Sam Altman Can Afford It

I know what you are thinking, sounds great for Sam Altman? Well not entirely as the process and preparations will inevitably end the billionaire’s life. All so that his brain can be uploaded.

Altman who is only 32 is currently on a 25 person waiting list at the start-up company Nectome. They are the ones promising that they can upload human brains to a cloud. The procedure is known as ‘eternal preservation.’ It will require him to go out in a process similar to physician-assisted suicide.

The companies co-founders are aiming to preserve brains down to the last microscopic detail thanks to a high-tech embalming process. The process requires your brain to be turned in to glass, but the company uses the term vitrifixed.

What use is it?

The whole process could be very useful for people who are suffering from a terminal illness and want their brain to be preserved forever. Sam Altman said recently: “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud. There is a lot of philosophical debate, but to me, a simulation is close enough that it’s worth something. And there is a much larger humanitarian aspect to the whole thing. Right now, when a generation of people dies, we lose all their collective wisdom. You can transmit knowledge to the next generation, but it’s harder to transmit wisdom, which is learned. Your children have to learn from the same mistakes. That was fine for a while, but we get more powerful every generation. The sheer immense potential of what we can do increases, but the wisdom does not.”

The company made it’s intentions clear after the Co-founders spent several weeks staying in an Airbnb in Oregon. They arrived to buy the body of an elderly woman. They managed to preserve her brain after just 2.5 hours. Which means that even though the tactics they use may be very creepy, they still know what they are doing!

Would you ever consider having your brain “turned to glass” and uploaded to the cloud so that it may live on forever, or do you feel like it is too strange?