News You Can't Use: Media Mogul Dmitry Itskov Plans to Live Forever by Uploading His Personality to a Robot

Is it possible to defeat the grim specter of hateful death and should this victory over the grave be used to preserve some Russian web content oligarch? The answer is both of these questions is, of course, "no" but this isn't going to stop a fantastically wealthy Muscovite from attempting to recreate a plot from a lesser Isaac Asimov novel in a bid to allow an endless, mediocre eternity imprisoned in a mechanical hell. I wish him all the best.

Money can buy you immortality, according to the Russian internet multi-millionaire who is ploughing a fortune into a project to create a human that never dies.

Well, I'm convinced. Trade one bubble for another, sounds reasonable.

The group of neuroscientists, robot builders and consciousness researchers say they can create an android that is capable of uploading someone’s personality.

I would like to hang out with consciousness researchers and maybe party with them. That sounds absolutely righteous. I'm not sure how we'll convert the human mind and soul into a "has performed a fatal error will now shut now" computer program to be uploaded into an android, but if anyone can do it it's the guys ripping off a plutocrat who also uses his money to buy tiny giraffes.

"Different scientists call it uploading or they call it mind transfer. I prefer to call it personality transfer" - Dmitry Itskov​

I prefer to call it the hope of worms, but I'm a deeply cynical individual who probably needs extensive re-education.

It would work by uploading a digital version of a human brain to an android – effectively rebooting a person’s mind – which would take the form of a robotic copy of a human body or, once technology has developed, a hologram with a full human personality.

Once we discover this technology that currently doesn't exist in even the most rudimentary form we'll be all set.

Mr Itskov, who at 35 has amassed a fortune from his internet media firm New Media Stars, says he is “100pc sure it will happen”.

I made all those wonderful and joyous "reaction" videos, I deserve to live forever in a twenty-foot tall mechanical body.

He told BBC Horizon in a documentary that airs Wednesday: “If there is no immortality technology, I’ll be dead in the next 35 years.”

I'm not going to make it past 70, for obvious reasons. *gestures toward bloated, decadent lifestyle*

Now to transfer my personality into this robot T-Rex.

The project’s first step is to create a robot that can be controlled using the mind. 

Simple little milk run, no big deal.

“The ultimate goal of my plan is to transfer someone’s personality into the new artificial carrier,” Mr Itskov told the Horizon documentary, writes The Sunday Times.

Imagine the horrific nightmare world, worthy of your worst "young adult dystopia" hack, that will result. We gotta get on this.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.