Surpassing our Biological Limitations [in useful ways, today] with Virtual Twins
Have you ever had the desire to live forever? Or to have all the world’s knowledge? If so you are not alone in this fantasy, and the cool thing is that we are now in the first stages of this happening, by way of your Virtual Twin.
The merging of man and machine, to surpass man’s biological limitations, whether that be intelligence or longevity, is a hot topic.
Ray Kurzweil, the famed futurist, predicts the “Singularity”, a time when the intelligence of man and machine will come together in a way that will enormously benefit humans. It will herald “Humanity 2.0” where we will all apparently be funnier, better at music and even sexier…
While the full promise of Singularity is not set to happen until 2045, we are today seeing the first tangible fruits of man and machine coming together in a digital-based, non-biological you. We are seeing that when we recreate our own physical likeness in code, entirely new, and tremendously useful things become possible.
Augmented Communication
This is happening first and foremost in the realm of Communication. This is of course one of humankind’s most important skills. In Sapiens, Yuval Harari claims that it is our unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers that allows us, and no other species, to rule the world.
The issue is that the scope of our cooperation is limited by the languages we speak (in the US, just 20% of people can communicate in more than one language). In a globalized world, and globalized business, it’s not enough to only communicate within our tribe. Cooperation must happen across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
As such, Language Translation is a huge business. The Translation industry is worth a whopping $56 billion, with every sector from the military to commerce requiring translation services. Meanwhile, Google Translate is the biggest AI project in the world. For Google to fulfill its mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” the language barrier simply must be removed.
At this point you’re probably wondering where your Virtual Twin comes in… Well, this is when the digital you with all your human likeness and charm, takes on a super-intelligence that Google has created. Imagine integrating the magical abilities of Google Translate into your skill set, and actually speaking these languages, with perfect pronunciation, as a native would.
This is already possible to an extent today, where the Virtual Twins of known and not-so-known people are speaking with full native expression in a dozen different languages. And it will become more close to real-time (as with Google Translate) as technology progresses.
Making linear time exponential
A further biological restraint is the time in a day we have to do things, and the limitations of linear time. There are only so many hours in the day we can invest in communicating. This is nowhere more prescient than in today’s era.
As an example, video is now a primary communications medium. Today, everything from learning and training, to health consultations, corporate communications and sales have gone online, with video replacing many traditionally in-person communications. The opportunity with video is great, but the issue is that to create video you have to spend a lot of time making it: sitting in front of the camera, editing, setup, retakes… Perhaps five times more time invested in creating it than the output of video you’re able to generate.
This is slow and cumbersome, consuming valuable time that could be spent creating new materials or making big decisions, in your actual area of expertise.
And given that all this video is digital, why rely on so biological an input? Why not generate it with code? This is of course where your Virtual Twin comes in — already codified and ready for (skip the cameras…) action. Simply feed your scripts into the system, dozens of lessons, pitches or speeches at a time, regionalized and translated for your global audiences, and generate your finished videos in minutes. Remove the input of human labor, and just reap the output, on steroids… Put your Virtual Twin to work for you, and you can make linear time exponential.
For your Virtual Twin to work for you it must satisfy certain factors. It must look like you, which requires extreme photo realism and learning of your natural expressions. Also that it can be instantly served and delivered on any screen across all geographies, and that use remains exclusively under your command… More to come on that next.
