic connection between two neurons,

0:54:290:54:32

then I can really be quite sure

0:54:320:54:35

that the function or memories that that piece of brain tissue encoded

0:54:350:54:42

is still there.

0:54:420:54:44

Dr McIntyre's method does preserve connections between neurons

0:54:440:54:49

but whether the connectome encodes memories

0:54:490:54:52

and whether they could be preserved is unknown.

0:54:520:54:55

But Ken believes a method like this

0:54:560:54:59

will soon let him travel into the future.

0:54:590:55:02

The preserved brain at this level should store all of those memories,

0:55:020:55:08

all of those personality traits

0:55:080:55:10

for thousands of years in storage.

0:55:100:55:13

That could allow imaging technologies of the future

0:55:130:55:17

to read off the connectome

0:55:170:55:19

and potentially simulate it.

0:55:190:55:21

If there was ever a reliable method,

0:55:230:55:26

Ken wants every hospital to offer the terminally ill

0:55:260:55:30

the option of preserving their brains,

0:55:300:55:32

even if it means choosing to die.

0:55:320:55:36

Let's say I am diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

0:55:360:55:39

It would make no sense whatsoever

0:55:390:55:41

to slowly, painfully be erased in front of all of my loved ones

0:55:410:55:47

until I finally have my heart stop.

0:55:470:55:50

It would make much more sense

0:55:500:55:52

to say, "We've got to intervene before you are erased.

0:55:520:55:59

"We've got to intervene."

0:55:590:56:01

And that intervention is in the form of

0:56:010:56:04

preserving the brain structures before they get destroyed,

0:56:040:56:10

with the legitimate hope that a century from now

0:56:100:56:15

science will advance to bring you back.

0:56:150:56:18

Across the world, the immortalists are gathering strength.

0:56:250:56:28

Their case is built on many profound unknowns

0:56:300:56:33

but neuroscience cannot rule out the possibility

0:56:330:56:37

of uploading the mind.

0:56:370:56:38

The pathway that leads within new neuro-technologies

0:56:400:56:45

to our understanding of the brain

0:56:450:56:46

is the same pathway that could lead, theoretically,

0:56:460:56:49

to the possibility of mind uploading.

0:56:490:56:52

I do think that scientists that are involved in this method

0:56:520:56:55

have the responsibility to think ahead.

0:56:550:56:59

Mind uploading would usher in a world fraught with risk.

0:56:590:57:04

If you could replicate the mind

0:57:040:57:06

and upload it into a different material,

0:57:060:57:08

you can, in principle, clone minds. These are complicated issues

0:57:080:57:11

because they deal with the core of defining what is a person.

0:57:110:57:16

Rafael is on the Brain Initiative's ethics panel

0:57:160:57:19

that oversees how new technologies are used.

0:57:190:57:23

I would put the mind uploading in the list of the topics

0:57:230:57:27

that should be very carefully discussed and thought through.

0:57:270:57:31

I will answer you to the question of ethics

0:57:330:57:39

by the opinion which was given to me

0:57:390:57:44

by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

0:57:440:57:46

when I visited him in 2013.

0:57:460:57:48

So his point was that you can do everything

0:57:480:57:53

if your motivation is to help people.

0:57:530:57:55

Since the dawn of humankind,

0:57:550:57:58

impossible dreams of immortality have burned in the minds of some.

0:57:580:58:02

For the next few centuries,

0:58:040:58:07

I would envision having multiple bodies

0:58:070:58:10

and one probably would live in something like a traditional Earth.

0:58:100:58:15

The other body will be probably somewhere in space.

0:58:150:58:18

As the scientific search for the butterflies of the soul intensifies,

0:58:200:58:25

we are still to discover

0:58:250:58:26

if our consciousness could ever be replicated in a machine.

0:58:260:58:30

Another body would probably be hologram-like

0:58:320:58:35

and I envision my consciousness just moving from one to another.

0:58:350:58:40

We are now embarking on a journey into a very different world.

0:58:410:58:45

Whether we find we can live for ever in machines or not,

0:58:460:58:50

for some, the journey will certainly change what it is to be human.

0:58:500:58:55

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