Skip to content
Culture & Religion —

In the Future, You Will Be an Android Clone

Two parallel technologies are providing a glimpse of the future: Digital database of all the knowledge you have and android technology that could mimic your behavior and speech. 
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest Development?

A couple novel technologies on display at this year’s South by Southwest festival give us a taste of a radical future where our minds may be stored on digital files and uploaded into androids that talk like us and behave like us. The LifeNaut project allows people to store digital records of themselves online, including video and audio files, written documents and even DNA information. Called ‘mindfiles’, these records could one day be used ‘to create a digital clone of that person that can interact with future family members and others’.

What’s the Big Idea?

Using artificial intelligence software in conjunction with your mindfile, the electronic equivalent of your personality could continue to grow and learn even after you have passed on by using video cameras as eyes plus face and voice recognition software. Texai AGI, a company working on natural language technology, could allow your future android self to closely approximate your personal speech patterns and respond to others the way you would have responded to them in life. It’s not machine consciousness, yet, but it is one step closer to immortality. 

Photo credit: shutterstock.com


Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people
Related
Up Next
Angering Bishops: An Open Letter
This is an open letter in response to a religious group, who have argued to remove a piece of entertainment based on their moral values, in a secular society. The […]