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A tech billionaire has paid more than £7,000 ($10,000) on the promise that one day the entire contents of his brain will be uploaded to a computer so that it is preserved forever.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman joined start-up company Nectome’s waiting list to upload the contents of his brain onto a computer so that his consciousness can live on after he dies.

Nectome, founded in 2016 by a pair of MIT AI researchers, hopes to eventually offer a way of preserving the brain and all its memories using a process called “aldehyde-stabilised cryopreservation.”

Mr Altman, founder of Y Combinator, told the MIT Technology Review: “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud.”

Speaking to the MIT Technology Review, Nectome’s founder, Robert McIntyre said that the process will involve a “high tech embalming technique” which causes the customer to die.

The living individual will be hooked up to a machine which pumps them with embalming chemicals, a method which is “100 per cent fatal” the company claimed.

“The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide,” Mr McIntyre said.

Nectome said on its site: “Our mission is to preserve your brain well enough to keep all its memories intact: from that great chapter of your favourite book to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie, or having dinner with your friends and family.

“We believe that within the current century it will be feasible to digitise this information and use it to recreate your consciousness.”

The company said it plans to connect people with terminal illnesses 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 anaesthesia.

After consulting with lawyers, the company believe that the process will be legal as it falls under California’s two-year-old End of Life Option Act, which permits doctor-assisted suicide for terminal patients.

Currently, Nectome doesn’t have a method for “uploading” the brains it stores, but it hopes to demonstrate a fully uploaded simulation of “a biological neural network” in 2024 according to its website.

The idea of uploading a human brain onto a computer has gained traction among some scientists.

Futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson told The Sun that he believes in 50 years’ time we’ll be able to transfer our brains to the cloud.

He said a person will be able to “use any android that you feel like to inhabit the real world.”