A 32-year-old tech-billionaire, Sam Altman, is paying $10,000 to be killed so his brain can be preserved forever.
The entrepreneur is one of 25 people on a waiting list at Nectome, a startup company that says they can upload the contents of a person’s brain and store it on a computer to grant eternal life to your consciousness.
There’s just one (huge) catch: it has to kill you first.
The process, as described in MIT Technology Review, involves embalming your brain for it to potentially be simulated later in a computer.
The living customer would be hooked up to a machine and then pumped full of Nectome’s custom embalming chemicals.
The method is “100 per cent fatal”, claims the company.
“The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide,” Nectome’s co-founder Robert McIntyre revealed to the publication.
“Our mission is to preserve your brain well enough to keep all its memories intact: from that great chapter of your favourite book to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie, or having dinner with your friends and family,” writes Nectome on its site.
“We believe that within the current century it will be feasible to digitise this information and use it to recreate your consciousness.”
The reality, however, is that physician-assisted suicide is currently only legal in five out of 50 US states, and individuals seeking it must have a terminal illness, as well as a prognosis of six months or less to live.
