Immortality Today

We could probably achieve immortality within 5 years if the best neurologists, cyberneticians, AI researchers, etc in the world worked on it together. They would need a research budget in the tens of billions of dollars, and to "immortalize" a single individual would cost millions of dollars and probably take a few years from beginning to end.

When I work out some details I'll write up an abstract on the process and post a link to it on this forum, but the core concept of the process is really simple:

it's a less aggressive version of Hans Moravec's uploading schema. Unlike Moravec's, "my" process requires neither nanotechnology or superintelligent AI's to model and translate to software your brain in an afternoon sitting. Rather it utilizes proven technology that we have in working (albeit crude) form today. Here are the technologies that are essential to the process.

1) We have already developed and demonstrated working applications of the tech. required to input and extract data through direct brain-machine interfaces.

2) We have the technology to monitor and record all output and input of a single neuron in vivo.
This has been done, and preliminary work with this technique has shown that accurately modeling its responses to a given input is not the daunting task many thought it would be.

3) Integration of neuron-mimicking IC's into an existing, functional network of living neurons has been accomplished in vitro.

So we have all we need to make you immortal. Here’s how we do it:

you go to the hospital for brain surgery. In the operation, the doctors implant arrays of microelectrodes into your brain. The first operation only interfaces with one brain function, e.g. control of your right arm. The electrodes connect to a machine that contains IC-based "neurons". Computers analyze the inputs and outputs of the monitored 'wet' neurons, and develop a rough model of their responses to their normal 'wet' synaptic inputs.
The Computer then configures the 'hard' neurons to act according to this model. After this is finished the electrodes begin sending input to the 'hard' neurons, and relaying their output back to the 'wet' ones. Over time, the 'hard' and 'wet' neurons will adapt to each other, forming a naturally structured network in which the 'hard' neurons are indispensable components.

As the two types of neurons more tightly integrate, more 'hard' neurons are added to the network, and 'wet' neurons are gradually removed.
After perhaps 6 months, 90% of your right arm control is handled by that network's 'hard' components. The remaining 'wet' neurons are kept as a back up in case of partial hardware failure. Since neurons die over time, the living 10% of the network is kept 'fresh' by the periodic addition of fetal neurons.

6 months have passed; you return to the hospital for another round of brain surgery. The same procedure carried out in your first operation is completed, except this time a different part of your brain is interfaced. This time part of your, say, visual cortex is interfaced and slowly migrated from wetware to hardware. As before, 10% of the network remains wetware. Eventually, if you choose, the wetware can be fully removed without any ill effect. This is why. If two highly interconnected regions are migrated, the interconnects migrate as well; presumably the most tightly coupled regions would be migrated simultaneously. Area A's neurons would connect indiscriminately to Area B's neurons, and vice versa. This means that the 'wet' 10 percent of Area A's interconnect neurons are connected to 10% of Area B;s interconnect neurons. Area B's interconnects are 90% 'hard' as well, meaning that perhaps only 1-2 % of the total A/B interconnects are wet/wet. As more of your brain is migrated, the 'wet' components become more superfluous since the % of wet/wet links drops w/ each 'hard' neuron added.

This goes on and on for maybe 10 years; at the end of your decade long transformation, at most 1% of your total brain function is handled in wetware. Given the almost "holographic" nature of a large neural network, this 1% consisting of 'wet' neurons could all be removed at once and you would not even realize it... the biological 1% of your brain is no different in significance than the 'hard' neurons were when they handled a mere 1% of brain function, 10 years ago.

Most people will probably keep their few 'wet' neurons, for sentimental reasons or a reminder of what they once were, or whatever. Many will not, but neither group could tell which they were if they somehow they suffered amnesia (a dysfunction of memory reduced to nothing but a memory of a now-impossible affliction :) a nice irony, I think...

It's taken you 10 years and 30 million dollars, but you are now free. Hang out near Alpha Centauri 3 billion years from now to get a front row view of our home system's star go nova. Help build and settle a new universe in the final days of our universe's heat death. Or get bored after a couple millennia and commit suicide. Whatever. It's up to you...