How do new technologies bring the dream of immortality closer?

A new future, the picture of which we described in a previous article on connecting a person to the Internet, as suggested by a number of researchers, awaits humanity in the next 20 years. What is the whole vector of human development?

Significant financial flows are invested in the development of the quality of human life. The main sources of deterioration in the quality of life in general are all kinds of diseases and mortality. Work on solving these problems is going on in seven main areas:

• Cryonics.
• Gene modification.
• Cyborgization.
• Digitalization
• Nanomedicine.
• Artificial Intelligence.
• Regeneration. Biotechnology

There are about 15 directions in total, and all of them describe how specifically, roughly by 2040, to achieve a radical increase in the duration of human life and improve health.

The fight goes on simultaneously in several directions.

What prerequisites can we observe now?

• A social experiment in China with a rating of citizens and total surveillance .
• Significant reduction in technology costs when approaching the point of technological singularity. The point at which the further development of technology will occur abruptly and unpredictably.
• The development of Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud computing and infrastructure technologies .
• Legislative changes from creating the basis for regulating information processing issues to the introduction of electronic signatures, workflow and digital profiles of citizens .
• Essential steps in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence and neural networks.
• We are most interested in such areas as cyborgization, artificial intelligence, nanomedicine, regeneration and artificial organs, bioinformatics and concepts of digital immortality.

There are a number of factors that provide the basis for the most daring assumptions.

First of all, if we consider the current goals of human civilization, we will understand the tactical steps that it takes to achieve them.

Already now we see the first steps of cyborgization - artificial limbs for the disabled, entirely controlled by signals from the brain. Relatively inexpensive and high-quality artificial hearts. Soon, we can assume the appearance of biomechanical analogues of all internal organs.

In the context of creating a full-fledged life support system, this means curious prospects and opportunities.

In the end, humanity is on the verge of creating an artificial autonomous body.
Some difficulties are with the central nervous system.

By the way, they plan to use it to connect a person to a global network (cloud) using nanomedicine. In particular, we are talking about creating an interface between the human brain and the cloud - B / CI (Human Brain / Cloud Interface).

In this case, the question is in the “Theseus Ship” thought experiment, which can be formulated as follows: “If all the components of the original object were replaced, will the object remain the same object?” In other words, if humanity learns to replace human brain cells with equivalent artificial constructs, will man remain human, or will it already be an artificial lifeless being?

A synthetic neuron is predicted by the year 2030. It would allow connecting the brain with the cloud even without the use of special neuronorobots, since it would greatly simplify the ability to create an interface.

What is already implemented?

Already, they plan to use Artificial Intelligence for diagnostics in medicine according to tens and hundreds of thousands of parameters. This simplifies diagnosis and takes medicine to a new level.

The constant monitoring of health, which we already observe at a primitive level in the form of bracelets that monitor the biological parameters of the current state of the body, is already yielding positive results. According to recent data, people who regularly monitor their condition in this way live longer.

Artificial intelligence, able to understand and interpret natural languages, can interact with a person tightly enough for joint and rapid progress.
The computer will be able to generate new ideas, as he has now learned, albeit at a primitive level, to create, say, musical works.

So, what is next?

Thus, AI will improve itself, and this will inevitably lead to an exponential growth of technology.

Creating a complete model of the human brain will raise the question of transferring consciousness to a new medium.

Certain prerequisites for the separation of the central nervous system come primarily from the medical industry. Successful dog head transplant experiments have been reported. As for the transplantation of a human head, so far the experiments have been limited to a full-fledged combination of tissues, blood vessels, nerve fibers and even the spine on a dead body in 2017. The transplant queue for living disabled people is already enough to expect experiments in the near future. In particular, one of the first applicants is a Chinese citizen, and the next one is a person from Russia.

This will lead science to the possibility of transplantation of the head (original or modified) to a new biomechanical body.

Genetic engineering does not lag behind. The ultimate goal in it is to create a cure for old age and eliminate the errors of standard gene codes. Achieving this is preceded by screening of combinations of various methods of prolonging natural (not cyborgized) life in mice, and the creation of ageless transgenic animals. The basis for this should be the new unified theory of aging and its mathematical modeling.

At our current level, these tasks are devoted to providing extensive databases that record the links between genomics, proteomics of aging, and other sciences.

Initially, one of the immediate and attainable goals is the creation of a new type of medicine based on artificial selection to create symbionts leading to a longer life span. A prerequisite for their creation is an active study of the genome and those parts of it that are responsible for longevity.

Scientists do not ignore the issue of losses in DNA replication. It is known that during copying during life, some end parts of the molecule are shortened, and by old age copying occurs with losses, which leads to deterioration of the body.

At this stage, we are still learning to diagnose and evaluate factors that influence aging as such. The first priority is to evaluate the effectiveness of drugs based on markers of aging and life expectancy.

Let's live to immortality?

For those who want to at least somehow live up to the leap in science, which will increase their life expectancy, not only the science of a healthy lifestyle is actively developing, but also cryonics, which should ultimately allow freezing bodies on demand.
We are now on that part of the way when the most important thing is the ability to properly manage the volumes of information that our civilization has accumulated. For these purposes, we are already able to ensure its safety and availability, streamlining and infrastructure for interaction, whether it be protected circuits, state-certified or high-availability optical rings.

It is obvious that the described events are systematically developing and quite predictable.

Certain fears are caused by those scenarios that modern cinema introduces into the minds of the audience, showing either a revolt of machines, or enslavement of people by new technologies. We, in turn, share optimistic forecasts, are engaged in our health and try to provide the highest possible level of quality for projects of the future.