Do Digital Immortals Dream of Offline Afterlives?

2025

Creating a legacy is often seen as a way to circumvent mortality. At the very least, it is a way to ensure that someone's ideas live on and their influence on others extends beyond their own lifetime. Common examples of such legacies are cultural products, such as books, music, or art, that one creates and leaves behind. In light of rapid advances in artificial intelligence research, it is conceivable that it will soon become possible-and, to some extent, it already is-to create a new type of legacy in the form of a virtual entity, such as a chatbot or an avatar, that acts as a digital replica of someone. In this paper, we investigate in what sense, if any, one could say that the original person continues to exist in their digital replica. Taking Derek Parfit's work on the nature of personal identity as our inspiration and starting point, we suggest under what circumstances one could (and should) perceive such replicas as genuine extensions of one's personhood.

Synthetic Eternity, 2025

This thesis investigates the plausibility, mechanisms and philosophical implications of transferring human consciousness into digital platforms-a process commonly referred to as mind uploading. It evaluates two major pathways: scan-and-copy and gradual neural replacement. The study introduces original contributions such as the Digital Consciousness Fidelity Index (DCFI), a novel error-correction algorithm for highresolution brain image stitching and the hypothesis of adaptive synthetic neurons capable of real-time plasticity. Ethical concerns like digital rights, autonomy and posthumous identity are addressed through proposals like the Digital Personhood Charter. A fictional case study and an implementation roadmap provide practical illustrations. Drawing from interdisciplinary insights spanning neuroscience, AI, robotics and philosophy, this thesis offers a structured yet speculative framework for understanding and assessing the future of digital immortality.

Knowledge Cultures, 2017

The concept of digital immortality has emerged over the past decade and is defined here as the continuation of an active or passive digital presence after death. Advances in knowledge management, machine to machine communication, data mining and artificial intelligence are now making a more active presence after death possible. This paper examines the research and literature around active digital immortality and explores the emotional, social, financial, and business impact of active digital immortality on relations, friends, colleagues and institutions. The issue of digital immortality also raises issues about the legal implications of a possible autonomous presence that reaches beyond mortal existence, and this will also be investigated. The final section of the paper questions whether digital immortality is really a concern and reflects on the assumptions about it in relation to neoliberal capitalism. It suggests that digital immortality may in fact merely be a clever ruse which in fact is likely to have little, if any legal impact despite media assumptions and hyperbole.

International Journal of Research & Development, 2020

We are on the threshold of a significant change in the way we view digital life, which will have a major effect on the physical world. Computers have increasingly emulated deceased human beings through growing awareness in the fields of artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning, and have symbolically managed to overcome death with the help of technology. One thing is clear, though: now that there are proper and legitimate discussions happening about human immortality, we can be certain that the future is upon us. This article attempts to explain and challenge the ways in which digital immortality, in particular, has manifested itself. This paper summarizes the technological solutions, research findings and technical challenges of major researchers by reviewing the key technologies and general technical schemes in the field of digital human beings. The prospects of digital human beings are being investigated.

American Journal of Bioethics, 2024

There is an ongoing debate about the ethics of research on lifespan extension: roughly, using medical technologies to extend biological human lives beyond the current “natural” limit of about 120 years. At the same time, there is an exploding interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create “digital twins” of persons, for example by fine-tuning large language models on data specific to particular individuals. In this paper, we consider whether digital twins (or digital doppelgängers, as we refer to them) could be a path toward a kind of life extension – or more precisely, a kind of person extension – that does not rely on biological continuity. We discuss relevant accounts of consciousness and personal identity and argue that digital doppelgängers may at least help us achieve some of the aims or ostensible goods of person-span extension, even if they may not count as extensions of our personhood on dominant philosophical accounts. We also consider relational accounts of personhood and discuss how digital doppelgängers may be able to extend personhood in a relational sense, or at least secure some of the goods associated with relevant relationships. We conclude by suggesting that a research program to investigate such issues is relevant to ongoing debates about the ethics of extending the human lifespan.

French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1989, p.259) suggested in the mid-1980s that the ‘life or the afterlife of cinema depends on its struggle with informatics’. He predicted that digital technologies would have a dramatic impact on the technological and aesthetical development of cinema. That ‘struggle’ is evident in contemporary science fiction cinema, but it reflects not just our connection to technology, but also to religion and spirituality. My proposed paper will look at how this struggle is unfolding with regards to human self-identity, postmodern spirituality and the relationship with our world. In this context, I will investigate why contemporary science fiction rather than destroying religious sentiments, do heavily trade ‘in religious goods and thus provide a new space, a cyberspace, for religious imagination.’ (Caputo, 2001, p.68) I will further argue that over the last two decades we can observe a gradual shift from a largely dystopian treatment of machines, artificial intelligence and virtual realities to a more ambiguous portrayal that shows the opportunities as well as the dangers of virtual worlds. John Caputo had suggested that the very nature of virtual realities – in that they challenge our perception of what is real and provide a sense of something beyond – is deeply religious. This paper will therefore explore the spiritual concepts that are explicitly and implicitly played out in contemporary science fiction cinema. For example, whereas The Matrix largely relies on Judaeo-Christian symbolism – Neo as the Messiah, his girlfriend Trinity, Zion as the last remaining human city and so on – Avatar seems to draw heavily on a naturalistic, pagan spirituality. The latter is, however, also very postmodern and adapted to a cyber-universe. It is thus not surprising that so many viewers are drawn towards the basic mythic and spiritual concepts presented in a hyper-modern, technologically enhanced, cyber-world such as Pandora in Avatar. Part of this development is – as I will argue – that spirituality becomes more ‘materialistic’. We can find this ‘material’ spirituality for instance in the electronic-organic networks and the ‘Tree of Souls’ in Avatar. On the one hand nature here is mysterious and spiritual, but on the other hand it can also be measured with scientific methods. I therefore argue that what we find in contemporary science fiction is often a synthesis of spiritual and material aspects. As a consequence ideas of belief and religiosity also become progressively linked to a materialistic dimension. Yet, while spirituality becomes increasingly materialistic, we run the risk of turning the body into something mystical and ephemeral. Within virtual worlds, the body at times only remains ‘as a heavily charged trace object of a remotely remembered […] sense of the encompassing unity of natural physicality, the sense of simultaneous physical and social containment that came from a fated/unalterable relationship to one’s body.’ (Csicsery-Ronay, 2002, p.75) The statement indicates the social relationships that are linked to the body. As a consequence, it becomes clear that body and soul are by no means independent and that by making the body disposable and open to endless modifications as suggested in some of the post-humanist debates, we risk losing a sense of wholeness that identifies us as human beings. It becomes evident that the ‘encompassing unity’ is a crucial aspect of the soul which needs embodiment as much as transcendence. This is reflected by Anderson, who describes human life as ‘the spiritual saga of the creaturely soul: limited, but also expressed through physical embodiment; distressed, but also inspired through the power of spirit; mortal, but also graced with the promise of immortality through the promise of God.’ (1998, p.188) The use of religious concepts immerged in high-tech narratives reflect our own struggles with the notions of embodiment, power and mortality in a world of (almost) endless possibilities. This is why particularly the shift in our relation with technology as outlined above highlights an underlying need for spiritual meaning.

This paper presents a theoretical description of steps needed for digitalization and transfer of an individual’s self, and a concept of practical realization of immortality of the individual self.

„Virtual Art / Virtual Domains of Art”, ART INQUIRY, Volume 10, 2008

The article concerns the description of various phenomena connected with identity, which human can be subjected to in the Net. Accordingly, the processes have been presented which take place mainly within 3D electronics environment. These environments possess an ability to cause a strong immersion, which "engages" human intentionality, and also provides possibility for self-creation. For a description of the phenomena of translocating human activity to the Net, two processes have been indicated: incorporation process, i.e. receiving of an electronic body, e.g. of avatar, and existential process, i.e. human involvement in electronic environment which exceeds the utilitarian aspect. Both processes lead to the state of electronic incarnation, which is not related to any cause of being in the electronics environments, and becomes an autonomous value. Electronic incarnation combines with cultural and anthropological aspects, and has reflection in electronic art. Interrelation between common everyday activity with Net, influences a range of human involvement in the electronic environment, i.e. sometimes changing a user into a participant of immaterial events. On the one hand, such processes reach deeper in human, and secondly, electronic worlds, such as Second Life, create possibilities for finding there spiritual values, emotional life, and the sphere of feelings. Human subjected to immersion can begin specific "journey", starting in front of computer's interface, and ending in the rising of electronic personalityfinding oneself in the reality alternative to the physical world, in the electronic reality.

Playful Materialities

This chapter takes the puzzle-platform game UNRAVEL as a case study to explore how the 'haptic-panoptic' 1 quality of digital toys can locate players in the liminal space between material reality and immaterial imaginings. Drawing across Zoe Jaques' 2 theorization of the 'spectrality' of stuffed animals and Katriina Heljakka's 3 examination of toys as avatars, I argue that toylike protagonists in video games are intuitive vehicles to shuttle players between the realms of the physical and the digital. I suggest that since digital toys occupy an intermedial space between sensory planes, they can simultaneously elicit an intense sense of presentness and a profound sense of absence. I consider the paradox of manipulability and intangibility through the lenses of nostalgia and tactile memories, making connections between UNRAVEL's core mechanic of 'dis-membering' the protagonist and 're-membering' the past. I posit that the subject position available to players in UNRAVEL is that of 'ghost,' haunting the playspace and possessing the doll-like

Studia Humanistyczne AGH , 2019

Based on an analysis of the American Lifenaut research project, I attempt to capture immortality created today as a network of relationships among human and non-human factors. Lifenaut was established in 2006 as a pioneering project in the field of creating posthumous digital avatars. The users involved in the experiment gather data on the www.lifenaut.com platform to retain their personality in a digitized form after biological death. Part of my work is reconstructive-I describe the assumptions of the American project and the main concepts associated with it, such as "mindclone", "mindfiles" and "mindware". In the second part I present the results of my own avatar creation experiment and confront them with the sociological perspective of symbolic interactionism (G.H. Mead, H. Blumer) and relational sociology (B. Latour).