Tech billionaire Sam Altman paid $10,000 to be put on Nectome’s waiting list.
The entrepreneur is one of 25 people on the waiting list of the Nectome startup company, which claims that its chemical solution can preserve the integrity of your body for hundreds or even thousands of years, like a statue.
The idea is that someday in the future scientists will be able to scan your petrified brain and turn it into a computer model.
But in exchange for eternally preserving his mind, the 32-year-old will have to die in a process similar to physician-assisted suicide – which is only legal in five US states.
To do this, a live client connects to the machine and then injected with Nectome’s embalming chemicals. The company says that the method is “100% lethal”.
According to the MIT Technology Review, the process he’s signed up for involves embalming the brain so it can later be simulated onto a computer.
“The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide,” Nectome’s co-founder Robert McIntyre told the Review.
The company’s website says that their mission is “to keep your brain so well that all memories remain: from the excellent chapter of your favorite book to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie or lunch with your friends and family.”
“We believe that within the current century it will be feasible to digitize this information and use it to recreate your consciousness.”
Nectome said it plans to connect people with a terminal illness who sign up to a heart and lung machine and pump the embalming mixture into their cateroid arteries in their necks while they are alive but under general anesthesia.
The company has consulted lawyers familiar with the law and said that if people have a terminal illness, they believe this service will be legal to them.