The Future Virtual You: How Will Digital Twins and Afterselves Change Our Identities?
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About
A talk at Future Day 2025 by James Hughes.
We already can make deepfakes of ourselves and others. There is an issue of consent; ideally people should consent to have digital twins of themselves made, even if its your grandma.
But if we start making digital twins of ourselves, which is already being done, they can go out and do things on our behalf. Many may not object to this application, but it will raise questions about identity. We want them to be sophisticated enough, and attentive to us enough, to perfectly mimic us, but not so sophisticated that they develop goals or identity of their own.
What if they do something criminal – are we liable?
What if your deepfake of grandma isn’t just her best, more friendly, most knowledgeable version, but starts to get creative or go rogue?
When would we have qualms about turning them off?
People can make ‘Afterselves’ (or death-bots) for the dying or dead, but if we start making our own, and refine them over time, they become digital assets that our descendants could inherit. Like copyright, the consent of the dead is probably a matter of time. We can make Einstein bots as much as we want, but should get grandma’s permission. Gifting our digital assets including agents to our inheritors is even better than consent.
If the person died in the last 30 years you need permission, but not before.
The utility question is moot – having a specific personality is only a gimmick for humans. We would have “Top Engineer” not bots with Einstein’s personality – and you definitely don’t want them to have self.
Also see grief-tech.
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| March 1st 09:30 | March 1st 11:30 | Feb 28th 16:30 | Feb 28th 19:30 | March 1st 00:30 |
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For active participation (asking questions etc) join via these links: day 1 & day 2 to get the appropriate link. Also see the Facebook event. If just lurking, you can tune in via this Riverside streaming link, or try YouTube (unstable).
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Digital twins present an intriguing concept, though they can only capture surface-level aspects of human personality and behavior. While they might offer some emotional comfort to those grieving, they cannot replicate the complex internal experiences that make us human, such as our inner dialogues and private thoughts. Looking ahead, advances in artificial superintelligence could potentially enable more sophisticated approaches to technological preservation of human consciousness and identity.