Russian transhumanist Alexey Turchin has shared a new "roadmap to immortality," which proposes several different plans (with backup plans!) for extending human life through technology. Here's the gist, as he explains it:
Plan A. The most obvious way to reach immortality is to survive until the creation of Friendly AI; in that case if you are young enough and optimistic enough, you can simply do nothing – or just fund MIRI. However, if you are older, you have to jump from one method of life extension to the next as they become available. So plan A is a relay race of life extension methods, until the problem of death is solved.
This plan includes actions to defeat aging, to grow and replace diseased organs with new bioengineered ones, to get a nanotech body and in the end to be scanned into a computer. It is an optimized sequence of events, and depends on two things – your personal actions (such as regular medical checkups), and collective actions such as civil activism and scientific research funding.
Plan B. However, if Plan A fails, i.e. if you die before the creation of superintelligence, there is Plan B, which is cryonics. Some simple steps can be taken now, such as calling your nearest cryocompany about a contract.
Plan C. Unfortunately, cryonics could also fail, and in that case Plan C is invoked. Of course it is much worse – less reliable and less proven. Plan C is so-called digital immortality, where one could be returned to life based on existing recorded information about that person. It is not a particularly good plan, because we are not sure how to solve the identity problem which will arise, and we don't know if the collected amount of information would be enough. But it is still better than nothing.
Plan D. Lastly, if Plan C fails, we have Plan D. It is not a plan in fact, it is just hope or a bet that immortality already exists somehow: perhaps there is quantum immortality, or perhaps future AI will bring us back to life.
The first three plans demand particular actions now: we need to prepare for all of them simultaneously. All of the plans will lead to the same result: our minds will be uploaded into a computer with help of highly developed AI.
Here's a visual summary of his "Immortality Roadmap."
Of course, as Turchin explained to Popular Mechanics [Paywalled], it would take a lot of energy to power a super intelligence of this scale, which is where the Dyson Sphere would come into play. Also, if we're being technical, this super intelligence wouldn't so much be resurrecting you as it would be making a copy of the data that is you. Tomayto, Tomahto.
A Dyson Sphere Could Bring Humans Back From the Dead, Researchers Say [Stav Dimitropoulos / Popular Mechanics]
Immortality Roadmap [Alexey Turchin]
Image: Public Domain via NASA
