‘By 2020, our day-to-day lives, relationships and even what to have for dinner could be controlled and run by digital versions of ourselves.
- The claims were made by futurist and system theorist John Smart
- He believes we will have ‘digital twins’ within the next five years
- These twins could act like digital personal secretaries or agents
- They could also, one day, have human faces and hold conversations
- In addition, when people die, loved ones could converse with digital versions of ourselves long after our death
- Apps already exist that offer similar tools including Siri and Google Now
- The claims signal a step towards the futurist theory of singularity
Mr Smart, founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, made the comments during an interview with Business Insider.
According to futurist John Smart, within the next six years many of us could have so-called ‘digital twins’ that schedule our appointments and even have conversations with others on our behalf.
And they could one day console loved ones after we die by mimicking our voice, emotions, mannerisms and thoughts.
‘[Digital twins] will become increasingly like us and extensions of us,’ Smart said.
‘When you and I die, our kids aren’t going to go to our tombstones, they’re going to fire up our digital twins and talk to them.’
He continued there are prediction apps and software that already carry out similar tasks – such as Siri and Google Now – and these services are only going to get smarter as algorithms, interfaces and processing power increases.’