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Speaking at the Meltdown Festival in London, the controversial computer programmer said that sources at Silicon Valley which is regarded as the tech capital of the world say they are close to creating an ultra-powerful AI.

He adds people will shortly begin uploading their brains to machines, essentially giving them immortality.

The 45-year old told festival goers via a video link from the Ecuadorian embassy: I know from our sources deep inside the Silicon Valley institution[s] that they genuinely believe that they are going to produce AI that's so powerful, relatively soon, that people will have their brains digitised, uploaded to these AIs and live forever in simulation, therefore have eternal life.

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Mr Assange added the development could lead to a lack of productivity, as there would no urgency as people will literally have forever.

He added: It's like a religion for atheists.

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And given youre in a simulation, why not program the simulation to have endless drug and sex orgy parties around you.

He continued by saying that this ridiculous quasi-religious model that's it all going to lead to nirvana.

Mr Assange is not the first to make these claims.

Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov has said he will make it possible for humans to live forever in the next 30 years by uploading their brains onto a computer.

The 35-year-old Russian is the founder of the 2045 Initiative, which is an organisation working on making immortality a reality by scientists creating a feasible program which maps the brain.

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It then transfers the mind onto a computer, which is put on a robot body or as a hologram.

Mr Itskov said in a BBC documentary titled The Immortalist: "Within the next 30 years, I am going to make sure that we can all live forever.

I'm 100 per cent confident it will happen. Otherwise I wouldn't have started it.

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LIVE FOREVER? Julian Assange claims immortality is near by 'DIGITISING BRAINS' - Express.co.uk