Lecturer: David Burden
Fields: Artificial Intelligence, Metaverse, Embodied Intelligence, Digital Immortality
Content
Stories and comment around digital immortality seem to be increasingly common in the media, and public reaction (particularly in the West) is often very negative. But what is the true current situation, and how might things evolve in the future? This series of lectures will explore the emergence and evolution of both virtual human and metaverse technology, and how they come together in the form of embodied AI. One possibility, almost an implication of these developments is the creation of digital replicas of real human beings, as well as of synthetic personalities, and how once such entities emerge they may deliberately, or even accidentally, transcend the death of their human models, and take on a form of digital amortality. The lectures will consider both the technical possibilities and the ethical and social implications of such developments. Students will be directed to resources which will enable them to experiment with the technologies discussed, to prompt discussions and explore the future through a matrix or similar narrative game.
Lecture 1 – Conversational AI and Virtual Humans
Lecture 1 will examine at the development of Conversational AI and virtual humans, from Eliza to ChatGPT. In particular it will look at the different elements required to create the ‘mind’ and ‘body’ of a virtual human, and how Large Language Model approaches contrast with some of the more traditional approaches, and whether hybrid approaches are possible or desirable. The lecture will also discuss the current use cases for conversational AI and the challenges, particularly in terms of ethics, privacy and employment. The representation of such AIs in the media, such as in Spike Jonze’s Her will also be considered. The idea of personal replicas will be introduced and attendees will be introduced to tools that will allow them to build their own personal replica during or after the School.
Lecture 2 – The Metaverse
Lecture 2 will explore the evolution of virtual worlds and metaversal spaces, with a particular focus on social virtual worlds. Current models of virtual worlds, such as Fortnite, Robolox etc will be compared to those of almost a generation ago such as There, ActiveWorlds and Second Life. Current use cases and challenges will be considered. Different definitions of the metaverse will be discussed and ten axioms for a future metaverse considered. The lecture will also examine 7 possible futures for the concept of the Metaverse. The idea of information gardens, a memory-palace or second brain made explicit, will also be explored. Media representation of the Metaverse will also be presented, such as Vernor Vinge’s True Names, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, Lottie Moggach’s Kiss Me First and the Mindjammer Role-Playing Game (RPG). Attendees will be introduced to tools that will allow them to build their own information gardens during or after the School.
Lecture 3 – Embodiment
Lecture 3 will bring together the two strands of ideas and technology presented in the previous lectures by considering the role of embodiment in the development of intelligence and sentience. The lecture will examine the embodiment of AI in physical (robot/android) and virtual (avatar/robotar) forms, how they compare and their relative affordances. The virtual embodiment model will then be considered in more detail, looking at past and present examples, and future directions for the research, and even dreaming (of electric sheep?) will be considered. Media representation of embodiment, from the physical embodiment of Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica’s Caprica prequel and the Sentience RPG to Andromeda’s Rommie and the fluid embodiment of Greg Egan’s books will be examined. Attendees will (hopefully) be introduced to tools that will allow them to create their own embodied robotars during or after the School.
Lecture 4 – Digital Amortality
Lecture 4 will push on into the future and, informed by the previous lectures, consider the question of digital amortality – is it viable (or even inevitable) and is it desirable. Digital amortality (a term coined by in Neal Stephenson in Fall; or, Dodge in Hell) is a slightly more ‘realistic’ version of digital immortality where it is accepted that true immortality may be something of a tall order, and that a more reasonable goal may be to have a control over when to end (or pause) one’s existence. Whilst a possible technical pathway will be presented, much of this session will be about the ethical and motivational issues for such developments, and particularly the different perspectives (and goals) of the person themselves and of those left behind. An argument as to why such amortality may be accidental, and inevitable will be presented, along with a consideration of the concept of a thanoverse, and the relationship between digital amortality and space exploration. There will be some live polling to gain attendee feedback on the different issues, and options, discussed, media representations (such as Black Mirror and Upload) will again be examined, and a potential personal pathway towards digital amortality presented.
Evening Session – A Matrix Game of the Future (provisional)
As an evening session a ~2 hour “matrix” game will be presented, focussed on the future development of AI, the metaverse and digital immortality. A Matrix Game is a form of structured argument. Each player takes on the role of a different stakeholder (e.g. country, organisation, pressure group, AI?) in the topic under discussion, and each turn presents an argument for undertaking one action – which can be challenged or supported by other players. A suitable adjudication method (e.g. dice, voting, probability cards) is then used to decide if the action is successful. For this game a turn may represent around 10-20 years so that the next century of human history, and of AI, metaverse and digital immortality can be examined.
Literature
- Burden, D. J., Savin-Baden, M., & Bhakta, R. (2016). Covert Implementations of the Turing Test: A More Level Playing Field? In Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XXXIII: Incorporating Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems: Vol. XXIV 33 (pp. 195–207). Springer International Publishing.
- Burden, D., & Savin-Baden, M. (2019). Virtual Humans: Today and Tomorrow. CRC Press.
- Savin-Baden, M., & Burden, D. (2019). Digital immortality and virtual humans. Postdigital Science and Education, 1, 87–103.
- Burden, D. J. H. (2020). Building a Digital Immortal. In M. Savin-Baden & V. Mason-Robbie (Eds.), Digital Afterlife. CRC.
- Burden, D., & Savin-Baden, M. (2024). The Metaverse: A Critical Introduction. Taylor & Francis.
Lecturer
Biography: For the last 20 years David has run Daden Limited, helping organisations explore and exploit the social and commercial potential of using conversational AI and virtual worlds, delivering over 100 projects for clients across the globe. Daden were finalists in the BCS Machine Intelligence Competition, and chatbots designed by David successfully passed two covert Turing Tests in the 2010s. David spoke at the inaugural TEDxBrum on Digital Immortality, has authored over a dozen papers and book chapters, including co-authoring the books Virtual Humans, and The Metaverse:A Critical Introduction, both published by Routledge, New York. David is currently studying for a PhD on wargaming urban conflict, is an ex-Royal Signals officer, a Chartered European Engineer and is also series co-editor for Taylor & Francis on their Metaverse Series of books.
Affiliation: Daden Limited
Homepage: https://taunoyen.com/