548: DEEP DIVE: Digital Afterlife: Preserving Your Mind for Eternity
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As long as people have been alive, they've wanted to stay alive. For centuries, explorers have searched for the fountain of youth.

And today, scientists are hard at work researching technology that can extend the human lifespan, stop or reverse aging, and even preserve a terminally ill person indefinitely until a cure for their disease is discovered. But what if instead of preserving our bodies, we could preserve our consciousness by uploading it to a powerful computer? This is called mind uploading.

And one startup has developed a procedure to do exactly this. It's scientifically sound, there's a waiting list to participate, and the procedure is 100% fatal.

There is no limit to human desire. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, there is a limit to our lifespan. But what if we could upload our memories, experiences, our entire consciousness to the cloud? This would be a sort of digital immortality. It might not be as far-fetched as you think.

Famous futurist Ray Kurzweil believes we'll be able to upload our entire minds to computers by 2045, and that machines will replace our entire bodies by the end of the century. Now, this might be a bit optimistic, but it really is just a matter of time. But there are a few issues we need to solve first.

The concept of uploading an entire human brain is called whole brain emulation. Three main areas of technology make this possible. Scanning, processing power, and environment. Let's start with brain scanning. The complete map of the brain is called the connectome. Mapping this is the holy grail. So

So far, we've only been able to map the complete connectome of one creature. The nematode is a tiny worm less than a millimeter long. Its brain has about 300 neurons. For comparison, the human brain has over 80 billion neurons. And our 80 billion neurons are connected by about 100 trillion synapses. Then you have neurotransmitters, proteins, hormones, and all kinds of electrochemical processes to replicate.

All of this needs to be mapped and understood before we can even consider uploading. Our current imaging technology just isn't good enough to map this out. There are better methods, like cutting the brain into millions of slices, than scanning it with an electron microscope to identify all the cells and synapses.

But this technique is destructive. We know it works though because it was used on mice. In 2019, this technique successfully mapped a cubic millimeter of a mouse brain. Although a cubic millimeter is only the size of a grain of sand, this piece of the brain contains 100,000 neurons and over a billion synapses. This brings us to the second problem with mind uploading: processing power and storage space.

When that tiny piece of mouse brain tissue is imaged, it used two petabytes of data storage. That's two million gigabytes. Okay, fine, that's doable. But for an entire human brain, we'd need two million petabytes or 2,000 exabytes. That's a lot of storage. Let me put this number in perspective.

All of Google's data storage, all of it on the planet, is estimated to be about 15 exabytes. So a human brain would need over 100 times what Google has. Now let's say you cut a deal with Google to give you 2,000 exabytes of storage. What would they bill you for this? Well, Google says its biggest corporate clients pay a little over $5 million per month per exabyte. So what's the cost of storing a human brain?

$10 billion per month per brain. Here's a little more perspective on 2,000 exabytes, also known as two zettabytes. If you had a nickel for every byte and stacked them up, the pile would reach the nearest star to the Earth, Alpha Centauri, and back a hundred times. The stack of coins would be 2,500 light years tall.

You get the point, the human brain is a ton of data. And that's just storage. To actually process this data would take more computing power than is available on Earth.

But Moore's Law states that computing power doubles every 18 months. Even though this is slowing down, it's pretty much held true for 50 years. So this means that even though we can't do it now, at some point in the future, we will be able to store this data and process it. That's why MIT graduate Robert McIntyre founded Nectome, a company that claims to be able to back up your brain.

For a fee, you can put yourself on their waiting list to have your brain imaged and stored in the cloud. The only catch is you need to die first.

Brain storage is not a new concept. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation has more than 150 bodies and severed heads stored in liquid nitrogen. But there's some dispute as to whether liquid nitrogen damages brain tissue. So several years ago, Robert McIntyre, while working with a cryptobiologist, came up with a different approach. Their technique combines typical cryonics with embalming to preserve the brain structure.

Nectome developed aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, or ASC. It says its technology can preserve a detailed brain ultrastructure over long timescales. We're talking hundreds or even thousands of years. And their technique has proved effective at preserving an entire brain at the nanometer level, including the entire connectome. So all cells, synapses, fibers, proteins, molecules, all of it,

has been preserved. But there's no expectation of reviving the preserved tissue, like with Alcor's life cryonics. Instead, the idea is to retrieve the information stored in the brain's anatomy. Ken Hayworth, a neuroscientist and president of the Brain Preservation Foundation, said, if the brain is dead, it's like the computer is off. But that doesn't mean the information isn't there. That's really interesting. Would you sign up for it?

Well, if you put down a $10,000 deposit, you can get on the waiting list. But there's a bit of a catch. You need to still be alive at the beginning of the procedure, and you won't be alive at the end of it. And that's okay, your body's gone, but your consciousness survives in a state of something like sleep. But when you wake up, what's that like?

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Ray Kurzweil thinks we'll have mind uploading by 2045, but we already use artificial intelligence or AI to outlive our physical bodies.

DeepBrain AI, a company in South Korea, mostly runs video AI programs such as virtual assistants and AI news anchors. But they offer another service, re-memory. They spell that re semicolon memory in case you want to look it up. In 2023, re-memory began using AI to give you life after death.

Kind of. For $10,000, you can create an avatar of yourself. For an additional fee, you can let your loved ones visit that avatar after your death. Your avatar can answer questions and talk to your visitors using your voice. The program's English slogan is "To meet you again as a digital twin." This can be a big comfort to those who've lost family members and loved ones, but it's not a perfect system.

So far, reMemory's technology can only give avatars one mood, like happy or entertaining. They aren't really capturing anyone's personality or mind. It's just a surface-level copy. I mean, if my family really wants to hang out with me after I'm gone, my avatar is going to need a little dash of moodiness. And when you first boot up my avatar, it's going to be pretty grouchy until you feed it some coffee.

Hereafter AI is another avatar after death company. They created a Q&A program in the form of an audio chat bot. Family and friends can interact with the bot. Your voice will relay stories from your past and answer questions. But it's obviously limited to the anecdotes and answers you left behind before death. Hereafter AI is an app. You do an automated interview answering predetermined questions. Hereafter AI is an app.

In 2017, a study found that more than 50 businesses were specializing in the digital afterlife industry, including Microsoft, which obtained a patent for a chatbot that could recreate a specific person.

It would use a person's social data such as images, voice files, social media posts, and written letters to better recreate the individual's personality. But Microsoft hasn't debuted their chatbot just yet. So you can leave behind a digital presence and your voice right now. But what about your thoughts, your memories, and the things that make you you?

Well, to achieve digital immortality, we need to connect our brains to computers. Once we can do that, we'll be able to upload our consciousness, like uploading a file to the cloud. And then we might just be able to live forever. But is this a good thing?

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As a kid growing up in Australia, Thomas Oxley had always been curious about the human brain and how it works, what mysteries lie within it. This fascination led him to become a neurologist. He often performed endovascular neurosurgeries or minimally invasive spinal cord surgeries. In 2006, Oxley saw an article about a woman who had a stroke

and was paralyzed from the neck down. She was no longer able to use her arms or legs. But thanks to an implanted brain computer interface, she used a robotic arm to feed herself using her brain power. Her limbs moved according to her thoughts. The implant was called the Brain Gate Sensor System, developed by Brown University. It captured a thought in the brain, then coded that thought, then turned it into action via the robot arm.

It wasn't quite uploading your consciousness, but it was getting close. It was the first success of this kind. Oxley was hooked. From then on, the possibilities of brain-computer implants became his focus. He saw it as an opportunity to treat the neurological diseases he studied throughout his career. Before long, he was on a path to develop his own implant.

In 2010, Oxley was studying for his PhD in neural engineering at the University of Melbourne. The research field melds the two subjects while exploring how to manipulate the peripheral nervous system. Oxley was studying toward his goal of making a brain-computer interface implant. At one point, he took a break from school and went on vacation in New York.

While he was there, he looked up the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. It's basically the Defense Department's research and development arm. Oxley saw that DARPA's prosthetics department had a new leader, Colonel Jeffrey Ling. Ling was a fellow neurologist who helped develop a new prosthetic arm. Oxley described Ling's invention during a TED Talk. Soldiers were surviving horrific blast injuries.

making it back home, but without their arms and legs. DARPA neurologist, Colonel Jeffrey Ling, led an inspired effort to build a replacement arm, a robotic limb. And they did, and it's magnificent. And trust me, this arm can do things that none of your arms can do when controlled by a computer. So the problem became, okay, how do you put the brain in charge of the robotic limb? How do you connect the electronic circuitry of the brain

Oxley didn't know Ling personally, but he sent him an email. Oxley introduced himself and pitched his idea, a small device that would be implanted into the brain. The process would be minimally invasive, and the implant would help the brain control prosthetic limbs like the one Ling created. He didn't expect a response. When he got one, Ling invited Oxley to meet with him in Washington, D.C.,

Oxley stayed up all night to make a presentation for the Colonel. And a few hours later, he was on a bus to DC. The meeting went better than Oxley could have dreamed. Ling offered him $1 million to form a team and make his invention happen. When he returned to Melbourne, Oxley recruited other faculty members to the project. And the University of Melbourne gave him his own lab. By 2012, the initiative had become Oxley's tech company Synchron.

Synchron specializes in developing brain-computer interfaces to help people with neurological diseases. He described his company's mission during his TED talk. We're building something we think is going to be transformative. Technology implanted into your brain, not your brain, a brain capable of streaming direct thought for people who through injury or disease have lost the capacity to move or speak.

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To achieve the company's goal, Dr. Oxley built a team that spanned many disciplines. He recruited University of Melbourne professors who developed bionic eyes and ears. He also enlisted people from veterinary science, statistics, material science, and other fields. But why did Oxley have to expand beyond neurology?

The science behind what he wanted to do was very complex. At its core, a brain-computer interface does three things. It senses an idea, it computes how to do it, and it controls the outcome. To sense the idea, a device needs to read the brain's electrical communications. Usually, this device is an electrode that helps conduct electricity even in the brain. Oxley explained it with the following metaphor. I want you to imagine...

that the brain is a lake. Just bear with me, okay? Now, every drop of water in the lake represents a brain cell. In the lake is a fish swimming along a particular path causing a ripple in the water as it swims. That fish represents a thought in the brain. Now, as it happens, the fish is invisible, okay? That's just the way it is.

So if you want to detect the movement of that fish, you have to detect the ripple in the water. And somehow, that ripple in the water must be decoded for an action to happen. Next, the brain data needs to be computed via a device and AI. Basically, it's translating the brain's electricity into a doable action for the robotic limb. The final step is the action taken, such as bending or flexing the limb.

After several years of work, Oxley's team was finally able to make this groundbreaking, life-changing technology a reality.

By 2014, Dr. Thomas Oxley and his Synchron team debuted their prototype. It was a combination of an electrode and a stent, which is a small tube used to hold open blood vessels. Oxley called it a stentrode. He stuck to his goal of ensuring it could be inserted without major brain surgery. Four years later, in 2018, Oxley and his team were ready for clinical trials.

Doctors would use a catheter to insert the stent road into the jugular vein in the neck. The catheter then travels up into the skull. It stops near the motor cortex located in the center of the brain. The motor cortex is known as the brain's command center because it creates the signals to move our bodies.

The catheter leaves a small, intricate set of platinum wires and sensors shaped like a tiny cylinder. Oxley called it a self-expanding stent. Now, stentrode sensors can pick up brain activity and transmit it to a device outside the body via Bluetooth.

The brain data is sent to a decoder, which uses an AI machine learning algorithm to turn the signal into a command, like bending an arm or holding a glass. It's a huge advancement in the field.

But the Stentrode is just the beginning because Oxley isn't the only scientist chasing this brain-computer connection. At the same time he was developing the Stentrode, other big names in tech were entering the race and every single one of them was determined to win.

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Facebook was one of the first platforms to introduce social networking. Family, friends, colleagues, even casual acquaintances were suddenly connected to each other. People journaled their lives through status updates. Users uploaded albums filled with photos from parties and vacations. So what if I told you Facebook wanted you to upload your thoughts too?

Let's go back to April 2017. Facebook held its annual developers conference called F8 in San Jose, California. Giving the keynote speech was Regina Dugan, the head of a very special R&D department at Facebook. The highly secret department is known simply as Building 8. Dugan also happened to be the former head of DARPA, the same organization that funded Dr. Oxley's Stentro team.

During her F8 speech, Dugan announced the company had recruited more than 60 scientists for a very ambitious project. Together, we have a goal of creating a system capable of typing 100 words per minute, five times faster than you can type on your smartphone, straight from your brain.

Dugan called it a silent speech system. Words you want to say or type could be transmitted straight from the brain to a computer. Unlike Oxley's Stentrode, Dugan and Facebook's plan focused on optical imaging. Optical imaging is a way of saying

Optical imaging is a way of looking inside the body without surgery. It uses the various colors of light and photons to create images. The most common medical procedure that uses optical imaging is endoscopy. Endoscopy uses a flexible tube, light, and camera to see what's going on with a specific organ in the body.

However, Dugan and Facebook wanted to use it to create a silent speech system. Dugan did point out that optical imaging wasn't quite there yet. Current optical imaging systems aren't able to measure neural activity like signals in the brain, and what they can detect is too slow for the system. But she remained optimistic that the technology could get there eventually.

In a few years time, we expect to demonstrate a real-time silent speech system capable of delivering 100 words per minute.

A few months later, the project's leader, a neuroscientist, Marc Chevillé, gave more details. And it sounded very similar to the stentrode. Like Oxley, Facebook would use non-invasive sensors to detect signals sent from the brain. But unlike stentrode, Chevillé was looking into diffuse optical tomography for the sensors. Diffuse optical tomography uses near-infrared to create 3D images of a body.

Chevrolet wanted to use it on the brain to see how the neurons were arranged. After the brain activity was measured, it would be transmitted and decoded, likely with an algorithm or AI just like the stentron. But Facebook wasn't the only tech company diving into the space.

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If you shop online, you may be familiar with Braintree. It's a mobile and web payment platform founded by entrepreneur Brian Johnson in 2007.

The company grew incredibly fast. By 2015, it had authorized nearly $50 billion in payments. Around the same time, Johnson sold Braintree to PayPal and eBay for $800 million, and he himself earned about $300 million from the sale. A year later, Johnson founded Kernel, a new company focused on brain technology.

He was the company's CEO, and he backed Kernel with $100 million of his own money. Johnson was also interested in linking the human brain with computers.

At first, he aimed to do it through implants and other devices. But six months after Colonel's big debut, Johnson switched gears. Instead of an implant, he and his team wanted to make a smaller version of the brain scanning machines you see in hospitals. In 2020, Colonel announced its new projects, two helmets called the Flux and the Flow.

The helmets use sensors and lasers to measure brain activity and blood oxygen levels. In other words, they can read your mind. It sounds great in theory, but the $50,000 price tag? Not so great. Johnson hopes helmets will become more affordable in the next few years and become as common as smartwatches or cell phones.

But what if you didn't want to use a helmet or an implant to connect your brain to a computer? Well, thanks to another tech entrepreneur, you wouldn't have to. If you've ever had an MRI done, you know it can be pretty confining. You have to lie still in a small, tight space. The giant machine uses magnets and radio waves to produce images of your body, and the MRI is slow and loud. But the results can change your life.

That's what happened to Mary Lou Jepsen in 1996. At the time, she was getting her engineering Ph.D. at Brown University. However, she developed a mysterious illness that caused her to drop out of school and move home. Her body was covered in sores and no one knew what was going on. Finally, Jepsen got an MRI and doctors located the cause of her illness, a brain tumor. Luckily, it was operable.

Once Jepson had the tumor removed, she resumed her life and finished her doctorate. But she had a renewed purpose. Jepson became a Silicon Valley visionary, working at Pixel Chi, Google, and Facebook. Eventually, she left Facebook to found her own company called Open Water. The company's main goal was to build a wearable MRI. Jepson wanted to make the technology that saved her life accessible to everyone. And she planned to do it using holograms.

Holograms are three-dimensional pictures and videos recreated with lasers and light waves. Jepson wanted to use hologram video to map out the brain.

Like Brian Johnson, she wanted to make it as common as a smartwatch or a cell phone. And her ultimate objective was to take it a step further, something she described in her own TED Talk. It can allow us to connect our brains directly to the computer so we can upload and download thoughts and enhance our minds and our thinking in profound ways. The stuff of science fiction. Currently, the wearable MRI is still under development, but it's getting closer to becoming a reality.

There's one last tech entrepreneur who's entered the brain-computer interface race. You might have heard of him. Elon Musk.

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Inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter/X. However, another one of his companies is starting to garner attention. In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink with seven scientists and engineers. Its main goal was to create a computer brain interface. Like the other companies we've covered, Neuralink aims to connect your brain to a computer.

But to do what? Does Musk want to help paraplegics move their limbs, help amputees operate their robotic arms and legs, or make another holographic MRI? Unlike the other companies, it wasn't quite clear in the beginning, and it's remained a big question over the years. But here's what we do know.

Musk hired the absolute best neuroscientists for universities across the country. Neuralink was primarily funded by Musk and a venture capital firm called Founders Fund, which was run by Peter Thiel. Thiel is a co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook. The concept of Neuralink didn't come from personal experiences, tragedies or even altruism. It came from science fiction.

Musk was apparently inspired by a series of books called Culture, written by the late I.N.M. Banks. In the series, the author invented something called a neural lace. It was a mesh the characters wore on the outer layer of their brains. And with the device, it could be used to

They interacted with AI and created backups of their mind and memories. An actual upload of one's consciousness. One that could help people live forever. In Banks' books, if a character died, they just got restored from the backup. Just like when you accidentally delete photos or files from your computer. You just retrieve them from your recycle bin, your trash, or recently deleted folder. Of course, it's easy to invent concepts like this when you're writing science fiction.

Making them a reality? Well, that's something else entirely.

Elon Musk wanted to make the fictional Neuralace in real life, and his company Neuralink would make that happen. Neuralink announced its mission in 2017. In the short term, Musk said he wanted the company to treat brain diseases and spinal injuries. In the long term, he aimed to create something called Human-AI Symbiosis, which is a fancy way of saying humans would work with AI to improve their lives.

Here's how Musk described the neural lace and AI-human symbiosis at the 2016 Code Conference. I think it's to essentially... I think one of the solutions, the solution that seems maybe the best one, is to have an AI layer. If you think of like you've got your limbic system, your cortex, and then a digital layer, sort of a third layer above the cortex, that...

could work well and symbiotically with you. I mean, just as your cortex works symbiotically with the limbic system, your sort of a third digital layer could work symbiotically with the rest. Musk has called the AI-human relationship, quote, critical to the future of humanity. Meaning if you can't beat AI, you join forces with it and make it part of your life.

Musk said as much during an interview on the series Axios on HBO. Essentially, how do we ensure that the future constitutes the sum of the will of humanity? And so if we have billions of people with the high bandwidth link to the AI extension of themselves, it would actually make everyone hyper smart.

That sounds great, right? Humans and AI are making each other better. Musk also alluded to the neural lace being inserted into the human brain via a vein. However, he didn't go into specific details about how it would all work, which likely required more research. So it was time to test the technology on animals.

When testing pharmaceuticals, technology, or anything that will be used on the human body, typically scientists begin by testing on animals. Research labs usually use primates because they're so genetically close to humans. On average, human DNA is about 96% identical to the DNA of most primates. Our

Our closest match is the chimpanzee, whose DNA is nearly 99% identical to ours. But Neuralink didn't use monkeys at first. It used pigs. In the summer of 2020, Musk live-streamed a Neuralink update. At one point, he showed several pens, each containing a research pig.

Musk even referred to the pigs by name and talked to them during the presentation. Each pig had a different status. Joyce didn't receive a Neuralink implant. Dorothy had one, but then it was removed. This showed that the Neuralink could be inserted and removed without damage. The third pig, Gertrude, had the Neuralink installed.

Musk demonstrated how it read her brain signals with melodic beeps. The beeps you're hearing are real-time signals from the neural link in Gautri's head. So this neural link connects to neurons that are in her snout. So whenever she snuffles around and touches something with her snout, that sends out neural spikes, which are detected here.

And so on the screen, you can see each of the spikes from the 1,024 electrodes. Musk showed the public how happy and healthy the pigs were. He even said that several times during the stream. The animals seemed to be doing just fine in the Neuralink lab.

It took some convincing, but in 2023, the FDA approved Neuralink's plan to begin testing on primates. But they would skip chimps altogether and go straight to humans.

In 2023, the FDA approved Neuralink to perform a human clinical trial. The company recruited patients with spinal cord injuries and some who were suffering from ALS. The public identity of the participants stayed private until a year later. On March 20th, 2024, Neuralink introduced the world to 29-year-old Nolan Arbaugh.

Arba had become a quadriplegic after a diving accident, dislocating two vertebrae in his cervical spine. It left him paralyzed from the chest down. He appeared on a live stream on X. During the clinical trial, Arba had the Neuralink device implanted in his brain. Since then, he said the device has improved his life a lot. In fact, the live stream showed how Arba could move a computer cursor and play chess using only his brain.

I love playing chess, and so this is one of the things that y'all have enabled me to do. Something that I wasn't able to really do much the last few years. It's especially not like this. I had to use like a mouse stick and stuff, but now it's all being done with my brain. Y'all can see the cursor moving around the screen. That's all me, y'all. It's pretty cool, huh?

Arbaugh went on to say that he also stayed up all night playing video games on his computer using Neuralink. The live stream showed that his brain-computer link was already strong. So maybe uploading your consciousness might become a reality sooner than we think. And after that, digital immortality. But when this happens, there is something we need to consider. The human soul. We will reach the point where our minds can be converted into a conscious, sentient digital program.

We'll have security in knowing that if we become injured or ill, we can continue to exist digitally. But would we still be human? I don't know, that's a question for philosophers. But I do know that because our time here is so short, it creates urgency.

Urgency to experience all we can while we can. That's why there's the concept of a bucket list. The urgency makes us human. If we can live forever and experience literally everything, what happens after that?

What purpose do we serve? What's our reason for even existing? And after a while, would we even want to? And there are ethical implications to consider. If you transfer your consciousness to somewhere else, in another body for instance, would that copy be considered human? Would it be you? And what if that copy lives on after you die? Does it inherit your rights and belongings?

It's a lot to think about. That being said, digital immortality isn't happening anytime soon. So enjoy actual life while you can. A simulation without risk will never be as exciting or as fun as the real thing. And we just have to accept that we're not meant to live forever and that's okay. But it'd be nice to have the option.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learn anything, do me a favor, leave the podcast a nice review. That lets me know to keep making these things for you. And like most topics I cover on the Y-Files, today's was recommended by you. So if there's a story you'd like to learn more about, go to the Y-Files.com slash tips. And special thanks to our patrons who make the Y-Files possible. I dedicate every episode to you and I couldn't do this without your support.

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All right, those are the plugs and that's the show. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.