Startup Out of MIT Promises Digital Afterlife — Just Hand Over Your Data

v3rgEz writes "A new startup out of MIT offers early adopters a chance at the afterlife, of sorts: It promises to build an AI representation of the dearly departed based on chat logs, email, Facebook, and other digital exhaust generated over the years. "Eterni.me generates a virtual YOU, an avatar that emulates your personality and can interact with, and offer information and advice to your family and friends after you pass away," the team promises. But can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?"

Comments

No.

[damn_registrars]

But can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?"

No, it cannot. Once you're dead, you're dead. Game over.

Re:No.

[CanHasDIY]

But can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?"

No, it cannot. Once you're dead, you're dead. Game over.

True that. I doubt any software can truly emulate the nuance of human personality based solely on pictures and tweets.

Re:No.

[Megol]

This idea can't make anyone immortal, right. But there are uses to something like this IFF the simulation is good enough. The problem is that we still can't create intelligent programs and until we can the result of something like this can only be a slightly tasteless version of Eliza.

Re:No.

[SJHillman]

I don't know... most of the people I know that use Twitter and Facebook heavily have slightly less personality than most software.

Re:No.

[dmbasso]

No, it cannot. Once you're dead, you're dead. Game over.

True that. I doubt any software can truly emulate the nuance of human personality based solely on pictures and tweets.

Actually it is worse than that. People should learn to grieve and then go on with their lives. A bot would only hinder this necessary mental healing process.

Re:No.

[ackthpt]

But can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?"

No, it cannot. Once you're dead, you're dead. Game over.

Well, assume they could make a perfect clone, the original you would still be dead and that's what we fear the most in this, some construct which believes it's me also, doesn't have the continuity.

Besides, I don't think I'd be a happy clone/chatbot going around with a patent number on my arse.

Re:No.

[jdbuz]

I just want it to keep updating my FB status with predetermined posts such as, "Wow! Who knew they had free Wi-Fi up here?"

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but this answer is not sufficiently cyberpunk. Clearly you need to rewatch Serial Experiments Lain.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but this answer is not sufficiently cyberpunk. Clearly you need to rewatch Serial Experiments Lain.

There is no need for a real body in the wired. Come, join us.

captcha related : CoRonary

Re:No.

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Besides, I don't think I'd be a happy clone/chatbot going around with a patent number on my arse.

Yes, you would. You'd be programmed to be happy. (and to not notice the patent number).

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

But there are uses to something like this IFF the simulation is good enough.

What sorts of uses? This doesn't sound like something that could be used to, for example, enable Stephen Hawking's genius to continue working on problems after he passes away.

Re:No.

[thewolfkin]

yes.. I have some hootsuite scheduled posts to my twitter of a similar thought. I push them back every year or so. It'll be funny if I forget one year.

Re:No.

[bleckywelcky]

People's obsession with the world around them after death is odd. None of the major religions talk about just hanging around in the normal world after death to see what is going on. And secular followings certainly don't. So most of what we do before death, regarding death, is for the sake of satisfaction while we're alive. And that should really cover, at most, your required responsibilities. I.e. if you are the sole income earner in a family with kids, then get a life insurance policy to be responsible for those kids. And broader global issues like not damaging the Earth, so future generations can enjoy it too.

So when people put tremendous effort into setting up wills, estates, etc, I find it hilarious. The person that is potentially dying has no interest whatsoever in any of that. It is impossible for them to care at all, because they are dead and can not care. About the best outcome is getting to see which of your family members fights over the writing of the will or estate, so you can see which values your money over the family relationships.

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

Well if you do it right and use brain state rather than just tweets and facebook posts, then you don't need to greive at all, because you'd still be alive, and your consciousness would be housed in a silicon brain rather than a meat brain.

Re:No.

[bob_super]

I'll take "Cool, all the promiscuous girls are down here!"

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you do it right and use brain state rather than just tweets and facebook posts, then you don't need to greive at all, because you'd still be alive, and your consciousness would be housed in a silicon brain rather than a meat brain.

And how exactly would you be transferring said "consciousness" into that silicon brain? A copy of a brain and it's mind is not the original consciousness. And even if in some fantasy a consciousness generator (BEC or somesuch) were inlined into the system it still would not be the original persons consciousness, merely another one with the same memories etc. The original person, consciousness, would still be dead or whatever and you'd be living with a lie, which granted is enough for most people..

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

The "original you" dies every time something in your brain changes. What's the difference?

What if you replaced every neuron in your brain with an artificial one, one at a time. Would this make it easier to pretend their is continuity? What if we hide the blob of meat that used to be your brain after the process is over?

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

People's obsession with the world around them after death is odd. None of the major religions talk about just hanging around in the normal world after death to see what is going on. And secular followings certainly don't. So most of what we do before death, regarding death, is for the sake of satisfaction while we're alive. And that should really cover, at most, your required responsibilities. I.e. if you are the sole income earner in a family with kids, then get a life insurance policy to be responsible for those kids. And broader global issues like not damaging the Earth, so future generations can enjoy it too.

So when people put tremendous effort into setting up wills, estates, etc, I find it hilarious. The person that is potentially dying has no interest whatsoever in any of that. It is impossible for them to care at all, because they are dead and can not care. About the best outcome is getting to see which of your family members fights over the writing of the will or estate, so you can see which values your money over the family relationships.

Actually, according to Spiritualism and eye witness accounts since about forever, many spirits apparently hang around earth for a long long time. Many watching their families. Religions tell you what it serves them to tell you, they are man-made organizations designed to serve man-made purposes..

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows, perhaps the thing comes out of the closet for the departed and makes terror threats all over twitter.

Re:No.

[dmbasso]

To be fair, it is hard to tell, as you can't experience other people's consciousness. But you yourself isn't exactly the same you of a millisecond ago. So if you could make a copy of your neural pathways, even if roughly accurate, other people wouldn't be able to easily distinguish copy from original... I think that's the point TsuruchiBrian was making, for all practical purposes, you would be alive (from someone else's point of view). If your copies would have the subjective experience of being the actual you, that's probably something that we will never know.

Re:No.

[fastest fascist]

What does this even mean? If you can transfer "brain state" to silicon, why can't you just make a copy of a living person instead of a dead or dying one? And if you had a silicon copy of yourself, would you be willing to kill the meat-you? No? Then I'd say a brain-state copy isn't you, it's a copy.

In short, either all this business about a continuous, individual consciousness is largely illusory or we just don't understand the phenomenon very well at all yet.

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

And if you had a silicon copy of yourself, would you be willing to kill the meat-you? No? Then I'd say a brain-state copy isn't you, it's a copy.

I would not be willing to kill the meat me. This is because I have evolved some pretty sophisticated self preservation instincts. That doesn't mean the copy can;t *also* be me. There is no rule of the universe that says there can be only 1 me. If I copied myself, I'm sure the meat me, would be sad that he is still going to die of old age. The silicon me will be ecstatic that the copying process worked.

It's easy to say that the meat me is the *real* me. But I think a more appropriate way to look at the situation is that we are constantly changing into different people. The present me is a new person that came from the me from a moment ago. The future me is a new me that is going to come from the present me in a moment. A copy is a scenario where there are 2 future me's rather than only 1. Unfortunately the biological copy has some limitations and is going to die.

Looking at it this way I think clears up some confusion. You asked would *I* be willing to kill the meat me. This presupposes that *I* will be only 1 of the 2 copies, which is wrong. If there are 2 of me, they would both not want to die equally. One of the copies would be better able to achieve that goal.

In short, either all this business about a continuous, individual consciousness is largely illusory or we just don't understand the phenomenon very well at all yet.

There is lots of things we *do* understand. We understand that the atoms that make up our brain are constantly changing. New ones come in and old ones go out. Some of the atoms in our brain belonged to other people's brains (some of which are probably even still alive). It is pretty clear that what makes you you is not the physical atoms. If this were true then you are definitely not the same person moment to moment.

The only other alternative is that it is the configuration of the atoms that is you. This explains why you feel like the same person even though your atoms are constantly changing. This also makes people unfomfortable because it also implies that you can be copied because your particular configuration can just as easily be made from different atoms. But this discomfort is not a good reason to believe this idea is wrong.

Also if the configuration is what makes you you, what does it mean if you can make a different configuration that has the same functional effect (i.e. a silicon copy). It acts like you, it has the same feelings, taste in music, loves the same peoople, has the same memories. Even if you want to call this thing a mere "copy", it would appear to be a copy that's as good as the original. There would be in my view as much utility in distinguishing these copies as there would be in trying to figure out which one of every set of identical twins got the soul.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

People should learn to grieve and then go on with their lives. A bot would only hinder this necessary mental healing process.

This is the way it has always been done, and therefore this is the way it must always be done forevermore.

Re:No.

[Cryacin]

Either way, that's future me's problem.

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

Unfortunately due to what I inherited from past me's, I am compelled to worry about future me's.

Re:No.

[fractoid]

What does "the original consciousness" even mean?

If you're completely unconscious, then when you wake up, you aren't "the same" consciousness because continuity has been broken. You're merely another 'you' running on the same hardware with the same memories.

Re:No.

[Oligonicella]

How indeed? The brain's state isn't just some electronic pattern, it's also the hormonal bath the brain resides in. Duplicate that in silicon. You would at the very best wind up with some android-like entity. This presumes you can "transfer" a dead brain. If you do it with a living one, you have an self-evident mental clone. Don't blame the parent though, when geeks think about these kinds of things, they tend to equate biology with circuitry.

Re:No.

[Oligonicella]

Me is a self-referent. If somehow you or most anybody got cloned down the the atomic structure level, the you that you are at the moment wouldn't at all look at the other as "me". Rather as some other person who is just like you - a copy. This will be reinforced by the very act of going in to get copied. How would you know it was the "you" that came in? You would still be in the same place when you woke up, if you had to go to sleep at all. The other you would "occur" somewhere else on receiving consciousness.

To accomplish tricking you into not knowing, they would have to go to some extremes that I'd bet solid money on would be highly illegal at that time.

That's a very physics dependent mystical view of what "me" means.

f you believe in souls, not an issue. Twins have two.

Re:No.

[Oligonicella]

Hallucinations don't count. People see many things that aren't real, especially concerning deceased relatives. You voided one of your own references as well. Spiritualism is a religion, it's practitioners are self-serving like all the others.

Re:No.

[Wycliffe]

Depending on when the copying took place, the original "me" might not be too upset.
Just like people take comfort in the idea that they live on in their children I can see
taking comfort in the idea that you live on in silicon. If I was 100 and could copy
myself before I die I might consider it so at least one of the me's could continue
doing whatever I thought was important to do. Likewise if I could keep a backup at
home that could be activated to take care of my children if I died I would also do
  that.

Re:No.

[Vintermann]

But can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?

No, it cannot. Once you're dead, you're dead. Game over.

Sure it can! It can provide notoriety, media attention, and maybe even a position in the ethics faculty.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. Today. I'm seeing this as similar to the point before Google Search started and after Google Search started. Search sucked, it wasn't thought out well, and it still has a ways to go. Software hydrated from 'old' data might suck...but what about Google glass or other technologies supplementing and reinforcing patterns? I personally think the whole idea is creepy, but what if a great-great-great grandson wanted to know more about his ancestors? I read an article about Amazon Glacier (cold-storage, Blu-ray disc-based storage) that hinkered a thought about Cryosynthesis... take it from there.

TL; DR: why poopoo something in its infancy? ["This child is stupid, can't duplicate life, kill it"] Let's see where this goes.

Vader

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

What does "the original consciousness" even mean?

If you're completely unconscious, then when you wake up, you aren't "the same" consciousness because continuity has been broken. You're merely another 'you' running on the same hardware with the same memories.

That's the error of perception right there. You are never "un"conscious in the sense that you are inferring and there is never a break of continuity. There are periods of time when your field of consciousness is not being fed much signal though, during which time when unmodulated it simply has not much to be conscious of but it itself still remains. Consciousness is a physical property of reality. We experience abstractions, abstractions cannot experience us.

Re:No.

[AmiMoJo]

I don't buy this argument. There seems to be this idea in sci-fi that if you copy your brain you are somehow still alive, but IMHO it isn't really you. It's a copy, the original one still dies, that stream of conciousness ends. You can't download yourself to a computer or a new body, just make a copy and then die yourself.

Re:No.

[david_thornley]

Biology can be replaced by circuitry, for any purpose that doesn't involve examination of the internals. This includes both the complex electrical and complex chemical processes in the brain (which indeed is more complicated than many people seem to think). Whether this is possible in the near future, or feasible, or fast enough, or a good idea, are other questions.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually want to go that way. But this is creepy.

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

If somehow you or most anybody got cloned down the the atomic structure level, the you that you are at the moment wouldn't at all look at the other as "me".

I would probably phrase this as: Both my future me's would not view eachother as the same person as themselves.

You would still be in the same place when you woke up, if you had to go to sleep at all. The other you would "occur" somewhere else on receiving consciousness.

I never wake up in the same place in the bed that I went to sleep in. If my clone and I both wok up in the same bed, I'm sure neither of us would no for sure which was the original copy, based solely on discontinuity.

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

It's a copy, the original one still dies, that stream of conciousness ends.

So if you could freeze someone and thaw them out, they would not be really you because their stream of consciousness was not continuous?

You can't download yourself to a computer or a new body, just make a copy and then die yourself.

Well if you *could* download yourself into a computer or a new body, how would that be any different? That's like saying I want you to email me an image file, but I don;t want it to be a copy, I want it to be the original. What does that even mean? It's the information that's meaningful, not the atoms used to represent that information at any given time. You can represent the same image using different materials (pits in a cd, electric charges on a magnetic disk, 1's and 0's written in a notebook with a pencil)

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://triumphpc.com/johnlennon/index.shtml

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

Imagine the following thought experiments:

1. You take out your brain and cut it right down the middle. you make a copy of both halves and reattach the halves so that you have 2 brains each with half original atoms and half copies. You take each of these brains and stick them into artificial bodies (e.g. robots). They both have the same memories and inclinations, until the moment they awaken and slowly diverge as they start to have different experiences. Are they both you? Are neither you?

2. You replace one neuron in your brain with a clone of this same neuron and reattach in the same way that the original neuron was attached. It functions just as the old one did. You feel exactly the same. Is this just an illusion? Is this a different person who only thinks he's you? What if we repeat this process 100 billion times, and replace your neurons one by one and get the same result (you feel the same and act the same)? What if I told you we were in fact taking all your old neurons and putting them back together into your original brain and sticking that into a robot that also acted and felt like you (but in a robot)? Which one would be you? Both? Neither? What if instead of pulling out your neurons 1 at a time, we replaced the atoms in your neurons one at a time? This is kind of whats already happening in your brain already just through normal biological process, the only difference is that nobody is assembling the neurons that are removed, back into your original brain.

Re:No.

[AmiMoJo]

So if you could freeze someone and thaw them out, they would not be really you because their stream of consciousness was not continuous?

I never said continuous. You can pause it, sure. Copying to a new body is rather different though. One conciousness ends and never re-starts. That original person dies, they cannot experience what the copy does.

Consider this. If it were possible to make the copy and keep the original around would that mean there were two of you? Would your conciousness be looking out of four eyes, listening with four ears, be in two different places at once? Of course not, the two would be separate and immediately begin to diverge as their experiences differed.

Re:No.

[TsuruchiBrian]

I never said continuous. You can pause it, sure. Copying to a new body is rather different though. One conciousness ends and never re-starts. That original person dies, they cannot experience what the copy does.

That's only if you refuse to consider the copy to be the same person. Obviously if we do consider the copy to be the same person, then he never died, and if we don't then he did die. My argument is that we *should* consider the copy to be the same person for reasons I have already stated. We are already copies of our past selves.

Consider this. If it were possible to make the copy and keep the original around would that mean there were two of you? Would your conciousness be looking out of four eyes, listening with four ears, be in two different places at once? Of course not, the two would be separate and immediately begin to diverge as their experiences differed.

Yes they would become 2 different consciousness. But they started from the same consciousness. Neither one is more you than the other. This is exactly the same is if you made 2 copies kept them both alive and killed the original.

It has been the case throughout all of human history that you can clearly say which human being "was you" at all points in time, because of the way human biology works. If you had a time machine you could find the "you" from 1979 or the you from 2020, or definitively say that "you" didn't exist in 1903.

What I am saying is that this limitation of biology may one day come to an end, and we may have to explore how this affects our preconceptions of terms like "me". I think we will need to have a new model for how consciousness evolves, and allow for branching.

Imagine if whenever a cell divided, one of the 2 descendents died. It would be easy to treat this new cell as the same cell because it has a clear and single ancestor and descendent. You can look at every point in time and see which single cell corresponds to this particular lineage, and you might be tempted to refer to all these cells as "the same cell" (e.g. cell X). If you all of a sudden remove this limitation, and allow cells to divide (without one always dying), the language of "which one of these cells Y, Z *is* cell X", doesn't really make sense anymore. You have to change your terminology to "cell X is cell Y's ancestor" and "cell Z is cell X's ancestor" , and "cell X has 2 descendents, cell Y and cell Z".

All of this has happened before...

[heezer7]

and will happen again.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[randomhacks]

You're right. Channel 4 (UK) Black Mirror - Episode 1: "Martha and Ash are a young couple who move to a remote cottage. The day after the move, Ash is killed, returning the hire van. At the funeral, Martha's friend Sarah tells her about a new service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased. By using all his past online communications and social media profiles, a new 'Ash' can be created. Martha is disgusted by the concept but then in a confused and lonely state she decides to talk to 'him'..." Definitively worth watching.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[gnick]

So say we all.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[JeremyWH]

Yup, I'm booking my ticket to Earth ASAP! , o wait..

Re:All of this has happened before...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's okay, Syfy pulled the plug. It'll never happen again. Cycle broken.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[TWiTfan]

I seem to recall a similar situation when someone tried creating such an avatar back on Caprica.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[Minwee]

What, the skiffy channel won't pull the plug on a good series and replace it with crap again?

Hey... you're right. I just looked at their lineup of shows and it's simply not possible for that to happen. Never mind.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[mbourgon]

Came for the Black Mirror reference. The tone is black as pitch, but the writing is damnably good.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[thewolfkin]

same here... that episode is the only one I haven't seen. Too cringy for me. I read a synopsis and remained cringed out.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[Zaelath]

Which tells you just how actually repellent the idea is; when you consider the first episode includes the Prime Minister being extorted to have sex with a pig on live television for half an hour.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[Chuck Chunder]

Black Mirror is an absolutely awesome series (though perhaps series isn't the right word as each episode is standalone). Well worth watching.

Re:All of this has happened before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which tells you just how actually repellent the idea is; when you consider the first episode includes the Prime Minister being extorted to have sex with a pig on live television for half an hour.

Where the heck is this show? I must see it!!

Re: All of this has happened before...

[Mabhatter]

Came here just for this reference... It's surprisingly far down on the list.

This was EXACTLY what Zoe did to creat the original "cylon" AI's based on her dead friend. Further, it was what the Church of the One was going to use to offer people "eternal life."

Except all the avatars freaked out when they realized they were just copies of dead people. Only a handful could cope.

Tailia is the Cylon's god, not Zoe. That's why her little brother's ship was spared.

PRON!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is... will it continue to search for the degraded and twisted pron I so enjoy?

Re:PRON!!

[SJHillman]

Not even a robot will want to want C-SPAN

Serial Experiment Lain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the plot of a Japanese scifi....

Re:Serial Experiment Lain?

[gnick]

No. It wasn't Japanese.

Re:Serial Experiment Lain?

[dmbasso]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=serial+ex...

Re:Serial Experiment Lain?

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for googling for us the literal name of some obscure shit you were thinking about that nobody else gave a rat's ass about instead of direct linking it like a non-fucktard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain

direct link for people who don't want to sit through shitty animation to see what terrible animu this neckbeard thinks we should all be aware of

Re:Serial Experiment Lain?

[Pseudonym Authority]

Kill yourself.

Sirius Cybernetics?

[Anonymous Coward]

WIth a real live person personality?

Black Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Season 2 Episode 1

Arnold Rimmer sir...

[ravenscar]

Reporting for duty.

"Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back for breakfast."

Re:Arnold Rimmer sir...

[gnick]

Gods help us if Holly decides to bring Arnie back...

Re:Arnold Rimmer sir...

[Bradmont]

He's Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer
Without him life would be much grimmer...

Re:Arnold Rimmer sir...

[Darinbob]

"Stoke me a clipper!"

Yikes

[Bovius]

Holy balls that is creepy. At best, this would really weird people out who knew the dearly departed. At worst, it would provide a hook for traumatized loved ones to avoid dealing with the grief and get increasingly bottled up in a fantasy world.

It is difficult for me to imagine ways in which this would be a good thing.

Re:Yikes

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy balls that is creepy. At best, this would really weird people out who knew the dearly departed. At worst, it would provide a hook for traumatized loved ones to avoid dealing with the grief and get increasingly bottled up in a fantasy world.

It is difficult for me to imagine ways in which this would be a good thing.

That's the worst you can think of? Can you imagine these bastard avatars being used to advertise shite? Cause I can.

Re:Yikes

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently I'll be providing technical support, product suggestions, and torrents for my friends and family for quite some time after I'm gone.
^^;

Re:Yikes

[Dynedain]

I can think of a lot creepier uses than you suggest as the worst... but I can think of some good ones as well.

Is there a famous personality from history you'd love to have a conversation with? Einstein, Churchill, religious figure, celebrity?

Re:Yikes

[TWiTfan]

it would provide a hook for traumatized loved ones to avoid dealing with the grief and get increasingly bottled up in a fantasy world.

Joseph Adama in Caprica was creepily portrayed as having done just that with his dead daughter, with rather disturbing results.

Re:Yikes

[Darinbob]

My friends and family would say "he never writes or tweets or chats, it's almost like he's still with us!"

Re:Yikes

[Oligonicella]

Go you one better. Savings. The last one left (and the sooner the better) from an identical set of clones (including brain scans) has a distinct leg up on keeping the cash.

Re:Yikes

[Sqr(twg)]

It is difficult for me to imagine ways in which this would be a good thing.

Well, according to eterni.me, it could provide a hook for traumatized loved ones to avoid dealing with the grief and get increasingly bottled up in a fantasy world.

Re:Yikes

[Threni]

> At worst, it would provide a hook for traumatized loved ones to avoid dealing with
> the grief and get increasingly bottled up in a fantasy world.

No, it would just annoy and frustrate them with more tedious computer crap that doesn't deliver what it promises - just like practically every other aspect of computers.

Re: Yikes

[Mabhatter]

This is how the computer in Star Trek created characters for the holo deck.

Reconsider "creepy".

Re:Yikes

[bluefoxlucid]

I'd rather join the Massed Minds.

Before death?

[WPIDalamar]

Can I get this before I die? I hate talking with people sometimes.

Re:Before death?

[Jack_of_Shadow]

Me too! I want this to remind me of the me I was before the me I become... Because my 27 year old me was invincible, while the 54 year old me is clearly not!

Re:Before death?

[Tom]

Yes, please.

I was about to post something scathing to the effect of "that is the LAST thing I want happening to me afterwards", but yeah, if this can handle all that Facebook crap for me...

Re:Before death?

[Ichijo]

A chatty avatar version of me that keeps people on the phone as long as possible without committing to anything would be a great way to get telemarketers to stop calling. Maybe even better than Lenny. As a bonus, it would be seamless: just push a button in the middle of a conversation and the avatar would take over without the caller knowing.

MIT, please make it happen.

Re:Before death?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I think this would be able to attend like 90% of my meetings in my place.
"That's a stupid idea. It'll never work."
"The IT department will need another $10,000 in its budget this month if you want it to work that way."
"I know those things aren't working now, that's because you went with the vendor that I told you not to go with."
"Good one, Bob, remind me that I owe you lunch for that thing about the sports game last weekend."
"No, I'm not serious about lunch, but I am serious about the ten grand."
"Alright, well we'll just have to see how this works out with the status quo."

Now that I think about it, I think 100% of my meetings can use this exact same script. It's pretty scary.

Re:Before death?

[Anonymous Coward]

But would you be able to avoid the temptation of actually having a conversation with yourself? What if you find out you think you are as boring and nerdy as everyone else always said?

Re:Before death?

[psithurism]

Can I get this before I die

And for people who aren't dead?

I.e. can I get this to replace my long distance X-girlfriend? Or would it also decide I'm getting too creepy and we need to break up?

I can't be the only slashdotter that wants it for this purpose.

Caprica?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this the exact plot of the Battlestar Galactica spinoff: Caprica ? Not giving points for originality here.

Then again, good for them if they can actually manage this.

The scariest thing about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

.... is not that someone's selling it - it's that someone will actually buy into it.

I notice a distinct lack of timeline on this...

[mark-t]

They "promise" to do it... but they don't promise when.

This may be possible someday, but not yet.

Of course, if they do it too well, it may cause psychological trauma for some people who won't accept that the person they cared about is really dead.

Re:I notice a distinct lack of timeline on this...

[leftover]

1. Sell empty promises now.
2. Wait for your "customers" to die.
3. No 'Profit!' because you bolted with the money during Step 2.

Look for them to avoid any preview of the avatar,

Black Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

You heard it first on Black Mirror, folks.

Online and RL personalities are different

[Calavar]

Even if these guys could make an AI algorithm that is 100% accurate if given the correct input, internet posts are not the best seed data. People tend to be dicks on the internet. I'm pretty sure most people would not like to interact with the online versions of their departed loved ones.

Re:Online and RL personalities are different

[Calavar]

Or, to put it another way: would your wife want to sift through thousands of your work emails and memos? Probably not. So why would she want to talk to a chatbot that is trained on your work emails?

Re:Online and RL personalities are different

[mark-t]

I'm inclined to think that in general, people who act like dicks on the internet are actually dicks in real life who at best, possibly for reasons of conformity, may just be curbing their tendency towards being a dick around people they meet in real life to avoid the potential social and cultural complications. That doesn't mean that's who they really are, however.

Re:Online and RL personalities are different

[Calavar]

I think you're talking talking about closet racists and internet trolls and similar folks, and when it comes to those people, I completely agree. But even for your average Joe who loves his kids, and and is steadfastly loyal to his buddies, the internet is an entirely different setting. It's tone deaf for one, so a comment could be completely innocuous or scathingly sarcastic depending on how you read it. Since humans often have trouble telling the difference, an AI algorithm that perfectly mimics humans will have trouble. Second, suppose you're having a conversation with a person and he says something amazingly stupid or uninformed. Do you call him a moron? No, of course not. Not even if the conversation is in a private place and no one else will know what you said. Because you empathize with the other guy to an extent. But if you have an anonymous internet post that says something equally stupid, all the sudden the human element is removed. You are just staring at a sack of words and it makes you angry. This is why we have flamewars on every forum in the internet, not just stormfront.org.

Re:Online and RL personalities are different

[mark-t]

Actually, I was talking about anybody who acts like a dick online... generally a person who would call somebody that they didn't know a moron online because they said something amazingly stupid or uninformed but never to their face for the same reason is usually just somebody who is trying to avoid the social complications that would arise from such namecalling, and is not really any less of a dick just because they are wise enough to recognize that it's socially inappropriate in such contexts.

Re:Online and RL personalities are different

[Dasher42]

Actually, the karmic comeuppance to internet trolls is pretty fabulous here. Imagine a crowd sounding like a YouTube comment section. We'd... better just leave them to it.

Re:Online and RL personalities are different

[Oligonicella]

I happen to agree with you but you actually supported him. That "curbing their tendency" is what would be missing to those s/he curbed around. They weren't on the receiving end before, now they would be because that's what the extraction is drawn from.

First cryo, now this....

[Last_Available_Usern]

This is kind of terrible. Capitalizing on people's loss by selling them a pie in the sky dream. I admire the ambition, but I would think we would need to create an AI that can sufficiently pass the Turing test before we create one that represents a person's personality well enough to fool the person's closest family/friends.

Just like the Vu-Age church!

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Max Headroom episode Deities.

This sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

I think someone fell asleep watching Caprica reruns a few too many times...

Caprica?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did nobody there see Caprica? This will not end well...

I'm all in

[twistofsin]

As long as Jimmy the Saint is doing the sales.

Re:I'm all in

[sconeu]

Nah.... all he does is sit on the hood telling racing stories.

Interesting.

[Eric S. Smith]

Tell me more about can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators: This is a rather obscure reference to the Eliza "simulated therapist" program. It is funnier than currently modded. :)

I would need to sign up for Facebook first.

[toonces33]

so that's a deal killer right there.

If I were to sign up for Facebook, and then do nothing more than post cat pictures, what kind of digital afterlife would I end up with, anyways?

Caprica

[stewsters]

Caprica. Watch it. Doesn't end well.

Re:Caprica

[Anonymous Coward]

The last season got it cancelled because it was becoming terrible. So you're right, it doesn't end well.

Re:Caprica

[viperidaenz]

They find Earth in the end.

Re:Caprica

[Anonymous Coward]

That's backwards. Caprica started off really slowly - interesting characters, mixed into a hard-to-follow, glacially developing storyline. But it was getting better - some of their best episodes were aired after they were cancelled.

Re:Caprica

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair it ends fine, they find Earth everyone lives happily ever after, even the metal Cylons. It does not, however, begin well -- what with the massive genocide and all.

Unless you meant the directionless plot, obsession and reality of a bizarre facsimile of the Judeo-Christian God, and other storyline issues. Those got kind of bad by the end.

Re:Caprica

[barlevg]

Wrong show. And spoiler alert.

Re:Caprica

[fahrbot-bot]

Wrong show. And spoiler alert.

Have you been living in a cave since 2010? Oh, and:

• Tyler Durden is The Narrator.
• Dr. Malcolm Crowe was dead the whole time.
• Verbal Kent is Keyser Soze.
• Ned Racine was framed.
• Darth Vader is Luke's father.
• Dumbledore dies.
• Soylent green is people!

Re:Caprica

[HeavensTrash]

The last season? You mean the first season?

Re:Caprica

[geminidomino]

You forgot:

Rosebud is a sled.

Re:Caprica

[cellocgw]

You also forgot:

Ned Stark dies.
So does Brody.
So does Macbeth.

And why would I care?

[holophrastic]

So I'm dead. Why do I care about this? And why would I choose to spend money on it now?
And what if I want to retain my own intellectual property when I'm dead? Can I install a web-server in my tomb-stone to host this thing?

Oh wait, there is no tomb-stone -- again, because I'm dead so why would I want one?
Hey look! It's another service to rape and impoverish people who have zero self-esteem in the first place!

Don't worry. You can suck in this life. In your afterlife, you'll be wise and useful.
Hey look! It's another religious promise!

Last I checked, a facsimile after death is called a zombie.

Re:And why would I care?

[stenvar]

So I'm dead. Why do I care about this?

Because it may help your family and friends get over losing you, and they may want to have something to remember you by.

Of course, if you have broken with your family and don't have any friends, you needn't bother.

Re:And why would I care?

[holophrastic]

We've got a few thousand years of people dying. We don't need any help. Certainly not this kind of help. This would be detrimental to everything you're saying.

Re:And why would I care?

[stenvar]

Yeah, sure, it's like people have never before in history been concerned with preserving their memory or their remains. Oh no, never! What a silly idea! Only stupid people would do THAT! Humans have always just dug a deep hole, tossed the corpses in there, and forgotten about them, because that's the logical thing to do!

Geez, some people's ignorance is just astounding.

Re:And why would I care?

[holophrastic]

You might want to define "preserving their memory or their remains" to discover that it doesn't cover what's being suggested. Not at all. It sounds like it does, hence the marketing of the idea, but it actually doesn't.

Sit, think, and then discover. But hey, it's not like this is the first time you've been fooled by clever marketing. 80% of insurance, mortgages, vitamins, fitness gyms, tanning salons, gadgets. All sorts of things that you've been convinced into buying that don't actually provide the benefits expected by the purchaser. Congrats on another.

So, go ahead, waste your money. I'll enjoy your tax dollars I guess.

Re:And why would I care?

[stenvar]

Did I say I wanted to buy this? Did I say this particular approach was a good idea?

I simply explained to you why people want this since you obviously do not understand the impulse to preserve oneself past one's death.

Re:And why would I care?

[holophrastic]

So you decided to argue a point that no one was making? You're making no sense.

Re:And why would I care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you senile? I responded to your question: "So I'm dead. Why do I care about this?"

Re:And why would I care?

[holophrastic]

...and then you listed arguments as to why one would care, and then you said "Did I say this particular approach was a good idea?!" -- with an interrobang no less. "I simply explained to you why people want this...".

I asked why would "I" want this. You answered why others would.

I see the senility. But it ain't on my side.

Re:And why would I care?

[bingoUV]

By this logic, no one would buy insurance as all the "good" from insurance comes after the buyer is dead.

Have you not understood why people buy insurance too?

Re:And why would I care?

[holophrastic]

Heh, I've been adamently against insurance/warranties for decades now. So that's correct.

WRONG!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it can. It's already been done. What do you think the whole fucking point of POSIX specification is?

Should sell it to the mob

[Anonymous Coward]

They could disappear people and have people interact with their replicant online like nothing happened.

"Black Mirror" episode

[MDMurphy]

This is the basis of S02E01 of "Black Mirror"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

The episode did a pretty good representation of the idea, showing things that the the dearly departed's avatar would know and not know based on their chat and email history.

Sounds like Harry Potter

[CatsupBoy]

Really reminds me of that moment where harry potter talks to his loved ones before going to die in the woods (sorry for crappy ref, i'm not a huge potter buf). He isnt really experiencing something new with them hes just talking with them and they are giving him reassurance.

On the surface of course this sounds creepy, but its amazing how easy it is to comfort that "human" side of your brain. In a similar manner this would provide someone pretty much the same thing. You know, kinda like, if it sounds like joe, acts like joe, says something i think joe might say, then you can probably be reconnected in that small way, relieving your pain in a small way.

I think anything that has the potential to ease suffering probably has a future.

Yaaay for digital snake oil

[idontgno]

and postmodern spiritualism.

"We'll be happy to conduct a social media seance and allow you to contact your dearly departed. But first we'll need all that personal information."

Dixie Flatline

[SpectreBlofeld]

`How you doing, Dixie?'
    `I'm dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to
figure that one.'
    `How's it feel?'
    `It doesn't.'
    `Bother you?'
    `What bothers me is, nothin'~ does.'
    `How's that?'
    `Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb
was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later
he's tossin'~ all night. Elroy, I said, what's eatin'~ you? Goddam
thumb's itchin'~, he says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he
says, it's the _other_ goddam thumb.' When the construct laughed,
it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of
cold down Case's spine. `Do me a favor, boy.'
    `What's that, Dix?'
    `This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this goddam
thing.'

-Neuromancer

Re:Dixie Flatline

[kurobejin]

That's the first thing that came to mind for me as well....

Re:Dixie Flatline

[Anonymous Coward]

First thing I thought of too. The Dixie Flatline.

Re:Dixie Flatline

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I'm not the only one who thought of Gibson's ROM constructs

Re:Dixie Flatline

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you're dreaming me.
You're not Gibarian.
No? Who am I then?
A puppet.
And you're not? Or maybe you're my puppet. But like all puppets you think you're actually human. It's the puppets dream, being human.

- Solaris (2002)

Where have i seen this before?

[wed128]

I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.

Re:Where have i seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

(you beat me to it) what was the movie?

      I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.

Was it a movie based on an Asimov novel starring Will Smith?

    That is the right question.

who are you calling a "facsimile"?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, "creepy" and "awkward" gets you 97% there for most of this audience.

M I fucking T

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anything good ever come out of that overrated shitpot?

Bought Out

[Jason Levine]

Let's say that the best case scenario happens and they're actually able to do this. You've now got chat bots functioning as long-dead people chatting away with living people. So far so good. Of course, the technology to do this would be impressive and would attract the attention of "the big boys." How long before they get bought out by Facebook or Google (or some other company)? How much longer after that until the chat bots get monetized? Perhaps by increasing the likelihood that a chat bot would mention a specific brand name instead of a general product that the formerly living person was interested in or perhaps by just blurting out random product callouts. Even if the monetization doesn't happen, how long until the entire project is folded into some other group and the chat bots get shut down for good?

Even if they manage to do this, I don't see this lasting for long enough for many of the participants to actually die and be "resurrected" as chat bots.

Re:Bought Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Why only dead people? Why not mimic and learn a modern celebrity. $25 to talk to Scarlett Johansson.

TotalA

[SJHillman]

What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a botnet which has decimated a million websites. Facebook and Twitter have all but exhausted the resources of the Internet in their struggle for domination. Both sides now crippled beyond repair, the remnants of their users continue to post on ravaged smartphones, their dumbassery fueled by over four thousand posts of total crap. Now this will go past their death. For each user, the only acceptable outcome is the complete creation of a creepy, awkward facsimile.

Why not just offer to maintain data forever

[Anonymous Coward]

And promise to offer the digital memories of people up as fodder for AI research into sociological groups of AI sometime in the future?
 
  Not sure I'm enthusiastic, I hate being monitored and/or tested and can't imagine that a virtual representation of me living under such conditions would be viable as a creation.

Yes, yes it can...

[Anonymous Coward]

But can a chat bot plus big data really produce anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?"

Uhhh, you've just described the userbase of /. I doubt anyone would notice...

Re:Yes, yes it can...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom produced a creepy, awkward facsimile!

Awkward and Creepy?

[Hatta]

Well, at least they can recreate the readership of /.

Re:Awkward and Creepy?

[damn_registrars]

Well, at least they can recreate the readership of /.

An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.

Re:Awkward and Creepy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. The /. leadership isn't dead, it's just stupid.

Re:Awkward and Creepy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, I'm pretty sure my friend the fake liberal (damn_registrars) could be replaced pretty easily by a script since his parody of people like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz is so spot on.

In fact, I might be tempted to see if I can do it in 100 lines or less of LISP.

(Since my friend the fake liberal (damn_registrars) speaks with a lisp, you know, as a tribute to the greatness that is the sock puppet master, and my new best friend, the fake liberal damn_registrars.

Re:Awkward and Creepy?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you count the AC that occasionally posts markov-chained "BSD is dying"-style stuff with occasional links to shock sites, I'm with you. If you don't... I'm still with you.

Re:Awkward and Creepy?

[AmiMoJo]

An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.

I kinda hope that at least some of the trolls who spam every story are real people. I like to think some of the old guard who have been doing it for 15+ years are still around. It's comforting somehow.

Re: Awkward and Creepy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still haven't moved out of my parents basement, you insensitive clod!

Make Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you want to live forever in digital form? Make porno.

I read this in Otherland

[Gothmolly]

Priority override: Tears of Ra

Jack McDevitt invented this already.

[sconeu]

The "avatars" in the Alex Benedict series.

Black mirror

[sugar and acid]

Charlie Brooker's excellent series "Black mirror". Had exactly this idea in the episode "Be right back".

A company that would take all the tweets, facebook etc as input and create a bot of the deceased personality that you would be able to text with. The story had a pregnant recent widow start talking to her "deceased" husband. To extend it to the logical conclusion the company had upgrades that went from texting, through to phone conversation if audio input was put in, to finally an android based on the person that was fully functional.

The theme was that this was a really bad idea. The imitation can only ever be a imitation, with massive parts of the more private hidden personality missing. And for the people that care the most about the person, something deep in the uncanny valley. All it could really do was draw out the grief process with false hope, and that can't be a healthy thing.

Public data enough in some cases.

[DdJ]

For some people, there's no need for any disclosure beyond what they've already done 100% publicly. I'm pretty sure I could whip up an RMSbot over a long weekend, for example.

Fascinating what can get funding

[gweihir]

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Not only is technology not advanced enough to do anything like this, the data required is unsuitable for the task for any but the most shallow individuals.

That even a nearly perfect simulacrum would not be you is obvious.

VirtualBox Humans

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be more interested when they make a complete copy of my brain as it is and run me in a virtual machine.

Re:VirtualBox Humans

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Interesting, but it would still be just a copy. You will still be dead.

Putting your brain in a tank with life support and connections to an avatar would extend your life. But only for along as you can pay the costs (and even then, only up to a few hundred years, assuming the neurology researchers' estimates are reasonable).

Re:VirtualBox Humans

[LifesABeach]

By my math, that would take a minimum of a 4 PitaByte drive, i figure with todays RAID configuration, 3 drives would be required, 6 drives would be a safe bet. That will be in about 15 years, given current rates of progression. I guess the next part will be the Brain Map, that technology is still in Beta.

Caprica

[TWiTfan]

Entire series.

Betterage Says

[Anonymous Coward]

No

(*Posted via MIT digital afterlife based on user past comment patterns)

Welcome to Life(TM)

[mistapotta]

Didn't Tom Scott already talk about this one?

All that data

[laie_techie]

Do you trust any company with all the data it would take to train the AI? Do you trust the employees of that company not to read your emails and online posts and use it against you before you die? Do you trust their servers not to get hacked resulting in massive identity theft?

Be Right Back

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2290780/

This is sad

[EMG at MU]

I just think this is sad. When I become worm food I hope people find solace in their memories of me, the good times we had together, the adventures we went on. My life is defined by what I do in meatspace, not what digital excrement is left over in cyberspace. So many people are living more and more of their lives online, if your legacy is chat logs and facebook posts god dammit did you really live? Facebook isn't you, it is a digital representation of what you want other people to think you are

Yea, that's how they cylons turned against us...

[CppDeveloper]

Or was I the only one that watched Caprica...

Black Mirror

[umafuckit]

If you haven't seen it, I suggest you watch Black Mirror. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... Season 2 Episode 1 is about exactly this concept, just much more extreme. That episode is seriously freaky and intelligent sci fi. The others are all excellent too and each is different from the rest.

Talking to Myself

[Aero77]

How many would get this now, to improve the quality of their conversations?

NSA

[SecretSquirrel33]

It is a front to the NSA.

Re:NSA

[DeadDecoy]

Great. The last thing I want is for the NSA to be spying on my virtual avatar self. He's probably out there in WoW planning some terrorist act.

Of course it can!

[ClioCJS]

Of course it can! Why the resistance? Human-level AI will exist by the time young people reading this are dead. Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future was, more or less, right.

Re:Of course it can!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it can! Why the resistance? Human-level AI will exist by the time young people reading this are dead. Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future was, more or less, right.

How ironic that you should mention Max Headroom. Perhaps you forgot though that the episode where a company was doing exactly this was just a scam? They just used the deceased's image and had it parroting some phrases, essentially a really bad chat-bot, whereas they were advertising that they had made a perfect copy of them and were keeping them "alive" for a price.

btw: The Max Headroom AI was created by accident. The scientists at that time did not know how to make that level of AI on demand.

Re:Of course it can!

[TsuruchiBrian]

I think it will be closer to 20 or 30 years.

Re:Of course it can!

[ClioCJS]

Me too, actually, but I didn't want to overstate my position.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

AI is simply made up of algorithms, with inputs and outputs which are deterministic. The general public attributes magical properties to AI and think we're just about one step from having conscious machines ... but there is no evidence to support that. There are people in the field who think that consciousness and awareness will somehow magically emerge from adding enough complexity to a system ... but they're idealists, no different from someone who jumps off a cliff hoping god will catch them. As far as I know, there is no hint of anything resembling consciousness thats been created by AI researchers.

These researchers at MIT are pitching snake oil. They only thing they will be able to create after you die is a bot that mimics how you interface with twitter, facebook, etc. Perhaps they would also be able to infer attributes about you from those postings based on groupings of human personality traits, but those will have false positives, which will lead to interesting consequences. In general, systems which are running in high cost scenarios need to have very few errors, which means they have to be conservative. If they start making larger educated guesses about your personality they will be wrong some of the time, and this could potentially cause lots of emotional damage. This idea seems very irresponsible.

Why do we treat MIT and Stanford like they shit gold? Yes they produce lots of interesting ideas and technology, but we look to them as if they are producing prophets.

"How you doing, Dixie?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to figure that one."
      "How's it feel?"
      "It doesn't."
      "Bother you?"
      "What bothers me is, nothin' does."
      "How's that?"
      "Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later he's
tossin' all night. Elroy. I said, what's eatin' you? Goddam thumb's itchin', he says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it's the other goddam thumb." When the construct laughed, it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case's spine. "Do me a favor, boy."
      "What's that, Dix?"
      "This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this goddam thing."

I am the Slashdotter,Please describe your problems

[Dogtanian]

An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.

Does it bother you that an argument has been made (by both yourself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already?

Stansilaw Lem wrote about this kind of thing ...

[quax]

... in 'Tales of Pirx the Pilot' about forty years ago.

If I remember correctly, at some point the simulation of a famous departed scientist has to point out to the protagonist, that he can't really come up with any new idea since he's only a collection of the data and knowledge of the person.

dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly stops them from doing it while I'm still alive? Can I talk to myself? Can my digital representation be used for social engineering? Does this lead anywhere good at all?

I, for one..

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome our creepy, awkward facsimile overlords!

But seriously, I would love to have a creepy, awkward facsimile of myself. I want one right now, even before I'm dead, to help answer my emails and phone calls. If I can screen out 90% of that crap with a creepy, awkward facsimile of me, that is something I would gladly pay for...

Serial Experiments Lain-style

[Etcetera]

Because that's exactly what I want... to live on emailing people creepy messages from the Wired.

Yes, why wait until death...

[ffkom]

... if that AI was truly good for anything (which I doubt), I would like to have it as a substitute doing the boring parts of my day job, such as talking to technically challenged people. After death, there is nothing useful that AI could do for me.

This can't possibly go wrong.

[Minwee]

"Honey? Your dad's on the phone again. He wants you to switch to a new insurance carrier, and hire someone to have the carpets cleaned."

Re:This can't possibly go wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

you know an advertiser thinks it is a great idea to turn your departed loved ones into a zombie AI meant to hawk car insurance.

Re:This can't possibly go wrong.

[Anachragnome]

""Honey? Your dad's on the phone again..."

Maybe in a few years I'll be able to download George Carlin, fire him up on my iPeople, and chew the fat for awhile.

I miss George.

Yet this is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to do

[Katatsumuri]

This is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to do with his father.

I wonder if they got this idea from him.

This idea preys on unrealistic personal vanity.

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is, unless you are a famous person, once all the people
who actually knew you have died, no one will care about what you
did, said, or thought. Let me repeat that : NO ONE WILL CARE.

And even if you are a famous person after enough time you won't
matter either, except to weird people who study obscure ancient
cultures.

The clever MIT students who think this idea makes sense need to read the poem
"Ozymandias", which I have copied and pasted below :

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Startup from MIT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious how a start-up gets classified as an MIT start-up when not a single member of the organization ever attended MIT (I'm an alum and I checked). They aren't really affiliated with MIT as far as I can tell other than attending the week long Entrepreneurship Development Program at MIT.

Re:I am the Slashdotter,Please describe your probl

[damn_registrars]

An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.

Does it bother you that an argument has been made (by both yourself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already?

It bothers me only that I have no mod points to award to that comment.

Re:Stansilaw Lem wrote about this kind of thing ..

[An ominous Cow art]

... and Frederik Pohl in his Heechee stuff a little after that, both AI simulations of long-dead people (Einstein, Freud) and later, uploading consciousnesses.

Re:Yet this is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to

[narcc]

Ah, Ray Kurzweil. The Deepak Chopra of AI.

anything beyond a creepy, awkward facsimile?

[Arancaytar]

Nope.

You can't even pass the Turing test yet, let alone represent a brain state digitally, and you want to recreate a person based on text data? This is to mind uploading what ELIZA is to artificial intelligence.

Re:Yet this is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to

[wonkey_monkey]

This is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to do with his father.

Does Ray Kurzweil's father have anything to say about this?

Re:I am the Slashdotter,Please describe your probl

[Anonymous Coward]

I am bothered by not having mod points too, my dear friend the fake liberal damn_registrars.

Re:Stansilaw Lem wrote about this kind of thing ..

[quax]

When it comes to uploading consciousness the fundamental question is if a classical computer can fully simulate a brain, or if we have some inherent physical resources not captured by the Turing model.

Yes...it's wonderful, isn't it!

[R3d M3rcury]

Pfft. Go back to the Max Headroom episode "Deities" in 1987.

Max Headroom already did this

[Anonymous Coward]

Deities - from wikipedia The leader of the Vu Age church, who happens to be Carter's ex-girlfriend, kidnaps Max from Network 23 and threatens to erase him to prevent Carter from running a story exposing the church's claim of saving its parishioners' minds as AI constructs as false.

Re:Yea, that's how they cylons turned against us..

[Anonymous Coward]

It might not have been so bad if they hand't gone with teenaged cult member with daddy issues for the personality template.

Reminds me of Cyteen

[Caladrius]

Obviously a digital version is not as good as imprinting a clone with your life's history, but give cloning a few more decades ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Re:I am the Slashdotter,Please describe your probl

[damn_registrars]

It does not bother me nearly as much as some might wish it would to have such a talentless troll following me around.

Help me

[Anonymous Coward]

I died and am now struck in the internet. Is this hell? Live Jasmine won't leave me the fuck alone. ....I deserve this.

Better Service

[SuperKendall]

What I would be way more interested in, is a service that upon my death gets handed over all of my digital accounts and proceeds to send them out in a blaze of glory. Epic attacks on trolls I dislike, statement after statement of the most raw and un-PC thoughts ever to leave a final mark upon the world. You could pay extra for more advanced writers to craft your final remarks.

So much cooler than an Eliza that is Me flavored.

This looks like the perfect thing...

[Eddy_D]

to drive Lister insane.

Already done.

[sethstorm]

I believe a certain person whose last name starts with B and ends with t already monopolized that. They just haven't figured out how to stop.

Tad Williams "Otherland" series: great scifi

[davecotter]

IMHO Pretty excellent scifi series exploring this and other cool ideas. I don't want to spoil with details, so i'll just say: think neuromancer + matrix + johnny mnemonic + illuminati + these guys and you get the gist.

So based on people's Internet history...

[Anonymous Coward]

just about every bot would troll the person's family and friends.

I like the concept.

[Anonymous Coward]

The more data and detail of your digital footprint the more accurate your AI will be rendered.

Interactive memoir

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems more like they'll offer to auto-generate an interactive memoir.

Reminds me of something...

[sdJuice54]

This reminds me of the story "Death Switch" form Robert Eagleman's "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives".

Re:Yea, that's how they cylons turned against us..

[xski]

So, three of us watched it, then?

They could start with Bucky Fuller

[spiritplumber]

He is the best-documented human that ever lived, by his own decision. If they can get something out of his Chronofile, as a proof of concept, then it's interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Digital exhaust

[Anonymous Coward]

Does my staccato emission of ones and zeros count as "digital exhaust"?

Reality vs. Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Asimov wrote a story called The Dead Past. In the story, a scientist is working on an machine that lets you see the events that happened in the past. His wife wants to use the machine when it's done, because she wants to see her daughter again. (Her baby daughter had died in a fire years ago, and the mother hadn't recovered from her grief.)

As time goes on and work on the machine progresses, picture vs. reality becomes more and more blurred in the mother's mind. She wants the machine to be finished, not to see a -picture- of her daughter again, but to see her -real- daughter again.

Yes, I can see that happening to someone who is still grieving the loss of a family member. If software does a good job of imitating a deceased family member, then a person using the software might get swept into the fiction, and not want to face the harsh truth that their loved one is gone.

Million for wooden game characters what this do?

[Anonymous Coward]

'offer advice' Yeah, Riggggght....

What a bunch of BS. HYPE to sell to dolts.

Things like this just go to reinforce the fact that 99.9% of the internet info is garbage.

I have some BS (Bridge Shares) to sell to those who believe this trash.

Turing Test.

[Lairdykinsmcgee]

While I find the concept of achieving eternal life for the AI version of myself rather... well, stupid. I do think this startup starts up an interesting version of the Turing Test. I would be curious to see what the version of me they could create would seem like, and whether or not either strangers or family/friends could distinguish between the 'real me' and the 'AI me.'

Re:Yet this is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to

[Katatsumuri]

Who knows what kind of personal drama lies behind this. I'm not sure how appropriate it is to make jokes about it.

Re:Yet this is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to

[wonkey_monkey]

Who's joking?

Re:Yet this is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to

[Katatsumuri]

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were serious. The man is dead, so he doesn't have anything to say about this. Ray Kurzweil apparently misses him so much that he is willing to try and revive his personality, even if only in this, somewhat creepy, way.

Creepy interactive gravestone

[EdgePenguin]

This is not transferring your mind into a machine. Its not even vaguely a step in that direction. Why would this be any kind of 'afterlife'?

Re:Stansilaw Lem wrote about this kind of thing ..

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to uploading consciousness the fundamental question is if a classical computer can fully simulate a brain, or if we have some inherent physical resources not captured by the Turing model.

You cannot upload consciousness, it is a physical property of reality not an abstraction. We can experience abstractions, abstractions cannot experience us.

lame

[Anonymous Coward]

lame arse bitches have an extra '' on their page floating around...

Re:Yet this is exactly what Ray Kurzweil wants to

[wonkey_monkey]

Actually I knew he was dead, but are there no privacy/consent implications? Remember when Geordi fell in love with that hologram chick, or the real woman's reaction when she found out about it a few seasons later? (maybe you don't watch TNG; but that was pretty much the pertinent plot)

And what if, one day, these kinds of simulations become complete enough to be considered sentient? In a book I recently read, a dying father wanted to do something similar for his son - create a partial simulation of himself that continue, in some ways, to be the father he wouldn't be around to be.

The project failed because, in part (as I recall), the simulation wasn't stable or complete enough not to suffer a mental breakdown after a few hours. And there's a lot of negative public reaction to experimentation on the simulations.

Her

[BitwizeGHC]

"So I've been talking with somebody, his name is Alan Watts."

"Alan Watts... why does that name sound familiar?"

"Well, he was a philosopher who died in 1973. But me and a bunch of other OS's got together and used his books and everything we could find out about him to build a new, hyper-intelligent OS version of him."

"Hyper-intelligent, huh? So he's... almost as smart as me?"

"Heh, he's getting there."

It's gonna happen sometime...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Well, assume they could make a perfect clone, the original you would still be dead and that's what we fear the most in this, some construct which believes it's me also, doesn't have the continuity....

We don't have the capability yet, but we're knocking on the door. We are starting to understand how the brain works in considerable detail, and there doesn't seem to be any fundamental reason why we could not create a facsimile of a particular brain, complete with memories, in either biological material or electronic hardware. or something else not yet invented.

With that capability, you could go to sleep on the operating table and wake up with two of you. At the point of waking you would be as close to identical as makes no difference - though of course you would be separate entities and would immediately start to grow apart as your experiences differed. Both of you would have the 'continuity', for what it's worth. If you killed the original body rapidly, there is a reasonable argument that 'you' have been 'transferred' into another host.

I can imagine that this might be a technique used to replace biological bodies which are worn out, as an alternative to comprehensively mending one. You could have the experience of dying, and the experience of watching yourself die from the comfort of a properly functioning body sitting by your bedside....

he's also a fantastic swimmer...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Munchkin_Song?file=He%2527s_Arnold_Rimmer_Xtended_version

Re: Stansilaw Lem wrote about this kind of thing .

[Mabhatter]

This is "Ghost in the Shell"stuff.

Can the Abstractions have their OWN abstractions? Would those be a copy of the ORIGINAL's consciousness, or an entirely NEW consciousness... Or something else,

In GitS the show several known kinds of this happening. Most obvious is the Major who extensively uses multiple memory backup cyberbrains until presumably the last piece of "meat" dies. The Tachikomas continuously extract and analyze data and modify their own THINKING as they go. They were able to inhabit a remote server and switch bodies at will. Presumably their code contained the keys to doing it again.

Then you had other events like Ryesomes on the network, servers that held a particular point of view even as users came and went.. Kind of like Slashdot. They also had "stand alone complex" in which the larger group of "people" created the same idea multiple times without people collaborating. In that respect, keeping memories and personality "alive" on the network could be a way for humans collective experience to continue even when the idea carrier dies.. To keep the "spark" of those ideas available for the future human race.

Never have your dog stuffed

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of Inception:

You're just a shade...

At least until they actually can download all the data in a human brain into an artificial one. But at that point is it murder to Blue Screen a robot?

Rucker (caprica | maxheadroom)

[cellocgw]

His Software Wetware Freeware Realware series is way classier.

Plus, All Phear Mr. Frostee!

will it include

[Anonymous Coward]

recommended videos from xhamster?

Revelation Space

[ben_white]

Sounds like the "beta level simulation" in Alastair Reynolds' "Revelation Space" universe.

Genius. Truely genius.

[Gallomimia]

The guys who are starting up and building this project are absolutely brilliant. Not because they're trying to emulate human behavior, or even because they're trying to make a digital afterlife. The former is probably not that hard, and the latter is just marketing spin. No, they're brilliant because they've found the ultimate way to tap unlimited funding! They will attract millions of dollars from the NSA, CIA, Rothschilds, Bilderburgs, Rockerfellers and Koch brothers. They will never have to worry about work again, and can probably siphon off a few bucks for themselves or side projects. Spectacular genius. Only in America.

Shut up, I get the Grandfather Clock.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was the one most attached to it growing up.

Coming Straight Out

[Anonymous Coward]

of Caprica.

It's a Begining

[LifesABeach]

The personal history download I think will take some foundation work.

Re:I am the Slashdotter,Please describe your probl

[Anonymous Coward]

An argument has been made (by both myself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already. Not necessarily an intelligent one, but a script nonetheless.

Does it bother you that an argument has been made (by both yourself and others) that at least one slashdot user is a script already?

^-----Like this script here.