Death used to be the end, at least as far as socialising was concerned. Not any more. I recently came across Eter9 (www.eter9.com), a new social network that promises a form of internet immortality for its users. From what I understand, it works much like Facebook, at least while you’re alive, connecting you to friends, family and others who share your interests.
However, it has one extra, magic ingredient – artificial intelligence (AI). This analyses what you post and what you respond to; what you ‘like’; what you comment on; and what you say. The site’s creator, Henrique Jorge, is even working to create an AI system that can learn from other networks, including Facebook. All this data is then used to create a profile that can act for you when you’re not online.
And if you happen to be offline permanently, for the reason that, say, you’re dead? Well, that’s no problem. The AI will carry on posting and responding for you, ‘smiling’ at family news or a funny cat video, and interacting cheerfully with both the living and the not-so-living, long after you’re gone.
Blimey. Let’s think about this a little. If it’s not bad enough that some people can’t go out for a nice walk or a meal without documenting the whole event on Facebook, we may have to put up with these bores rattling on after they’ve kicked the bucket. True, at least they won’t actually be communicating from the afterlife – ‘I’ve just seen Johnny Cash duetting with Elvis, and Elizabeth I was in the audience’ – but all the same, what the hell is going on here? Welcome to the world of the digital undead.
It turns out that ‘internet immortality’ could be the next big thing. The mega-brained boffins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working on another prototype service, Etemi.me, which will collect your thoughts and memories, then create an intelligent avatar that looks like you. Hundreds of years later, your descendents will still be able to interact with this avatar to get a sense of who you were.
Meanwhile, researchers at universities in Orlando and Chicago are exploring how we might use AI, archiving and computer imaging to create digital versions of ourselves that might go on thinking and talking for us after we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. Leaders in the field actually talk about ‘backup brains’; AI that learns who we are then, effectively, takes over should the original self fail.
This is both creepy and entirely daft. As human beings, we’re so wired into our bodies and our own bizarre, shifting consciousnesses that the very idea that a machine could sift through your various online interactions and recreate your mind is bonkers. I’m sure there are people – some long gone – who I’d love to have a chat with now, but AI could only approximate them. More to the point these artificially created personalities would be unbearable. Think about how people talk about themselves on social networks; the endless posts that exaggerate how much fun they had at every weekend adventure, every family event, every social gathering. Now imagine what people will post knowing this stuff could define them for posterity. It makes me shudder.
In case you haven’t noticed, social networks seem to make us more stupid, behaving like the most self-obsessed, ego-driven versions of ourselves. Is that the version you really want preserved, or the people you want to network with after they’ve passed on? A digital ‘you’ would capture all your thoughts, all your feelings, all your best hopes and dreams and all your dullest, darkest and downright nastiest thoughts.
All that stuff happens in the brain, not on a social network and, frankly, I’d rather not have any AI digging around in there.