Humans have fought against death’s inevitable arrival for as long as we have existed. This conflict was the catalyst for the development of the faiths that have dominated human society for millennia and served as the foundation for the ideas that have formed our civilizations.
But is there a chance that a scientific answer to immortality is finally within reach? Artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced to the point where it appears poised to completely transform all facets of human life in recent years. It’s even conceivable that it will alter the way we perceive death, and perhaps even how we deal with it.
Science fiction has shown us numerous instances, most of them grotesque, where our minds can be uploaded to machines, effectively enabling us to outlive them.
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Modern Memories
A heartbroken mother was able to “reunite” with her deceased daughter in 2020 thanks to the efforts of a Korean documentary crew and VR producers. Several people found the procedure to be macabre, which caused a rift in opinion. The mother, however, stated that she had no regrets about following through with it and that the experience had helped her get through the grief process.
Although the images were extremely lifelike, this encounter was staged, and Jang Ji-Sung had little chance to engage with the seven-year-old who had died.
A few years later, however, a different South Korean business has shown off AI-based technology that might allow anyone to engage and communicate with the deceased as if they were in the same room (or at least, as if they were).
Technological Immortality?
Would Einstein have been able to address some of the issues that present-day scientists are still trying to resolve if he were still alive, building on the developments in our understanding of physics that have been made since his passing? Would Washington or Gandhi have been able to mediate a peace agreement that would have ended the hostilities that are raging today? If Shakespeare weren’t already extinguished from this earthly coil, what kinds of movies would he be producing? Of course, there is no way to know because those people’s capacity for good deeds in the world ended at the same time as their brains’ electrical activity.
Nonetheless, there are many who contend that if we acquire
