Digital Immortality

Rinat Malik: 00:00:00

If you put something online, you will never ever be able to remove it. I'm sure if you guys have heard this saying many times and it is absolutely true. And today, Amit and I, we want to talk about a term called Digital immortality and how this term looks at all the different ways. your data and your content are sort of digitally stored, whether you like it or not, and what effects does it have on the user, consumer who's consuming the content, and the user who's uploading the content? We're going to talk about all of these. Thanks. Thanks, guys, for joining us today in our podcast, so yeah, that's digital immortality means that and a whole lot more, which we're going to cover today. So Amit, thank you for coming up with this topic. I'm actually quite interested to talk about it and explore all the different things that this term means. What is what does it mean? To you? Tell us about this little more of digital immortality.

Amit Sarkar: 00:01:03

So thanks Rinat. I think that was a good introduction. I mean, I didn't think about the other content aspect because when I was, I actually saw a video about a person who had died and they use the services of a company to scan their whole body and their family members could come and talk to that digital version. And they recorded the person's voice as well. And this was a very specific scenario, but this is now a service that is now being offered to customers. So you pay for it, they scan your whole thing. They record your voice, and someone can talk to you and you can respond back to them even after you're dead. So that's what I meant by digital immortality. But I think you also put a very interesting aspect to it as to the content part. So anything that we create is online. So all our photos, all our videos, all our text messages or chat messages that we have posted on different forums. They are all online. So in a way, even though you're dead, or you have you have you are diseased or, or maybe you are in a comatose state. You are still active on the internet.

Rinat Malik: 00:02:20

Yes, absolutely. So, This is the thing with emerging technology and all of these new terms because this term can mean so many things. And, you know, as you mentioned two different kinds of things. But both are kind of encompassed within this town. And they're both very interesting things to explore in, in our lives, so because they all affects us all. Now, when you were talking about this, this company, it's fascinating. We know that it's commercially available already. But I it's a straightaway I thought about this TV series that I saw. It's called upload. And it was a really like interesting science fiction TV show and I think it didn't continue, but the first or second season

Amit Sarkar: 00:03:12

By the way second season is out. What's the second season I've seen this first season, but yeah, it's a similar concept.

Rinat Malik: 00:03:21

It is similar concept but way into the future. But this is quite interesting. And Audience Yeah, please do check it out. If you like it. I think you'll enjoy it if you're kind of tech savvy. Obviously it's a fictional show so there were a lot of things are not actually scientific, but it's amusing one anyway. So yeah, I mean, coming back from that thought. So, you know, being able to sort of be present for loved ones, when you're actually passed in a way that is, you know, digitally stored, you know, your personality is digitally stored and nowadays, with, with the rise of AI being trained in so many different ways. I mean, right now, you can ask chat GPT to sort of write an article, but then you can say to it, that okay, this is a good article, but write it in the style of Shakespeare or, you know, someone else, or Nelson Mandela, and then we'll generate that kind of, sort of nuance to that article or an email as if it was written by that particular person. So it can sort of emulate personalities already. And if you and this is Chat GPT, which is kind of generic for all kinds of things, but if you kind of have a focused, artificially intelligent sort of solution, which is sort of designed to be able to take on samples and be able to emulate or sort of mimic that personality, it would be a lot more accurate. And nowadays with all of these digital content and information even if you didn't make it public, you must have tonnes and tonnes of photos, audio content, video content of yourself. So there won't be any lack of data to feed and train this AI module to be able to sort of generate your own personality. So your loved ones wouldn't be able to tell whether it's you or you 2.0?

Amit Sarkar: 00:05:28

Yeah, absolutely. And, and it's interesting that you mentioned this, like, you have all the photos. So recently, the film Barbie released and a website popped up called Bairbie.me But the A was replaced by AI. So what you could do is you could upload a photo and it would create a doll of you in one of the Barbie from one of the dolls in the Barbie universe. So like Ken is the guy and Barbie is the female version and Ken is the male version. So if you upload your picture, say just the face and then it will put it over a piece of toy and it will create a digital avatar for you and you can buy the unwatermarked version for about $2. But watermarked version is free. Okay, so now this is interesting because it uses like mid journey using your photo to create a digital avatar. Okay? That is there somewhere online. I mean, I can download it with the watermark version, but it's there somewhere online, and it's stored and my digital avatar is now there. And imagine not this digital avatar you can use it in what do you say? This multi not multiverse what is it called? Which

Amit Sarkar: 00:06:53

Metaverse. not multiverse,

Rinat Malik: 00:06:57

Well Metaverse multiverse both I think.

Amit Sarkar: 00:07:00

So Metaverse so you can upload that digital avatar in metaverse. Now, while you're talking, so there are AI tools available which can record your voice and it creates then samples of audio in your voice on different texts that you have not recorded. So it asks you to first record your voice reading a bunch of text and then using that text it analyses your voice sample. And then with that voice sample, it generates additional audio and that is already being used in films. So you have you have a strike going on in the film industry. Screenwriters guild strike, SAG strike that's currently happening and the actors and the writers are protesting and saying that if you use a digital version of our face, or our voice in any form that we should be compensated for it.

Rinat Malik: 00:07:54

This is the first thing I was going to ask you actually. So this is one of the things that as you were speaking that's the first thing I thought about when you were talking about uploading your avatar to Bairbie,me is that who would own that IP of that picture because this is your picture, but this is also their system. So they also have creative contribution, but at the same time you because it's your picture you uploaded, you should also have some creative contribution to that piece of art, if you'd like to call it that. So how? does it have sort of IP ownership around AI has also been quite a hot topics in very recent weeks because even chat GPT open AI is being sued for all the material that it's been trained on. So it is very interesting topic into a topic to explore.

Amit Sarkar: 00:08:49

Yeah, definitely. But I think you have to bear in mind that you are willfully uploading a picture. No one is forcing you to upload your picture. So you willfully of your own free will you upload a picture. So of course there are permissions and then you say that okay, fine, and then it's watermark so if you want to buy an unwatermarked version you pay for it, plus all the tools that is being used are also free. So the only thing that they're charging is for the service where they are creating the prompt using your image as an input. So there and that's prompts per image.

Rinat Malik: 00:09:21

when you start, When you agree to the terms and conditions? I think they have you completely

Amit Sarkar: 00:09:26

Exactly, exactly. I think that's where that's how most of the services work, right? Gmail works like that. Sorry, Google works like that. Facebook works like that. Anywhere where you provide your information free of cost, actually it's not free, of cost, you're compensating the companies through data that the advertisers can use to sell you goods.

Rinat Malik: 00:09:48

and also you are kind of give your ownership of that. Whatever it is whatever they make from it. So even if you pay and remove the watermark and you are thinking because I paid I should have some sort of IT in that that may not be the case and you might wanna check that

Amit Sarkar: 00:10:04

So another thing is that imagine these tools like midjourney.com, stablediffusionweb.com, Dall-e, whatever. These are now being trained on different ideas. A lot of people are coming with these text prompts and they are generating the images. But then a lot of people are using the existing images and modifying it. And there are now Instagram profiles where they have celebrities morph into different digital avatars. Like say Brad Pitt, or say Sean Connery or someone in a Avatar that you're not used to watching them, say Brad Pitt in Sato like a yogi or something like that in Nepal. So it's very interesting. So those are some of the things that the digital avatar is doing. But I think let's go back towards digital immortality. So the idea about the immortality comes from the word itself. So digital means something that's on the internet. Something that's in the form that's not real, something that's that you can see it on computers on a mobile phone, tablets, etc. and immortality comes from not being mortal anymore. So mortal means you are dead, immortality means you are not dead. So you're you never die. And the whole idea about this is as a human being now. I'm limited to the amount of years I can live. So maybe I live at 90 years if I push myself maybe 100 By the time I reach 80 or 90, there might be a medical revolution and I might live till about 150 years old. So that's I think pushing the age limit of human beings. But then what happens after I die? What happens to all the ideas that I have in my head? What happens to the voice, what happens to my face? And I want to see or interact with my grandchildren, etc. So how do I do that? And so, technologist, people who are working in this area are thinking about all these things. First, they're thinking about you. Brain to AI interface, like how do you connect your brain to something in the digital world? So that's one way so brain machine interface, not brain AI interface, brain machine interface. So how do you connect your brain to machine and then how do you using your consciousness without typing without reciting anything? You're just consciousness. How can you send a piece of thought to that machine and that machine can use that to generate something.

Rinat Malik: 00:12:40

So this is the other aspect of what you can think about Digital immortalities and what comes to mind is neural link. I mean that is trying to sort of be that communication module between brain and you know what this is this. I mean, if I think about this idea, it goes back actually a long time ago. So even like 1999 when I had the first computer, and you know, I was doing all of these things, playing games as a teenager etc. And in my head as I was learning about computing and this whole new world and then after a couple of years, I got to know about internet and etc, etc. So that had become a whole new and in different worlds from the real world. And basically, I thought, Okay, this is one thing that's in my head, like this is a full world with all of these different things you can do and then there is real world where I have to go to school and do the exams, etc, etc. And they are completely separate. There is no connection between them. And then suddenly, and you would not believe the technology that I mentioned right now, that changed everything upside down. Then suddenly I found out about such a thing called scanner. When I knew about scanner. Wow, this is it. This is what the communicate makes the communication between real world and Digital world possible. Because you can write something because that time. I mean, right now, writing on a paper seems so prehistoric, but that time that was the main thing that you would do. And then I can write something and then suddenly I can bring it into the computing world. That was amazing. And then suddenly also slowly. Another thing started happening is mobile phones started coming up, coming up with data cables, so you can connect it to your computer. So basically, you can have your sort of actual real pictures, digital pictures of documents and yourself or anything and audio and then again bring it to the digital world by connecting because mobile phone was an interface was a very like a mid-look point. And that was how you know the first communication between real world and digital world came and then I mean in my head, that's how the technology progression goes in my head that it was a scanner first, which was reanimate objects of real world could go to digital world. And then slowly slowly became more and more cameras more and more resolution cameras, and then there became 3d cameras which can you know, take a 3d objects and shape digital world and then there was 3d printers which can take digital things in make it a real life thing. So these communication between these two has always been challenging. It's happening, happening and improving and the biggest thing that is in the middle of both of these world is our brain. Yes. So that would be the final ultimate communication module between the two worlds and we could sort of do so many things, everything that we can do in Digital World, what we'll be able to sort of have an impact of it on real world and vice versa. So that is a very interesting way, sort of thing to happen in future hopefully.

Amit Sarkar: 00:16:25

Yeah. So I think it all comes down to your digital consciousness. So you have a consciousness. I mean, what is what does being alive mean? Is it breathing? Is it like having a head, hands having legs having a torso? Having a body? Is it seeing someone else is loving someone, having a partner? Having your offspring? What does it mean to be alive? Or is it just your thoughts in your head? When you look yourself in the mirror, who do you actually see? Do you see a reflection? Can you identify that the person that you're watching is actually you because you have never seen your face? You can never physically see your face. The only way you can see your face is by looking into a mirror. So you don't know actually how you look like you're just seeing a projection of yourself through media. So what if we have a digital projection of our consciousness?

Amit Sarkar: 00:17:24

So our consciousness is projected into a digital world and maybe that consciousness survives beyond our body. And that's what digitally immortality is trying to talk about. And I know it's something that it's it could be like a hype hyped up topic, but there are certain aspects to it, which are already happening as I mentioned, a disease person, scan their body recorded their audio, and then they generated avatar in their physical form a digital avatar, and that person could then reply back using some of the notes that they have created. And the nodes, how they create is the train the Bot are like a digital bot, a chatbot kind of thing, where you ask lots of questions like Okay, tell me about how you feel. Tell me about your how you experience experiencing pain. What do you remember most about me? How do you want to be remembered things like that? Which it's an you can have this pre designed questionnaire, and then the bot can be trained on it. Once you reply back and then when the person when your family member comes to interact with this digital avatar, because it has already been trained on all this data, which are very personal to you, which your family member would know that they feel very connected even though that person is dead. And that is and that is something that's already happening. It's not something that's in the future. It's already happening. There is a video and I'll post that video.

Rinat Malik: 00:19:00

This is interesting to sort of explore because my first thought is that even I mean, as you mentioned, it is already happening and the loved ones who are interacting with this digital avatar, they must know that this is a digital device. They know it. and whether would it be acceptable to them to everyone like people who are doing it now they're happy with it but not everyone else may be happy with it. You know, maybe they have said their goodbyes in their mind and have closure and then reviving a real lifelike, responsive sort of idea of that person who they've already sort of made their peace with that might be very unsettling to a lot of people. So that's the controversy. And then the other thing is you could do this without the permission of someone.

Rinat Malik: 00:19:56

Say for example, you have a lot of you know, a lot of influencers have a lot of digital content uploaded, but you could, you know, get a lot of content of an influencer and create their avatar without their permission and use it for you know, God knows what purpose which is, which might be the negative side of it. So it is very controversial, but it's very interesting anyway, and then we also have to ponder about the question the philosophical question of what is mortal or what is not? Would you sort of consider what would you consider yourself? how are you alive and if a second consciousness which is just like you, Avatar is not a consciousness, so we are not very apt to sort of generate copy consciousness. There is currently no artificially created consciousness, just FYI. But if in future there it is, someone who can think and want something, and also possess emotional qualities, then what would you say that is? is that your clone? If you're already still if you're still alive, then who are they? if you're not alive, then is that digital consciousness you and then what were you instead, and those digital consciousness can again also be copied 10 to 100 times. So how, where does the definition of self and consciousness lies in the digital world? These are all sorts of interesting and thought provoking questions to ponder about on this arena.

Amit Sarkar: 00:21:42

Definitely. And I think I think just to rewind a bit, you mentioned about privacy. ethical aspects and concerned etc. And I think that's where the industry is actually currently struggling with. So there is a lot of content so that's why the actors are going on strike because they know that a lot of films are already there with their faces and their voices. So no one is actually stopping these big media companies to go through that data, use that as a training data and create models that can generate the actors faces, and actors voices, even when they have not given consent. Right? So that's already happening. And that's why the actors are going on strike. And then we can also take the example of ChatGPT. It was trained on data that was not given consent to by a lot of people. It just went to the internet and they used it as a training model. And now you have GPT, and that GPT is now being used by everyone without a lot of people's permission. So that's the aspect that people are already talking about. Then you also mentioned about a lot/all people will be comfortable with their avatars, digital being once they're dead, and that's true, because everyone has a different grieving process, some grief and they then let go and then they are okay. But some grieve and they long for that. Connection, they long for that person to be still with them. And this is a very unique, I mean, this company is now in that unique position where they can satisfy that longing, because a lot of people they never overcome the loss of a partner of a loved one. And this can help them it's like a mental health thing. It's a big support for them to be able to cope up with a loss of someone and it has huge implications ethical implications. You're right. But I think the companies that are doing it, they have asked permissions, and they would ask permissions you pay for it. So when you do a monetary transaction, of course you sign a contract. So there are legal terms and conditions that can be enforced. So I'm guessing that those things are already taken care of. So yeah, so those are those are very, very interesting things. And people are already thinking about it. So yeah, it's it's a good and exciting world. And let's see where it takes us.

Rinat Malik: 00:24:13

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And audience. Today will actually answer a lot of questions that probably gave you a lot more questions to think about, but I think that is the fun of sort of listening to a podcast where you don't just get information but you also get things that would keep you sort of thinking the rest of the week until we are back with our next set of thought provoking podcast episodes. But yeah, this was actually good to explore with you Amit with all the different sides of this and how to manage this and also or I would keep thinking about all of these different sort of scenarios where we could be as just human beings, we could be affected how we could be affected and also potentially think about what we shouldn't be aware of in future. A lot of scamming also is happening by mimicking your biological data. So that's another thing to be aware of. And how can we ensure that when we have passed that everyone does know that we have actually passed because that might have another set of implications to sort of think about so? It was very fun and thought provoking, too, to explore this topic. And hopefully our audience would have a lot more questions and a lot more things to think about. And we look forward for you guys to get in touch. ask us more questions or share with us your views, which we can share later in our next episode. So look forward to do that.

Amit Sarkar: 00:25:59

Yeah, and I think before I finish, I just wanted to cover two more things. One is the digital legacy and digital divide. So we have already spoken about this in our earlier podcast. And the reason I wanted to touch base this in as part of digital immortality is the digital legacy. Like once you die, what happens to all your digital assets, so you need to define it right now. In your will not just about your physical assets, but also about your digital assets, your avatars, your Metaverse, assets, your cryptocurrencies, your financial assets, everything, and maybe even this avatar, your voice everything. That's everything that's there on the internet. And now then we talk about digital divide. Not everyone would be able to afford a technology like this. So we talked about the digital divide, like not everyone on the internet is equal because some people have access to fast internet. So they get access to fast information. But a lot of people they don't have that fast connection so they don't get access to that information easily. So it means that the digital divide is already being created as we speak. I mean, it's already there, but it will be even more prolonged for people who can't afford a technology like that, even if they want to. So those are two topics that we have already covered. And it's interconnected with this topic, digital immortality, which I just wanted to highlight before we had the talk

Rinat Malik: 00:27:27

Yes, absolutely. Those are relevant topics. They also asked thought provoking questions and would make you think if you guys haven't checked them out yet, definitely, definitely do check them out. And would go well with today's talk that you've just listened to. So yeah, looking forward to hearing all of all of you guys's feedback regarding all of these episodes, and we'll be back again next week with our new topic. If you guys want us to cover any particular topics to let us know, but other than that, thank you very much everyone for tuning in. And hope to see you again next week.

Amit Sarkar: 00:28:07

Thank you, everyone. Bye

Rinat Malik: 00:28:10

Bye.