Is Digital Immortality Possible And Is It Needed - Alternative View

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Is Digital Immortality Possible And Is It Needed - Alternative View
Is Digital Immortality Possible And Is It Needed - Alternative View

Video: Is Digital Immortality Possible And Is It Needed - Alternative View

Video: Is Digital Immortality Possible And Is It Needed - Alternative View
Video: How Close Are We to Immortality? 2024, March
Anonim

In 2016, Chang Ji-sen's youngest daughter Nyon passed away from a blood-related illness. But in February, a mother reunited with her daughter in virtual reality. Experts modeled an electronic version of her child using motion capture technology for the documentary. Wearing a VR headset and tactile gloves, Jang could walk, talk and play with this digital version of her daughter. You can understand a desperate mother, but in reality it is even a little creepy. Is this really our future? Will our descendants really want to communicate with us in this way? We won't care. Or won't it? Let's figure it out.

Can immortality exist

Once upon a time immortality was science fiction, and people did not even think about it - there was no time for that. Now, we live in a relatively calm world and one can think about such things. More and more people are now interested in immortality - whether it is the physical immortality of body and mind, or simply creating a living memorial, such as the AI version of a robot or chatbot with their habits. The question is, should we do this? And if so, how should it look?

It all started with cryonics, when people began to think that they could freeze their bodies and then defrost them after 300 years to see what would happen there. Only with whom there to communicate and what to do to such a “fossil” in such a rapidly changing world, few people cared. They were simply excited by the idea itself. Although until now no one knows how to unfreeze those who have been frozen.

Research like the one published in PLOS ONE is fueling the fire. It said that you can act with chemical or electrical probes on the human brain and to some extent it will start working again.

It is worth distinguishing between the two goals of achieving immortality. In one case, the person himself wants to be immortal and live forever, or just wake up after many years to look at the future. In the second case, the relatives of the person who died want immortality. They want to somehow communicate with him. But one must understand that it will still not be he, but only a computer model that will deceive feelings and memory. In the first case, it will most likely be about real physical immortality, and in the second, only virtual.

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Immortality in the chatbot

In 2015, Evgeniya Kuida, co-founder and CEO of software company Replika, lost her best friend Roman after he was hit by a car in Moscow. Frustrated by the loss of a loved one, she taught the chatbot thousands of text messages. Over the years, Eugene's acquaintance exchanged these messages with Roman. So she created a digital copy of it that could still “talk” with family and friends.

Evgenia and Roman
Evgenia and Roman

Evgenia and Roman.

The first time she contacted the bot, she was surprised at how close she felt like she was talking to her friend again. “It was very emotional,” she said. "I didn't expect this feeling because I was working on this chatbot, I knew how it was built." It turns out that the machine simply tricked her brain and senses, forcing her to think out reality.

Nevertheless, Evgenia understands that it is unrealistic to create such a copy for mass use. Each person communicates differently with friends, colleagues, relatives and so on. People appreciate exactly how the deceased communicated with them, and a model based on communication with another person may disappoint them or they may simply not recognize the person.

Perhaps what happened sounded familiar. If yes, then you may have seen this in the TV series "Black Mirror". One of the episodes tells the story of a young woman whose boyfriend died in a car accident. In mourning, she signs up for a service that allows her to communicate with his version of AI, based on his past online communications and social media profiles.

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Another problem with the created copies is that they only allow you to “communicate” with the person who was then. He will not develop and change with you, and we value our friends precisely for how we develop and change together with them, while remaining close to each other.

Is it possible to digitize a person

There remains another option - to create a full-fledged digitized copy of a person. Perhaps even during his lifetime. Evgenia agrees that this is only partially possible. That is, you can create a complete virtual copy of a person, which will also look and move. Here are just a copy of his mind and emotions is still impossible to create.

Again, let's say we create such a copy, but it will be somewhere on a social network or just in the cloud. Then the company that supports the technology goes broke and shut down. Where will the created image go and then how can I access it? Take the history of the computer that Tim Berners Lee used to create HTML on the Internet - the machine exists, but nobody knows the password.

One of the more scientific concepts in the digitalization of death came from Nectome, a Y Combinator startup. He suggests preserving the brain for further memory retrieval through a high-tech embalming process. The catch is that the brain must be “fresh”. Simply put, a person must be specially killed for this.

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Nectome planned to conduct experiments with terminally ill volunteers in California, as such experiments and euthanasia are allowed there. The startup collected the necessary investments and recruited not only a base of volunteers, but also those who are ready to then test the technology on themselves when it starts working. It is reported that there were 25 such applicants. The startup raised $ 1 million in funding, along with a large federal grant. But Nectome does not respond to requests from journalists about the course of the experiment, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology refused to participate in the study.

There is another project called Augmented Eternity from FlyBits, which aims to help people live digitally in order to transfer knowledge to future generations.

Augmented Eternity takes your digital traces - emails, photos, social media activities - and feeds them into a machine learning engine. That in turn analyzes how people think and act to give you a digital copy of the studied person. Rahnama claims that such a person can even be contacted as a voice assistant or even an anthropomorphic robot.

The team is currently building a prototype, and Rahnama says that instead of asking Siri questions, you can ask your colleague or just a smart person who understands this.

Creating a robotic copy of a human

Many have heard of Hiroshi Ishiguro's creation of over 30 realistic androids in the Robotics Lab at Osaka University in Japan - including his robotic version. He was a pioneer in human-robot interaction research, studying the importance of things like facial expressions - the subtle movements of the eyes, lips, and facial expressions.

The most famous robot Ishiguro - his own copy
The most famous robot Ishiguro - his own copy

The most famous robot Ishiguro - his own copy.

My main goal is to understand what a human is by creating a very human-like robot,”Ishiguro said. “We can improve the algorithm to make it even more human-like, but for that we need to find some important human traits.

Ishiguro said that if he dies, his robot can continue to lecture students in his place. However, according to him, he will never become one and will not be able to put forward new ideas. This is what you need to understand.

With the robot, you can share the memory and he will say: "I am Hiroshi Ishiguro." But this is all over. He will not develop as a person, since every day certain events change the vector of our development and no AI alone will be able to simulate this. You can even safely say that never.

It has started raining and you went to the store to hide from it. They saw a magazine about science and decided to become a researcher. Or you missed the bus at a bus stop and met a person who interested you in studying geography. The machine is not capable of this.

This is also Ishiguro's brainchild
This is also Ishiguro's brainchild

This is also Ishiguro's brainchild.

Ishiguro believes that very soon we will have a brain-computer interface, which will erase the line between us and robots. It will not be clear where the memory is stored, but at the same time we can share it. But again, this will not be development and communication with such a robot after the death of its "source" (read for this comparison) will quickly get bored, since communication is an exchange of information. It must be constantly updated, otherwise it will quickly get bored.

People developed thanks to the biological principle - the survival of the fittest. But today we have technology that allows us to improve our genes ourselves and develop robots that look like humans. Maybe this is our evolution? Or, on the contrary, is it her dead end?

If the former, then we will be able to design our future ourselves, but the future is just a little scary in which all people will become just a computer program. It turns out, a group of system administrators will have to exist and be constantly updated (multiplied)? Will they be gods or slaves who provide digital well-being and immortality to others? Why then can't they just erase all the files and get on with their lives? So many questions and so few answers …

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