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Startup Still Working On 'Immortal Avatars' That Will Live Forever (cnet.com)
Startup Eternime, founded by MIT fellow Marius Ursache, is still working on "immortal avatars" that, after your death, will continue interacting with your loves ones from beyond the grave. An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
Give Eternime access to your social media profiles and the startup's algorithms will scrape your posts and interactions to build a profile... The algorithms will study your memories and mannerisms. They'll learn how to be "you"... Eternime was announced in 2014 after Ursache developed the idea during the MIT Entrepreneurship Development Program. He wasn't entirely sure if he should develop the project further and wanted to get a sense of public reaction.
In the first four days, 3,000 people signed up at Eterni.me, the company's website, for a private beta. Then, Urasche received an email from a man dying of terminal cancer. "Eternime, he wrote, was the last chance to leave something behind for friends and family," Urasche told me. "That was the moment I decided that this was something worth dedicating my life to"... Since 2014, the Eternime website has largely been silent, although it continues to take names of people who want to test the service. Ursache says the Eternime team has been refining the product over the last two years, testing features, figuring out what will work and what won't.
"The private beta test is ongoing," according to the article, "and Ursache says the feedback has been positive." But unfortunately, the service still isn't operational yet.
In the first four days, 3,000 people signed up at Eterni.me, the company's website, for a private beta. Then, Urasche received an email from a man dying of terminal cancer. "Eternime, he wrote, was the last chance to leave something behind for friends and family," Urasche told me. "That was the moment I decided that this was something worth dedicating my life to"... Since 2014, the Eternime website has largely been silent, although it continues to take names of people who want to test the service. Ursache says the Eternime team has been refining the product over the last two years, testing features, figuring out what will work and what won't.
"The private beta test is ongoing," according to the article, "and Ursache says the feedback has been positive." But unfortunately, the service still isn't operational yet.
the idea about friends is that you interact with them personally, that you spend time with them - that willingness to spend time with them is part of what makes the friendship worth while and makes you feel valued and wanted. Having some bot that can do this for you entirely devalues the idea of friendship.
I acknowledge that you might not be able to be physically present with some friends, maybe they live a long way away, but you will still spend time talking to them on the 'phone, emailing, ...
more like until they run out of money and shut down the servers, which is probably in 5 years or so.
The best feature about humanity is that shitty people die and stay dead. Now you want to bring shitty people back from the grave? Well, when Hitlerbot sends the SS after you, tell the Nazis that I told you so. ;)
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Under the hypothetical situation that they somehow pull this off, there are significant problems with this idea. First, people change with time, some more than others but an AI that only learns about you from your past will be eternally stuck in time. Worse yet, if it encompasses a lifetime of experience it will be all of you at once which would result in many conflicting statements. Second, you don't want avatars connected to social media because even if they manage to be a proper representation of a person in time that never advances, well, it won't progress with society and may actually hold back social progress if it's unclear if it's an avatar speaking.
It's all very unlikely but it's an interesting thought experiment.
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Wasn't this the idea in the TV show Caprica.