It won't be long before the dead are reanimated as robots

Cloning our loved ones as  a concept isn’t alien to us, we’ve already tried it with pets. While the clone may be genetically identical to the source, the problem with cloning is that it doesn’t replicate the mind. A cloned cat is just a cat that looks like the cat that was cloned. It’s not the same thing. Companies like Lifenaut hope to change that. Imagine a future where you upload your brain, where your own intellect is turned into an AI. That future might soon be a reality. Lifenaut’s Bina48 is one such project. Lifenaut’s AI absorbed hundreds of hours of audio recording belonging to a person called Bina Aspen, wife of Terasem Movement’s founder, Martine Rothblatt. The recordings contained Bina’s beliefs, her likes, dislikes and a great deal more. The AI learnt from those recordings and created a “personality” that was similar to Bina’s in many respects. But Lifenaut didn’t stop there. A robotic bust, in the image of Bina Aspen, was created and the face animated by over 30 motors. A combination of motion capture and motors created a Bina, Bina48, that looked and acted very much like the original Bina. The AI isn’t perfect of course, but it reportedly manages a passing resemblance to the source. Think of it like Siri, but with hints of the personality of some person that you know. In fact, in March last year, Google filed a patent to do exactly that. They envisioned a system where one could download personalities just as they would an app. The patent indicates a system that would be configurable based on a number of parameters that define its personality. The personality would also have the capability to “evolve” over time, the patent states. When The New York Times reporter, Amy Harmon interacted with Bina48, she found the experience unusual, to say the least. If you read the transcript, Bina48 doesn’t really seem to be much more than a glorified chat bot in a robotic bust. But she’s more than that. The system was designed to be aware of its surroundings and to respond with character and motive. This sort of AI system is very advanced, but it’s not much of a stretch to say that it’s very similar to Siri or Cortana. Right now, the AI is functional and, as mentioned earlier, only hints at a personality of sorts. However, it can’t be long before we start reanimating our dead in the form of robots, we might even have AI companions that are clones of us.

Why not? Nobody else knows you better. Bina48 is only a proof-of-concept for now, but given time, she can be a lot more than that.

Will our dead be reanimated as robots? It’s certainly within the realms of possibility. The real question is, will you want to?