AI Researchers Continue On Their Quest For ‘Digital Immortality’ And Attempt To Live Forever As AI 'Deathbots'
“You could put an instruction in your estate plan like ‘I don’t want anybody to do this,’” Stephen Wu, a lawyer at Silicon Valley Law Group, told me, regarding deathbots.
AI immortality is a silent trend that many technocrats and transhumanists secretly desire, a world where their consciousness and memories carry on with the help of AI and blockchain.
The WinePress has reported on instances of this already:
Tech And Financial Gurus Seek To Leverage AI And Crypto To Live Forever And Preserve Their Wealth
Google Founder And Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Engineers Admit ‘We’re Creating God’
In August 2024, The Atlantic ran a headline talking about the prospects of some people trying to attain immortality.
The article follows the ambitions of Hany Farid (58), an AI expert at UC Berkeley, who has said that he wants his wife (38) to ‘resurrect’ him as an AI after he passes. “My wife has my voice, my likeness, and a lot of my writings,” he told The Atlantic. “She could very easily train a large language model to be an interactive version of me.”
“We have very conflicting feelings about it,” he added. “I imagine that in the coming five to 10 years, it is a conversation we’re going to have the same way we have other conversations about end of life.”
The Atlantic goes on to explain who this digital immortality and so-called “deathbots” might work:
[…] As people get their affairs in order, there are lots of reasons they should take into account the possibility of deathbots. Some wills already include instructions for social-media profiles, emails, and password-protected cellphones; language about AI could be next. Perhaps you might set specific guidelines for how your digital remains can be repurposed for a deathbot. Or you might forgo digital immortality entirely and issue what’s essentially a digital “do not resuscitate.”
“You could put an instruction in your estate plan like ‘I don’t want anybody to do this,’” Stephen Wu, a lawyer at Silicon Valley Law Group, told me, regarding deathbots. “But that’s not necessarily enforceable.”
Telling your loved ones that you don’t want to be turned into an AI clone may not stop someone from going rogue and doing it anyway. If they did, the only legal recourse would be in instances where the AI clone was used in a way that violates a law. For instance, a voice clone could be employed to access a deceased person’s private accounts. Or an AI replica could be used for commercial purposes, in an ad, say, or on a product label, which would violate the person’s basic right of publicity. But of course, that’s little help for lots of harmful ways in which someone could interact with a deathbot.
Like so much else in the world of AI, many of the concerns about these replicas are still hypothetical. But if deathbots continue to gain traction, “we’re going to see a slew of new AI laws,” Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer at the firm Dunlap, Bennett, and Ludwig, told me.
Perhaps even weirder than a world in which deathbots exist is a world in which they are normal. By the time today’s children reach the end of their life, these kinds of digital ghosts could conceivably be as much a part of the grieving process as physical funerals. “Technology tends to go through these cycles,” Farid said. “There’s this freak-out, and then we figure it out; we normalize it; we put reasonable guardrails on it. I suspect we’ll see something like that here.”
However, the road ahead is bumpy. Part of you can still live on, based on texts, emails, and whatever else makes up your digital footprint. It’s something that future generations may have to keep in mind before they fire off an angry social-media post at an airline. Beyond just “What does this say about me now?,” they may have to ask themselves, “What will this say about me when I’m gone?”
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Zechariah 10:2 For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no shepherd.
This stuff is so silly, and the people who are convincing themselves that they can live forever prove they are indeed FOOLS in the truest sense of the word.
Try as they might, they still will die, and their memories will fade and vanish.
Ecclesiastes 9:5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. [6] Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.
Oh how easy salvation of the Lord is!? It could not be any simpler. Jesus of course said: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). But, nope, these weirdos would rather chose the ultra hard way to live forever, but are still going to fail!
The Lord Of Glory: The Detailed Guide To Who God Is – Available Now!
On one of his missionary journeys, the apostle Paul visited Athens, Greece, where he said he witnessed “the city wholly given to idolatry,” and who were “too superstitious” and worshipped a plurality of gods and deities, though the people acknowledged that there was still one God above all that was a mystery to them. When questioned by the philosophers …
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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I’m halfway through That Hideous Strength, the dystopian novel by CS Lewis. I’d never heard of it until recently though I’ve read many books by Lewis. It’s really the one of a few futuristic stories that weaves Christianity into the plot. Extending life spans basically into infinity is a main theme. And there is a crazy amount of prophecy in it that is spot on as to where we are right now! It’s available for free on www.archive.org.
Pathetic fools