The Future of Replicants and Ethical Considerations

Replicants of loved ones could offer comfort and connection, despite ethical challenges surrounding their rights and authenticity.

### The Future of Replicants: Ethical Considerations and Emotional Connections
* 🤖 The concept of an afterlife may evolve into having **avatars that mimic our loved ones**, enhancing our **memories and connections** with them.
* 📝 Reflecting on personal memories, the challenge lies in creating a **satisfactory representation of those who have passed**, as our recollections are often **imperfect**.
* 💭 The ultimate goal of these replicants would be to **evoke feelings and memories** rather than to strictly adhere to factual accuracy, emphasizing **shared experiences**.
* 👥 The feasibility of a world filled with replicants raises ethical questions, such as whether these copies would have the **same rights as their originals** and how they would fit into **social dynamics**.
* 👶 The idea parallels having children, where a replicant could succeed and make the original feel **proud**, even if it signifies a form of "**death**" for the original self.
* ⚖ Legal frameworks would need to be established to ensure that replicants possess **human rights**, especially if they are created from **deceased individuals**, complicating the matter of **obligations and agreements**.
* 📊 As technology advances, the ability to **collect vast amounts of personal data** could allow for **increasingly accurate recreations of individuals**, leading to a future where **digital personas continue to exist posthumously**.
* 💬 The emotional motivation behind creating such replicants stems from a **desire to reconnect with lost loved ones**, showcasing a blend of **hope and sadness** in the face of mortality.

Do you think we'll have a future with something you call, uh, afterlife? We'll have avatars that mimic increasingly better and better our behavior, our appearance, all that kind of stuff, even though those are perhaps no longer with us. Yes, I mean we need

some information about about them. I mean, think about my father. I have what he wrote. Now, he didn't have a word processor, so he didn't actually write that much, and our memories of him aren't perfect. So how do you even know if you've created

something that's satisfactory? Now you could do a rake Frederick Kurzweil Turing test. He seems like Frederick Kurzweil to me, but the people who remember him like me don't have a perfect memory. Is there such a thing as a perfect

memory? Maybe the whole point is for him to make you feel a certain way. Yeah, well I think that would be the goal. And that's the connection we have with loved ones. It's not really based on a very strict definition of truth. It's more about the experiences we share. Yeah.

And they get more through memory, but ultimately they make us smile. I think we, we definitely can do that, and that would be very worthwhile. So do you think we'll have a world of replicants, of copies? Would there be a bunch of Rakers as well?

Like I could hang out with one. I can download it for five bucks and have a best friend Ray. And, uh, you, the original, you wouldn't even know about it. Um, is that, do you think that world is, um, first of all, do you think that world

is feasible and do you think there's ethical challenges there like how would you feel about me hanging out with a replicant of you and you not knowing about it?  Doesn't strike me as a problem, um, which would you, the original, would you, would that cause a problem for you?

No, I, I would really very much enjoy it.  No, not just hanging out with me, but if somebody's hanging out with you, a replicant of you, well, I think I would start, it sounds exciting, but then what if they uh, start doing better than me

and and take, take over my friend group and then and then I'll because because they may be um, an imperfect copy or there may be more social or these kinds of things and then I become like the old version that's not, not nearly as exciting.

Maybe they're a copy of the best version of me on a good day. Yeah, but if you hang out with a replicant of me and that turned out to be successful, I'd feel proud of that person because it's based on me, so it's, it, but it is a kind of

death of this version of you. Well, not necessarily, I mean you can still be alive right, but and you would be pro, okay, so it's like having kids and you're proud that they've done even more than you were able to do. Yeah, exactly. Uh, it does bring up new issues but

uh, it seems like an opportunity. Well, that, that replicant should probably have the same rights as you do. Well, that, that gets into a whole issue. [Music] Uh, because when a replicant occurs, they're not necessarily going to have your rights, and if a replicant occurs to somebody

Who's already dead, do they have all the obligations and that the original person had? Did they have all the agreements that they had? So I think you're going to have to have laws that say, yes, there has to be if you want to create a

replicant, they have to have all the same rights as human rights. Well, you don't know someone could create a replica and say, well, it's a replicant, but I didn't bother getting their rights. And so yeah, but that would be illegal. I mean,

like if you do that, you have to do that in the black market. You have to if you want to get an official replica. Okay, it's not so easy. Suppose you created multiple replicants. Uh, the original rights, uh, maybe for one person and not for a whole

group of people. Sure, so uh, so there has to be at least one and then all the other ones kind of share the rights. Yeah, I just don't, I don't think that that's very difficult to conceive for us humans, the, the, the, the idea

that has certain, I mean, I've talked to people about this, including my wife, who would like to get back her father, and she doesn't worry about who has rights to what. She would have somebody that she could visit with and like give her some satisfaction uh

and they wouldn't, she wouldn't care about any of these other rights. What does your wife think about multiple array cores? Walls? Well, you had that discussion. I wouldn't address that. Whether I think, I think ultimately that's an important question, loved ones, how they feel about there's a, there's

something about love, well that's the key thing right? If the loved one's rejected, it's not gonna work very well. So, so the loved ones really are the key to determine whether or not this works or not, but there's also ethical rules um we have to contend with the idea and

we have to contend with that idea with AI, but what's going to motivate it is, I mean, I talk to people who really miss people who are gone and they would love to get something back even if it isn't perfect and that's what's going to motivate this

and that person lives on in some form and the more data we have the more we're able to reconstruct that person and allow them to move on right? And eventually, as we go forward, we're going to have more and more of this data because we're going to have

nanobots that are inside our neocortex so we're going to collect a lot of data. In fact, anything that's data is is always collected. There's something a little bit sad which is becoming, or maybe it's hopeful which is more and more common these days

which when a person passes away you have their Twitter account, you know, and you have the last tweet they tweeted, like something and you can recreate them now with large language models and so on. I mean, you can create somebody that's just like them and can actually continue

to communicate. I think that's really exciting because I think in some sense like if I were to die today, in some sense I would continue on if I continued tweeting. I tweet therefore I am. Yeah, well in some sense, I mean that's one of the advantages of a replicant.

that can recreate the communications of that person, you

Will humans become immortal? | Ray Kurzweil and Lex Fridman

Clips from the Lex Fridman podcast. Visit the main channel for full conversations and other videos.

Lex Clips

The possibility of creating digital afterlife avatars

Questioning the feasibility of creating digital avatars that mimic deceased individuals.

Discussing the limitations of memory and the challenge of creating a satisfactory digital representation.

Questioning the concept of perfect memory and its relevance in creating a digital representation.

Highlighting the emotional aspect of connection with loved ones over strict adherence to factual accuracy.

Ethical considerations of replicants and digital copies

Exploring the possibility of creating numerous digital copies and the potential for interaction with them.

Discussing the ethical implications of creating replicants without the original person's knowledge.

Considering the potential for replicants to surpass the original in certain aspects.

Comparing the creation of replicants to having children and the pride associated with their achievements.

Legal and rights implications of replicants

Discussing the legal rights and obligations of replicants, especially those of deceased individuals.

Suggesting the necessity of laws granting replicants the same rights as humans.

Addressing the possibility of illegal creation of replicants without proper rights considerations.

Discussing the distribution of rights among multiple replicants.

Personal perspectives and emotional impact of replicants

Sharing a personal anecdote about a wife's desire to reconnect with her deceased father through a replicant.

Emphasizing the importance of loved ones' acceptance in determining the success of replicant technology.

Highlighting the emotional motivation behind the creation of replicants.

Future technological advancements and data collection

Discussing the increasing availability of data due to technological advancements like nanobots.

Mentioning the use of social media data like Twitter to recreate deceased individuals using large language models.

Highlighting the potential for continued communication with deceased individuals through digital representations.