Elon Musk hints he has already built an AI-powered afterlife – and we’re in it

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    Responding to a Twitter user’s suggestion that Elon Musk would use the platform to recreate a digital copy of our personalities in a “digital afterlife”, the social network’s new owner cryptically replied “maybe we’re already in it”.

    Several experts have commented on how tech billionaire seem to be intent on achieving immorality – either through biohacking or uploading their consciousness into a “Matrix” style metaverse.

    PayPal founder Peter Thiel says he refuses to accept that immortality is impossible, saying in 2012: “Death is a problem that can be solved.”

    READ MORE: Musk says Twitter is 'giant cybernetic super-intelligence' with 'room for improvement'

    Google’s director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, predicted a future where technology like Elon Musk’s Neuralink enables us to upload ourselves into machines: “We’re going to become increasingly non-biological to the point where the non-biological part dominates, and the biological part is not important any more.

    “In fact,” Kurzweil added, “the non-biological part – the machine part – will be so powerful it can completely model and understand the biological part.”

    But Rami Kaminski, from The Institute of Integrative Psychiatry says the billionaires’ impulse to find eternal life is “juvenile”.

    “You may go to Mars,” he says, “but you cannot go out into the solar system."

    He says the tech billionaires have a “limited” view of the world: “What they’re trying to do is get away from the mortal coil. Every day when you look in the mirror you are reminded you are made of carbon. It is degrading and has to be recycled.”

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    American data scientist Emily Gorcenski went one further, in an extended Twitter thread last month she predicted a future where the human race was divided into “digital” personalities living on computer servers and a worker class maintaining the computer infrastructure in a ruined real world.

    She points out that Jeff Bezos’s Metaverse solves a question no-one was asking: “To understand the Metaverse means you have to understand that rich techno nerds genuinely believe they will be able to upload their consciousness before they die

    “The Metaverse isn’t being built to revolutionise remote working. It’s being built because they need to believe they can build heaven”.

    But, she explains, that’s a hard concept to sell, so the main discussion around the Metaverse is around business and remote working. Nobody, she points out, was asking for virtual reality business meetings.

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    And even if the digital afterlife is successfully built, Emily adds, we can’t all take advantage of it.

    “The servers that run the metaverse…have to be physical. They need power and spare parts. They can break. So people—mortals—need to maintain them.

    “In the Metaversal future there will be a class of mortal people tasked with the upkeep of the heaven of the gods”.

    And, she adds, the creation of a digital paradise could well lead to war here on Earth: “There are a *lot* of people who would be deeply offended by the idea of a synthetic heaven. A lot of people who would be violent to stop it.

    “The Metaverse Maintainer Class would also therefore need to be able to fight a mortal physical war”.

    If we are living in the Matrix right now, the real world could be even bleaker and more terrifying than we imagine.

    READ MORE:

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    • Elon Musk's Twitter takeover sees users move to little-known rival after dubious changes
    • Elon Musk loses £8bn net worth since buying Twitter – but he's still world's richest man
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