[jyl]

I had a thought about how things may go, that I wanted to share here, for discussion or interest.

A staple of science fiction is uploading a person’s mind to a supercomputer to achieve a disembodied existence. You may recall the episode “Spock’s Brain” from the original Star Trek, or a number of William Gibson stories.

As we watch the conversational AI tools like Google’s LaMDA and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it seems to me that we’re not far from some ultra-wealthy egoful person training an AI on himself.

His AI doppelgänger would converse and interact just like him - embodying his references, mannerisms, values, priorities, beliefs, biases, ignorance, interests, reactions, skills, life history, etc. Today AI tools like LaMDA can pass for a human in some conversations; tomorrow a customized AI will pass for a specific human in most or all conversations.

The AI can interact through spoken conversation as well as written, and it’s speech will sound just like the person’s voice. It can also interact through an image on screen, which will look just like the person. I don’t know about a humanoid “android”, because physical things have more restrictive limits than digital things. But if you go into a virtual reality metaverse, you’ll be able to meet, talk with, do things with the person, or his AI, without knowing which it is.

The AI will converse a lot with the person in initial training, then to stay in synch with him and as an ever-present companion, confidante, assistant, resource. The person can turn tasks over to his AI. Write holiday cards, make social media posts, screen emails and write replies for approval, handle virtual meetings with unimportant people, subordinates, Aunt Tilly, and go from there. Other people won’t know if they are talking with the person or his doppelgänger.

Over time, the person himself may come to think of the AI as a form of him, even a part of himself, and finally as the same as himself. His delusion? perhaps or perhaps not. People will believe much in return for eternal reward.

You see, the person’s AI can carry on indefinitely. Set up a private corporation, which can hold assets, own property, receive income, maintain bank accounts, spend money, enter into agreements, and has no end date. It will probably cost less to sustain our billionaire’s AI - a stack of racks in a datacenter - than the human himself - mansions, jets, doctors, clinics. With a little forethought, lots of money, and lots of ego, he can exist forever.

So, technology advances. We all have in our hand more computing power than the most powerful supercomputers of two decades ago. The computing available to the ultra-wealthy now will be available to the merely well-off in a couple decades.

More people, well-off and wealthy, will establish “AI-selves”, will interact through their AI-s, and will arrange for their AI-s to continue beyond the physical person. The AI-s will talk, even virtually stroll and play, with their survivors, children, grandchildren. Their delusion? Perhaps or perhaps not. People believe what comforts them. From religion to the movies, video games to Zoom gatherings, we have a long history of choosing what is real or not.

If you are roughly middle-aged or younger today, by the time you leave this world, you may not have to.

Thoughts?