Virtual Eternity
In the USA, the technology of "digital immortality" is being developed based on social media data
According to experts, these technologies cannot reproduce intuition, thoughts, behavior and empathy yet, but they are already able to preserve a small part of the emotional heritage.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) use the publications of 25 volunteers on social networks to train artificial intelligence to reproduce their judgments and manner of communication. This was reported on Monday by the British newspaper The Times.
Among those who provided their data to participate in the study are terminally ill people who hope that their digital copies will comfort their relatives, and highly qualified professionals who seek to share their experience and knowledge with future generations. The initiators of the project, called Augmented Eternity, admit that information from social networks is not enough to accurately recreate the manner of communication of a real person or make an expert judgment on his behalf, but they hope that the technologies of "digital immortality" will be improved.
"The capabilities of artificial intelligence are far from reproducing our intuition, thoughts, behavior and empathy," said Hossein Rahnama, a leading MIT researcher. "However, they have already reached a level that allows us to preserve a small part of our emotional heritage."
Experts emphasize that they continue to receive many letters from volunteers who want to perpetuate their knowledge or feelings. At the same time, the researchers admit that the idea of creating digital doubles that will be able to function even after the death of their real prototypes raises many ethical and legal questions. Discussions are also going on about which format of communication with a double will be preferable for his live interlocutors – a chatbot, an avatar or something fundamentally new.
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