Under what conditions would you consider uploading your brain?
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TVTranscript
00:00 (Music)
00:04 You've lived.
00:07 You've laughed.
00:08 You've loved.
00:10 Now what?
00:12 (Music)
00:16 This is WHAT IF,
00:18 and here's what would happen
00:20 if you could upload your brain.
00:23 Maybe it was a little sad
00:24 to say goodbye to your physical body,
00:26 but at least you still have your consciousness,
00:29 your mind and your memories
00:31 stored safely in the cloud.
00:33 And in the virtual world,
00:35 anything that was once real,
00:37 physical and finite
00:39 can simply be replaced.
00:41 But is this really you?
00:45 Is eternal youth and everlasting life
00:48 all that it's made out to be?
00:50 Or is there a dark side to cloud consciousness?
00:55 What could go wrong?
00:57 The science of being able to digitize your brain
01:00 and upload it to the cloud
01:01 is highly controversial
01:03 and ultimately inconclusive.
01:06 Some experts say the technology will never exist,
01:09 but others promise that we'll have it by 2050.
01:13 In fact, there's already a wait list.
01:16 An American startup called Nectome
01:19 claims that through a process called vitrification,
01:22 they can preserve both the external
01:25 and internal structure of your brain
01:27 in perfect microscopic detail.
01:30 They do this by replacing the blood flow in your brain
01:33 with embalming chemicals,
01:35 basically turning your meaty processor
01:38 into frozen glass.
01:40 And if you haven't already guessed it,
01:42 you can't survive this procedure,
01:45 at least not physically.
01:48 In theory, you'll live forever,
01:51 but that's only if Nectome
01:53 figures out how to upload your brain to the cloud
01:56 and then revive it.
01:58 Let's assume they do.
02:00 Benjamin Franklin once wrote that
02:02 "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain
02:05 except death and taxes."
02:07 But it turns out,
02:08 immortality might come at an even higher price.
02:12 Opting to be uploaded into the cloud
02:14 might have some unforeseen consequences.
02:18 Today, the cloud is pretty much just virtual storage.
02:21 You pay a company a monthly fee
02:23 to store all your family photos
02:25 so that their awkwardness doesn't slow down your computer.
02:29 But now we're talking about you,
02:31 and all your unique traits and special qualities,
02:33 and all the wonderful things you have to offer the world
02:36 for being uploaded to a server which
02:39 probably isn't powered by a benevolent
02:41 and somewhat scary-looking bearded man in the sky.
02:45 More likely, your e-heaven will be run by some tech giant
02:48 who will have access to your life's worth of data,
02:51 along with everyone else's.
02:53 Your continued existence would be subscription-based,
02:56 requiring you to pay for storage and maintenance
02:59 on some high-tech server.
03:01 Your new home, and I suppose your identity as well,
03:04 will look like this.
03:07 Because this is really what the cloud is.
03:10 It's basically a wide, interconnected network of warehouses
03:14 that are filled with hard drives,
03:15 and spread across multiple locations,
03:18 so that your data can be stored in several places at once,
03:22 just in case one of these warehouses were to go offline.
03:25 So unless you were rich enough to build your own
03:28 little private network of hard drives,
03:31 the term "home office" takes on a very dark meaning.
03:34 Would the company you subscribe to
03:36 be able to profit from their access to your mind,
03:39 memories, and talents?
03:41 What stops you from being copied and coded
03:44 as some kind of AI?
03:46 And then, what if we got into androids or surrogacy?
03:50 If technology advances to the point where we can cheat death,
03:54 why not cheat age, or health?
03:58 For the first time ever,
03:59 you could have the body you always wanted.
04:02 Forever.
04:03 But if you couldn't afford a top-of-the-line model,
04:06 what might you be forced to settle for?
04:10 But actually, what's far more likely than you becoming an android,
04:14 or having your brain stored in the cloud,
04:17 is having your brain stored in a box.
04:19 Russian billionaire Dmitry Itzkoff
04:22 is currently developing what he calls a "happiness box."
04:25 It's basically a computer that can send sensations to your brain,
04:29 just like your body does today.
04:31 In fact, the happiness box is being developed to replace your body.
04:36 If you don't totally get it,
04:37 think of the movie The Matrix.
04:40 That might be the closest thing to immortality.
04:43 So, what would you choose?
04:46 The red pill,
04:48 or the blue pill?
04:51 Right now, we don't need to worry about it.
04:53 Without knowing if the technology will exist,
04:56 or when it will become available,
04:58 the most important question we should be asking ourselves is,
05:01 how to make the most of the limited time we have?
05:05 Need some ideas?
05:07 Come back soon for more What If.
05:10 [music]