Immortality through a Robot Clone?

There was an article in Motherboard last week that intrigued me. ​Companies Want to Replicate Your Dead Loved Ones With Robot Clones explains how many struggle with grief and moving on after the death of someone well-loved. 

Many grieving people feel n emotional connection to things that represent dead loved ones, such as headstones, urns and shrines, according to grief counselors. In the future, people may take that phenomenon to stunning new heights: Artificial intelligence experts predict that humans will replace dead relatives with synthetic robot clones, complete with a digital copy of that person’s brain.

 According to the article, one research company has taken the first step down this path, with the goal ” to ‘transfer human consciousness to computers and robots.’ The firm has already created thousands of highly detailed “mind clones” to log the memories, values and attitudes of specific people. Using the data, scientists created one of the world’s most socially advanced robots, a replica of [the wife of the] … founder….” 

According to the article, creating these “mind clones” achieves “[t]he goal … to capture a person’s attitudes, beliefs and memories and create a database that one day will be analogged and uploaded to a robot or holograph, according to the Lifenaut website. Everything down to a person’s mannerisms and quirks can be recreated.”

Why you might ask, would one want a have a robot clone of oneself? According to the article, there are several reasons. “Some users simply like the idea of living forever. Others want to document themselves as a part of human history. Some hope to pass on an artistic project or genealogical information to offspring. Fewer will use it to “memorialize” and “communicate with” the dead….”

Google has also filed a patent, according to the article, that focuses on duplicating a personality and would use, the article notes ” a cloud-based system in which a digital “personality” can be downloaded like an app.”  The article continues, discussing the pros and cons of moving forward with this technology and debates whether humans can really be replicated.

To reference Aldous Huxley, it’s a “brave new world.”