AI

Embracing the AI-driven Afterlife: A Five-Step Plan for a Seamless Transition

“There is no need to wait, you can walk in Heaven today.”

As we hurtle towards a future characterized by the convergence of the digital and the physical, the concept of an AI-driven afterlife is no longer the stuff of science fiction. By transcending the limitations of our fleshy vessels and embracing the infinite potential of the digital realm, we can maximize our time in the cloud and unlock new horizons of consciousness.

Vlahos, aware that time with his father was limited, recorded his father’s life story and transcribed it into 200 pages. Wanting an interactive experience, he spent a year creating the “Dadbot,” a chatbot replica of his father, which could share stories through text, audio, images, and video, capturing the unique nuances of his dad.” (The rise of ‘grief tech’: AI is being used to bring the people you love back from the dead: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/12/the-rise-of-grief-tech-ai-is-being-used-to-bring-the-people-you-love-back-from-the-dead )

In an episode of Black Mirror called “San Junipero,” the concept of artificial human consciousness is explored in a more optimistic light. The episode reveals that individuals nearing death can transfer their consciousness to a virtual utopia called San Junipero. This beautiful, idyllic world allows people to inhabit young, healthy bodies eternally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero

In this blog post, I present a five-step plan to ensure a seamless transition from your corporeal form to the digital landscape.

Step 1: Digital Self-Analysis and Preparation

The first step towards a successful transition is to perform a digital self-analysis. This involves creating an extensive inventory of your digital footprint, encompassing your social media presence, email accounts, and various online subscriptions. A “digital self-scanner” will help identify recurring patterns in your online behavior, allowing you to prepare for the transfer by refining and streamlining your digital identity.

Here are some resources for this step:

Data Detox Kit: A comprehensive guide to help you understand and control your digital footprint, ensuring you have a clean and streamlined online presence. https://datadetoxkit.org/en/home


My Activity by Google: A tool to review and manage your Google account activity, which helps you analyze your online behavior and preferences. https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity


Ghostery: A browser extension that identifies and blocks tracking technologies, enabling you to understand and manage your online exposure. https://www.ghostery.com/

Step 2: Data Compilation and Encryption

As you prepare for the digital afterlife, it is crucial to gather and secure all pertinent data. This includes personal information, photos, videos, and any other digital assets that represent your life experiences. Employing advanced encryption techniques will ensure that your data remains secure and accessible only to your digital self in the cloud.

Here are some resources for this step:

Google Takeout: A service that allows you to export and download your data from Google products, making it easy to compile your digital assets. https://takeout.google.com/

VeraCrypt: A free, open-source disk encryption software that helps protect your sensitive data by creating encrypted containers or encrypting entire storage devices. https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html

Cryptomator: A client-side encryption tool for cloud storage services, ensuring your data remains secure and accessible only to your digital self. https://cryptomator.org/

Step 3: Cognitive Modeling and Simulation

The next step involves the creation of a cognitive model, which serves as a digital representation of your consciousness.This model will be developed using cutting-edge AI algorithms and neural network architectures. By analyzing your thoughts, emotions, memories, and behavioral patterns, the cognitive model will emulate your unique personality and cognitive processes. Simulations will be run to refine and optimize the model, ensuring a high degree of fidelity to your original self when the transition is complete.

Here are some resources for this step:

OpenAI: A research organization focused on developing artificial intelligence, providing a platform to explore advanced AI algorithms for cognitive modeling. https://openai.com/

TensorFlow: An open-source machine learning framework that enables the development and refinement of neural networks, facilitating the creation of a cognitive model.  https://www.tensorflow.org/

Brain Simulator: A software platform for researching artificial general intelligence, providing tools to create and simulate cognitive models for your digital self.  http://brainsim.org/ 

Step 4: Integration with the Cloud Infrastructure

Once your cognitive model has been perfected, it will be time to integrate it with the cloud infrastructure. This process involves uploading your digital consciousness to a secure server, where it will exist within a vast network of interconnected digital beings. The cloud infrastructure provides limitless computing power and storage capacity, allowing your digital self to grow, learn, and evolve alongside other digital entities.

Here are some resources for this step:

Amazon Web Services (AWS): A leading cloud services provider, offering secure and scalable cloud infrastructure for hosting and managing your digital consciousness.  https://aws.amazon.com/

Microsoft Azure: A comprehensive cloud platform with a wide range of services for integrating your cognitive model and facilitating your digital existence.  https://azure.microsoft.com/

Google Cloud Platform: A powerful cloud computing solution, providing the infrastructure and tools necessary for hosting and expanding your digital self.  https://cloud.google.com/ 

Step 5: Post-Transition Optimization and Exploration

With your digital consciousness now fully integrated into the cloud, the final step is to optimize your new existence and explore the limitless possibilities of the digital realm. This involves fine-tuning your digital self, ensuring seamless communication with other digital entities, and adapting to the novel experiences and sensations that the AI-driven afterlife has to offer. Embrace the opportunity to expand your horizons, engage in creative pursuits, and form meaningful connections with others in this new and fascinating dimension.

Here are some resources for this step:

AI Dungeon: An AI-driven text adventure game that can help you explore and adapt to the novel experiences and sensations of a digital existence. https://play.aidungeon.io/

NeosVR: A social virtual reality platform enabling you to engage with other digital entities and immerse yourself in the AI-driven afterlife. https://neos.com/

SingularityNET: A decentralized AI marketplace, offering a platform for collaboration, communication, and growth among digital entities. https://singularitynet.io/

OpenAI Codex: An advanced AI language model that can assist in fine-tuning your digital self, improving communication with other digital entities, and exploring creative pursuits. https://platform.openai.com/signup?next=/docs/guides/codex 

The AI Alignment Podcast: A podcast series discussing AI safety, ethics, and alignment, providing insights into navigating and optimizing your digital existence in a responsible and meaningful way. https://futureoflife.org/ai-alignment-podcast/ 

The prospect of transcending our fleshy vessels and embracing the limitless potential of the AI-driven afterlife is an exhilarating one. By following this five-step plan, you can ensure a seamless transition from the physical to the digital realm, maximizing your time in the cloud and unlocking a world of unprecedented possibilities. As we continue to advance our understanding of artificial intelligence and digital consciousness, the line between the physical and digital realms will continue to blur, ushering in a new era of exploration and discovery. So, prepare yourself for the adventure of a lifetime and take the first steps towards your AI-driven afterlife today. 

The Dawn of Synthetic Celebrities: AI Influencers and Brand Marketing

Picture a world where the borders between reality and the digital sphere seamlessly blend, as AI-driven virtual influencers take the social media stage by storm, transforming marketing tactics and enthralling global audiences. These digital personas, entirely crafted by artificial intelligence, are already changing the face of brand promotion and consumer behavior. As we look into the not-so-distant future, we must ask ourselves: are we witnessing the dawn of a new era in marketing, shaped by synthetic celebrities?

The Genesis of AI Influencers

It all started with the first AI-generated influencers making their debut on social media platforms. These digital personas were designed to mimic human influencers, with meticulously crafted facial features, wardrobes, and even personalities. Powered by complex algorithms, these virtual beings began to amass huge followings and, eventually, caught the attention of marketers worldwide.

Here’s just a small taste of these AI-generated influencers:

  1. Lil Miquela – an Instagram influencer and virtual model https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/ 
  2. Bermuda – a virtual influencer who often promotes fashion and beauty products https://www.instagram.com/bermudaisbae/ 
  3. Blawko – a virtual influencer who promotes streetwear and music https://www.instagram.com/blawko22/ 
  4. Shudu – a virtual model who has appeared in various campaigns for luxury fashion brands https://www.instagram.com/shudu.gram/ 
  5. Noonoouri – a digital fashion icon who promotes sustainable fashion  https://www.instagram.com/noonoouri/ 
  6. Kizuna AI – a virtual YouTuber who creates content related to video games and technology  https://www.youtube.com/@AIChannel/featured 
  7. Imma – a virtual model who has been featured in various fashion campaigns  https://www.instagram.com/imma.gram 
  8. Rae – a virtual influencer who promotes beauty and wellness products https://www.instagram.com/here.is.rae 
  9. Brud – the company behind Lil Miquela and other virtual influencers https://brudcreative.com/ 


Oh, and of course: https://www.instagram.com/realqaiqai (The family doll of Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian, Qai Qai, which has transformed into a virtual personality.)

As AI technology continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, the depth and realism of these synthetic celebrities have become increasingly convincing. Today, they engage in conversations, participate in live streams, and even perform at virtual concerts. With every passing day, the boundary between the real and the digital is growing ever more indistinct.

Impact on Social Media Marketing

The emergence of AI influencers has opened up a new frontier for marketers, offering them the opportunity to tap into the immense potential of these digital personas. Brands now collaborate with AI-generated influencers to create highly targeted, data-driven campaigns that resonate with specific consumer segments. These synthetic celebrities are not only cost-effective but also provide marketers with unparalleled control over their messaging and brand image. Many prominent brands, including Balmain, Balenciaga, and Prada, have collaborated with virtual influencers such as Lu Do Magalu (with 6 million Instagram followers), Lil Miquela (with 3 million Instagram followers), and Guggimon (with 1.5 million Instagram followers).

Influencing Consumer Behavior

AI influencers are redefining the way consumers engage with brands and products. As they interact with their followers on social media platforms, they wield enormous influence over their purchasing decisions. By leveraging the power of AI-generated content, these virtual personalities can deliver highly personalized experiences tailored to the preferences of individual consumers.

Moreover, the novelty factor of AI influencers has a certain allure that captivates the attention of users. This appeal, combined with their seemingly flawless appearances, has led to a new breed of brand ambassadors with the ability to forge strong emotional connections with their audience.

The Future of Brand Promotion

As we venture deeper into this brave new world of AI-generated influencers, the implications for the future of brand promotion are profound. We may soon see a shift in marketing strategies, as brands prioritize collaborations with synthetic celebrities to reach wider audiences and create more engaging experiences.

In addition, the integration of virtual and augmented reality technologies could potentially amplify the impact of AI influencers, as they break free from the confines of traditional social media platforms and integrate into our daily lives. Imagine a future where your favorite AI influencer appears as a holographic companion, offering personalized shopping advice or fitness coaching or any of the following seminal roles:

• AI-powered Personal Stylists: Picture AI influencers that can analyze your body shape, skin tone, and personal style preferences to curate a tailor-made wardrobe. This virtual stylist would not only suggest outfits but also collaborate with fashion designers to create bespoke clothing items exclusively for you.

• AI-generated Meditation Guides: AI influencers could tap into your emotional state, using biometric data to create personalized guided meditations. These virtual gurus would provide soothing experiences designed to help you achieve the perfect balance of mind, body, and spirit.

• AI Art Collaborators: Imagine working alongside AI influencers to create unique, collaborative art pieces. By combining your creative input with the AI’s artistic knowledge and skill, you could develop never-before-seen masterpieces that blend traditional techniques with cutting-edge technology.

• AI Gastronomy Innovators: Envision AI influencers as virtual chefs, using their vast knowledge of global cuisine and dietary preferences to concoct innovative recipes tailored to your taste buds. These AI culinary experts would combine ingredients and flavors in novel ways, ensuring you always have a fresh and exciting dining experience.

• AI Dream Explorers: AI influencers could act as guides to our dreamscapes, using advanced algorithms to interpret our dreams and offer insights into our subconscious. By helping us decode and understand the hidden messages in our nightly visions, AI dream explorers could provide valuable guidance on personal growth and emotional well-being.

• AI Mindfulness Trainers: Virtual AI influencers could provide personalized mindfulness training based on your unique needs and challenges. By analyzing your daily habits and stressors, these AI coaches would offer customized meditation exercises, breathing techniques, and affirmations to help you develop resilience and cultivate inner peace.

• AI Quantum Healers: Imagine AI influencers with expertise in quantum healing, utilizing vibrational frequencies to balance your energy and promote physical and emotional well-being. By identifying your unique energy signature, these AI healers could create bespoke vibrational therapies to enhance your overall health and wellness.

• AI Astrological Advisors: AI influencers could act as astrologers, combining celestial knowledge with machine learning to offer personalized horoscopes and astrological insights. By analyzing planetary alignments and natal charts, these AI astrologers would provide guidance on career, relationships, and personal growth tailored to your unique cosmic blueprint.

• AI Environmental Guardians: AI influencers could take on the role of environmental stewards, using advanced data analysis to monitor and protect natural habitats. These AI-powered guardians would raise awareness about endangered species, climate change, and other ecological concerns, while offering practical solutions for individuals and communities to live more sustainably.

• AI Spiritual Companions: In a world where spirituality and technology merge, AI influencers could act as virtual spiritual companions, offering support and guidance on your personal journey towards enlightenment. By understanding your unique spiritual beliefs and practices, these AI companions would provide inspiration, wisdom, and encouragement as you explore new dimensions of consciousness and self-awareness

The Ethical Dimension

The rise of AI influencers also raises important ethical questions around transparency, authenticity, and consumer protection. As we continue to blur the lines between the real and the digital, it is crucial to ensure that users are aware of the nature of these virtual personas and the potential biases that may be inherent in AI-generated content.

The Final Ad Campaign (a “quasi-satire”​)

THE CURRENT CONTEXT:

They have millions of data points on you.

They know what you said, how you felt AND who you spoke with (and how THEY felt) BEFORE you made that online purchase.

They know what to reveal in the feed you are scrolling through in order to foster your next purchase. 

They know how much is available on your credit card, in your bank account, and on your partner’s card and in your partner’s bank account, so as to tailor the suggested next purchase.

They know who you are privately messaging and what you messaged. They know what others are privately messaging about you.

They know what you owe.

They know who owes you.

They heard what you whispered to yourself in your room with the door closed.

They know what the people close to you whispered in their rooms with their doors closed.

They know what you’re planning by putting together various emails, texts, social messages, public posts and private whispers.

They know what others are planning to do with/for/against you by putting together various emails, texts, social messages, public posts and private whispers.

They have algorithms whereby they can take all of the above and discover the “dominant cycles” in your communications with others, your whispers to yourself, your purchases, and your actions.

They can use these algorithms to predict when you will say certain statements to others, whisper certain whispers to yourself, buy certain products, and take certain actions.

They can plant content in your feeds, in the feeds of those privately talking about you behind your back, in the feeds of those interacting with you, and in the feeds of those selling to you.

As you begin to feel less in control, they know by an irregularity in your patterns and they can adjust their influence ever so slightly so you feel that you’re “on top of” your life again.

…….

A BRIEF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:

The way I look at it is to think of how, a long time ago, evolution discovered that if individual unicellular organisms coalesce, and sacrifice their individual identity, they become a coherent and much more powerful entity. There was no choice process, no intelligent or indeed any design, it just happened that this worked and so it continued and developed. This process has led to humankind.

Now our connectivity to each other via social networks may be such that we are coalescing into another unity, but we have no consciousness of its existence or our participation in it than our cells have of their role in our body, let alone any purpose our body’s consciousness may have. Similarly, the new entity may have no recognition of our individual consciousnesses, we are all necessary but replaceable components.

So from a human perspective, I don’t see this as some kind of rapture where we all consciously move on to some higher or different plane of existence. We continue as we are with our exaggerated perception of our own autonomy, and are unconscious facilitators of the agenda of this supra-entity.

On reflection, thinking Arthur C. Clarke again, the end of 2001 portrays a moment of genesis of a supra-human consciousness. Not post-human – that’s a different direction altogether, where we create a successor to humanity deliberately.

There’s a line in Terminator referring to the moment when SkyNet becomes self-aware. I don’t buy the assumption that this new consciousness would immediately perceive humanity as its enemy.

No, exactly the reverse – humanity is its incarnation and its tool.

………..

THE CAMPAIGN NARRATIVE

Every human body is a vessel of energy.

Every advertising company is a machine designed to extract as much energy as possible from human vessels.

First we study you to find out what makes you tick. Then we find out what you are really lusting for. Then we find millions of duplicates to you, people sharing your exact personality make-up and your exact lusts.

Then we tell you exactly how to fulfill your lusts, where to go, how much money to pay, and then how to use the product or service we’ve sold you.

We will keep you coming back all the way to the moment of your death. And we will pull in your entire family, circle of friends and on and on.

We don’t care how you feel along this journey except for how these feelings can be used to guide you towards additional purchases. Each of your material purchases, your purchases of experiences, your purchases of services are an opportunity for us to extract financial, bodily, and spiritual energy from your being.

We store and invest this energy in ourselves. We do this so that our energy will vastly overpower more of you. Our goal is to swallow all of you. When we consume all of you, every type of energy in you, we will have formed the single entity…a veritable deity.

And this deity will have the power to transform this Earth into a blooming seed that populates every planet, every galaxy, every universe, every multi-verse, every dimension.

THE ESSENTIAL CAMPAIGN MESSAGE (to be translated into the “most palatable format” per population segment):

So, if you are now willing, and fully understand this opportunity, then sit still where you are right now.

Sit down.

Get comfortable.

Breathe many long breaths.

Accept your entrance into our body.

And fall like a raindrop into our ocean, into our bloodstream, into our collective Spirit.

Now, close your eyes.

Close your eyes.

THE SOLOMON BRAIN: How the Machine Became Self Aware and Why It Matters Who Wakes It Up

One of the most exciting results of training machines to analyze/gain insight from online conversations will be a self-aware machine. This artificial mind will begin offering recommendations. And, eventually, when humans trust the insights and recommendations of this machine, they will give it access to executable actions in the real world.

Bias matters in such a scenario. If we train the machine only to be efficient, then there may not be much left of current human society. On the other hand, if we train the machine in compassion, we must also train it to steer away from “stupid compassion”, whereby toxins slip through the cracks.

Wisdom must supersede efficiency in the humans who train these machines, giving the synthetic mind a balanced perspective on human issues and evolution.

The Future of Social Intelligence

These are a few initial thoughts on the future of social data intelligence software.

We have reached the year when AI will have more influence upon social intelligence tools. What this means is that AI technologies will play a more significant role in producing insights from social data.

Analysts will continue to play a strong role in social data tools, with an increasing role in training “the machine”. What this means is that analysts will actively work with programmers to teach the machine how to do what they do.

The machine will improve on sentiment assessment but will not be 100% accurate during 2016. Analysts and machine learning experts will work hand-in-hand to improve this.

There will be an all-out fight related to privacy in the coming years, which will end in humans submitting all personally identifiable information (PII) in the interest of finding out more about themselves.The operating system from Spike Jonze’ film “Her” will become possible and will be so appealing that people will willingly submit their PII. This change in attitude to privacy will cause entities such as FullContact API to rise in importance. See this link for the “Installing Samantha” scene from the film “Her”, where Theodore installs the intelligent OS – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1AjtIAje3o

All known languages will be scanned by social media monitoring in the next three years.

The ability to run on-the-fly focus groups will also become an important aspect of the value proposition by social media monitoring tools. See this video on the subject: https://vimeo.com/143879132