You may soon be able to catch up with
Friends and relatives who have passed away — on your computer. Dr. Pratik Desai, a Silicon Valley computer scientist who has founded multiple
Artificial intelligence platforms, boldly predicts that a human being’s “consciousness” could be uploaded onto digital devices by the end of the year. “Start regularly recording your parents, elders and loved ones,” he urged Friday in a
Twitter thread that’s since racked up more 5.7 million views and tens of thousands of responses. “With enough transcript data, new voice synthesis and video models, there is a 100% chance that they will live with you forever after leaving physical body,” Desai continued. “This should be even possible by end of the year.” Uploading a person’s consciousness would involve saving videos, voice recordings, documents and photos of the person you wish to reimagine to your computer. These compiled assets would then be uploaded into an AI system that would learn as much as it could about the deceased individual. The ultimate goal: for users to create an avatar resembling their loved one before he or she passed — so this person could, in a sense, live forever on your screen. Amid rising concerns about the growing global dominance of AI — marked by everything from “destructive” bot behavior to obsolete jobs to false criminal accusations — one company called Somnium Space is offering an AI-based “live forever” mode . “Literally, if I die — and I have this data collected — people can come or my kids, they can come in, and they can have a conversation with my avatar, with my movements, with my voice,” founder and CEO Artur Sychov told Vice . He added, “You will meet the person. And you would maybe for the first 10 minutes while talking to that person, you would not know that it’s actually AI. That’s the goal.” Another company, Deepbrain, has developed a program called “ Re;memory ” that allows users the opportunity to walk down a memorial hall dedicated to a late loved one and even interact with the person “through an actual conversation.” Meanwhile, similar freakishly futuristic technology is already being used for celebrities. Deepfakes use AI to manipulate videos and replace the genuine likeness of one person with an impossible-to-detect imitation, often to alarming effect. One AI platform created a “digital twin” of Bruce Willis — who has been diagnosed with aphasia , a brain disorder that affects his ability to communicate — to allow the actor’s likeness to appear on-screen despite his retirement from acting . The “Die Hard” actor’s deepfake has already made its debut, in an August 2021 commercial for MegaFon, a
Russian telecommunications company, which “grafted” his face onto Konstantin Solovyov for a commercial for MegaFon. The Willis estate has the final say on what’s created with his likeness and reportedly licensed the rights to use his face in the ad campaign. In Entertainment Weekly’s “Around the Table” video series last December, award-winning actresses Jean Smart and
Margot Robbie spoke about their concerns around potentially pornographic deepfakes. “After you’re dead, they’ll go, ‘Oh, let’s put Margot Robbie in that movie,’ a hundred years from now, having her doing God knows what. And your estate will have to sue them. It’ll be horrible, Margot,” Smart, 71, said. At the other end of the intellectual spectrum, many still argue that AI advancements — including ChatGPT — can be beneficial to humanity. However, a group of tech experts — including
Elon Musk — is urging a six-month pause in the training of advanced AI models, arguing the systems could have “profound risks to society and humanity.” The CEO of Twitter and
Tesla joined more than 1,000 experts in signing an open letter organized by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, which is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, the billionaire’s charitable grant organization. The letter calls for an industrywide pause until proper safety protocols have been developed and vetted by independent experts — and details potential risks that advanced AI could poses if not placed under proper oversight. Risks include the spread of “propaganda and untruth,”
Job losses, the development of “nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us” and the risk of “loss of control of our civilization.”