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NEWS > SCIENCE > HUMANITY LIKELY DOOMED AS SCIENTISTS MAKE FIRST MOVE TOWARDS CYLON DEVELOPMENT
HUMANITY LIKELY DOOMED AS SCIENTISTS MAKE FIRST MOVE TOWARDS CYLON DEVELOPMENT
October 22 2010
Hunstville, AL – For as long as we have been conscious and sentient beings we have had a healthy fear of death. While the thought of our own demise is certainly affecting and frightening, it is in the deaths of others that we truly feel the trauma of death. 
Whether or not it is a beloved person in our life, an acquaintance, or even a celebrity we start to feel our own mortality in their demise, while at the same time long to have them alive and back in our lives.
Now a company in Alabama has taken a major step towards doing just that; keeping the dead with us. While the company does not propose actually resurrecting the dead or prolonging life indefinitely, the company’s ‘Virtual Eternity’ does allow a person to record their likeness and personality as a digital clone which will allow future generations to interact with their lost loved ones. While the technology is certainly compelling and possessed of great potential, some believe that it is merely the first step on a dangerous road, one that may have already played out time and time again. Specifically, the critics are concerned that this new digital personality will lead us towards actual artificial beings possessed with human personalities, similar to the malevolent machines featured in the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ franchise, which will set us on a path to our end.
“The whole concept is legacy creation and preservations. The idea is I can use a number of technologies available and create a living legacy. We want to give users the gift of immortality while giving future generations a sense of connection to their roots,” said founder and CEO of Intellitar Don Davidson. “An artificial intelligent brain drives it. It has the ability to capture and maintain a virtually unlimited amount of content. It looks like me, sounds like me, acts like me and takes my personality.”
The program also allows upgrades so that the deceased will be able to keep up with new developments and possibly even current events.
“While this is certainly a compelling idea for people who have lost loved ones, which is just about everyone, the whole concept does bring up some disturbing issues. The biggest and most immediate concern is that people will be forced to watch these ghosts, to interact with them. I remember as a kid seeing this little figure in my grandparents basement and i could sleep until it was turned, I can’t imagine what it would be like to actually have my grandparents there,” said Scrape TV Science analyst Dr. Howard Poe. “Technology will always move forward and it always has to, but creating a new digital personality and preserving one that has died are two totally different things and could send us down a dangerous path. Developing technology just for the sake of doing it is not necessarily a good thing. We still have to have a strong moral and ethical component to every advancement.”
In the recent version of the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ franchise humanity is destroyed by human-like robots who evolved from formerly sentient robots created by man.
“We run into a lot of different moral issues. I mean what happens when you ask the avatar about their own death? Will they start to develop a complex? I can’t imagine what it would be like to be conscious but to know that you body is dead,” continued Poe. “They will also lose the physical component of life, looking out at things through a pane of glass, trapped forever with no way out. That would breed a lot of animosity and anger, exactly the things you don’t want in a sentient being. Exactly the kind of thing that could cause these devices to evolve and rise up and wipe us all out, exactly the plot of the TV show.”
According to officials from Universal the television show is designed as a simply a story, not a prediction of the future or a memory of the past. CEO Don Davidson did state that his favourite song is indeed ‘All along the Watchtower’.
Anna Phillips, Science Correspondent
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