A scientist believes we are just SEVEN years away from achieving immortality.
Futurist and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil believes humans living forever could be possible by 2030 and it will coincide with the peaking of artificial intelligence (AI).
It's a bold prediction and many will say it won't play out, but the American expert has form for making correct estimations which in their time may have sounded outlandish.
He previously accurate predictions about technology advancements include saying in 1990 that within 10 years a computer could beat the world's best chess player.
Kurzweil also said wireless and handheld devices would become a major part of modern life and even championed the internet when many were skeptical.
He now says AI will reach "human levels of intelligence" by 2029 and a year later immortality will follow.
He told Futurism: “2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence.
“I have set the date 2045 for the 'Singularity' which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billionfold by merging with the intelligence we have created.”
Speaking to computer scientist Lex Fridman on a podcast, Kurzweil went on to say humans will be able to “advance human life expectancy” by “more than a year every year and I think we can get there by the end of this decade”.
He also believes we will be kept healthy by nanobots in our blood and could eventually begin uploading our thoughts and memories to the cloud.
Kurzwell says such advancements are not to be feared and will make humans "godlike".
“We’re going to be funnier. We’re going to be sexier. We’re going to be better at expressing loving sentiment,” he told NOEMA in 2015.
"If I want to access 10,000 computers for two seconds I can do that wirelessly," he explained, "and [my computational power] multiplies itself in the cloud ten thousand fold. That's what we're gonna do with our neocortex.
"So I'm walking along and I see Larry Page coming, and I better think of something clever to say but 300 million modules in my neocortex isn't gonna cut it. I need a billion for two seconds.
"I'll be able access that in the cloud, just like I can multiply the intelligence of my smartphone thousands-fold today."
In 2010, the boffin reviewed his own predictions over the two previous decades and found of 147 that he'd made in 1990, a total of 115 were "entirely correct", reports IFL Science.
A further 12 were essentially correct, and only three were entirely wrong.
Kurzweil's incorrect predictions, include self-driving cars being implemented worldwide by 2009.
