The Pentagon’s new Avatar project, unveiled by Danger Room a few weeks back, sounds freaky enough: Soldiers practically inhabiting the bodies of robots, who’d act as “surrogates” for their human overlords in battle.
But according to Dmitry Itskov, a 31-year-old Russian media mogul, the U.S. military’s Avatar initiative doesn’t go nearly far enough. He’s got a massive, sci-fi-esque venture of his own that he hopes will put the Pentagon’s project to shame. Itskov’s plan: Construct robots that’ll (within 10 years, he hopes) actually store a human’s mind and keep that consciousness working. Forever.
“This project is leading down the road to immortality,” Itskov, who founded New Media Stars, a Russian company that runs several online news outlets, tells Danger Room. “A person with a perfect Avatar will be able to remain part of society. People don’t want to die.”
Itskov’s project, also called “Avatar,” actually precedes the Pentagon’s. He launched the initiative a year ago, but recently divulged more details to a group of futurists — including Ray Kurzweil — at a three-day conference, called Global Future 2045, held in Moscow.
Until now, most of the work on Itskov’s Avatar has taken place in Russia, where he claims to have hired 30 researchers — all of them paid out of his own deep pockets. Now, Itskov plans to take the mission global. “I want to collaborate with scientists from around the world,” he says. “This is a new strategy for the future; for humanity.”
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/dmitry-itskov/
