Elon Musk has made several controversial statements, and the new one points to the idea of living forever. Musk believes that if humans can download their brains into memory-keeping robots, they will be able to live indefinitely.
Musk believes there is a way to make humanity live endlessly on Earth – or elsewhere – and has been building spacecraft to evacuate humans from the planet in case.
“I think it is possible,” Musk, 50, told Insider.
“Yes, we could download the things that we believe make ourselves so unique. Now, of course, if you’re not in that body anymore, that is definitely going to be a difference, but as far as preserving our memories, our personality, I think we could do that.”
According to him, the technology that will make this feasible will be a steady growth from what is already available in computer memory with pictures and videos. Computers and phones enhance people’s ability to communicate and allow them to do things. He claims that extending human lives through the download of consciousness and the creation of artificial bodies has long been a staple of science fiction.
Some scientists agree that “mind uploading” technology may be achievable one day, although the timetable is quite uncertain.
“Mind uploading would necessitate two pieces of technology: an artificial brain and a scan of a person’s brain that could measure exactly how its neurons are connected to each other to copy that pattern in the artificial brain,” said Michael S.A. Graziano, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Princeton University.
“Creating the artificial brain would be quite simple. “But, to upload a human brain, we’d probably need a scanner that doesn’t kill the subject and can scan around a hundred million times as many details,” he added.
“That technology doesn’t yet exist. The most wildly optimistic predictions place mind uploading within a few decades, but I would not be surprised if it took centuries.”
The world’s richest man owns a start-up called Neuralink, which strives to improve how brain-machine interfaces with humans, potentially allowing them to retain memory as a backup.
“Neuralink in the short term is just about solving brain injuries, spinal injuries and that kind of thing,” he said. “So for many years, Neuralink’s products will just be helpful to someone who has lost the use of their arms or legs or has just a traumatic brain injury of some kind.”
Musk, on the contrary, does not want to live forever, and he does not appear to embrace the concept for anyone else.
“I don’t think we should try to have people live for a really long time,” he said. “That would cause asphyxiation of society because the truth is, most people don’t change their minds. They just die. So if they don’t die, we will be stuck with old ideas, and society wouldn’t advance.”
