Ever since humans have lived, so they have died; with death, comes the fear of it. The desire to live forever is weaved deep into the quilt of human history, engraved throughout cultures and legends of old. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the eponymous hero attempts, but fails, to outwit death (1). Countless explorers have devoted their lives to locating legends that promise eternal life and longevity, such as the Fountain of Youth (2) and Nicholas Flamel’s Elixir of Life (3). Ancient Tang Dynasty emperors have died consuming what they believed to be the key to immortality (4). Noblemen and women have been documented bathing in and injecting themselves with blood to regain their prior youth and beauty. Ambrosia, the Grecian mythical food and drink of the gods was supposedly able to grant people immortality upon consumption (5).
That’s where the field of mind uploading comes in. Still a greatly theoretical idea, mind uploading is a technology that thrives in the realm of science fiction. Regardless, countless entrepreneurs and scientists believe its development to be a strong possibility—it’s the tech Nectome is betting on, after all. Despite our many advances in neuroscience and AI technology, we are far from fully understanding how our brains process information and experience conscious thought. However, if successfully engineered, mind uploading would open a realm of possibilities for extending your conscious longevity. The premise is simple: Upload your brain, and after you die, you have an extra copy of yourself that can exist online or can be uploaded to a cyborg body that can live functionally forever, provided your data remains uncorrupted.
Even now, millions of years after the first human begged to live just one day longer, the prospect of death grips some of us with a looming, inevitable sense of fear. Each generation’s ‘greats’ have stubbornly refused to accept their mortality. From cryonics to mind uploading, people have come up with multiple potential solutions to combat the ‘issue’ of aging. The question now is, are any of these solutions viable, and should we be pursuing them in the first place?
One of the most infamous methods proposed to prolong life is cryonics, which involves freezing the body to preserve it immediately after death. Commonly regarded as pseudoscience, the premise behind cryonics revolves around the idea that, at a later date, cryogenically preserved individuals will be revived using the technology of the future. Freezing the body results in tissue damage, so scientists would not only have to be able to reverse the individual’s initial cause of death but also repair damaged tissue throughout the body using techniques and technologies that are still currently unavailable. Despite this uncertainty, as of 2022, 500 people are being cryonically preserved, with thousands more on the waiting list when their time comes (6).
People have yet to lose hope for cryonics, though. Nectome is a 2015 startup backed by prominent venture capital firm Y Combinator that aims to cryogenically preserve your brain. The hope is that, at some point in the far future, these preserved brains will be uploaded to the internet, and Nectome’s clients will effectively be ‘digitally immortalized.’ While Nectome looks more promising than traditional cryonics, it cannot get around the fact that cryonic preservation requires its clients to die first. This has not stopped a couple dozen people from signing up for the service, including partner of Y Combinator and CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman; such is the desire to live forever. Even still, most people are not willing to undergo cryonics if it means their preservation is uncertain.7 This begs the question: What if there were a way to ‘scan your brain’ while still alive?
Mind uploading brings up some questions, though. If you die but are brought back with CPR, the consensus is to say that you are unambiguously the same person with the same consciousness. If your brain is successfully transplanted into another body, most will still agree that you are the same person, just in a new body. But if your mind is converted into ones and zeroes, does that idea still hold true? Some ideators have taken a ‘Ship of Theseus’ approach to understand this issue: If your brain, neuron by neuron, is replaced by mechanical nanites, at what point, if ever, do you stop being yourself (8)? Furthermore, if your original self and your digital consciousness exist simultaneously and undergo different experiences, which ‘you’ is the real ‘you?’ If digitally uploaded minds act just as human consciousness would, should it be legally and ethically treated as such? None of these questions are easy to answer, nor should they be, especially when working with potential human consciousnesses. Rather, they should remind us to hesitate before going all-in with mind-uploading technology.
Even now, tons of research is being conducted on how to stop or reverse aging to increase longevity and, eventually, achieve immortality. ‘Immortal’ animals, such as the immortal jellyfish and hydra (9) are the subject of intense scrutiny, as scientists scramble to figure out the ‘key to immortality.’ Further research shows that aging was never a necessary end of life and that it may have had an evolutionary benefit. Calls to classify aging as a disease have been increasing from medical researchers and professionals in hopes that it will allow more resources to be dedicated to understanding how and why we age (10). Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have been focusing on how to increase longevity—the industry is predicted to grow to a value of $64 million by 2026. Some examples of new anti-aging biotechnology companies include Calico, Altos Labs, and Juvenescence, all of which are backed and led by big-name entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Yuri Milner, Arthur D. Levinson, and more (11).
We won’t have to grapple with such problems for now; uploading your brain is still in the far future. However, as we make steady progress toward understanding the brain and how to preserve it, we must be ready for the prospect that one day, we’ll be able to live for one more day, and then, perhaps, forever.
