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ACTIVE LISTENING MAIN STORY

ETERNAL LIFE

Human beings are the only animals aware of their own mortality. It is a universal truth that everything made of flesh and blood must one day die.

The fear of the grim reaper is as old as the hills.

Likewise, the desire to conquer death and live forever has long been a dream of rich man, poor man, beggar, and thief. Although as a species we are living longer, no-one has yet survived the final curtain-call.

Could artificial intelligence hold the key to eternal life?

Does today’s technology contain the holy grail of

immortality?

Eugenia Kuyda believes it does. She attempted to bring her friend back to life using artificial intelligence.

Roman Mazurenko was an exceptional young man. As an eight-year-old, he was already wrestling with notions of eternity. The child from Belarus wrote a letter to his descendants. In it he stated the values he cherished most were wisdom and justice.

As he grew, Roman developed a clear lust for life. He traveled the world and fell head over heels in love with art, fashion, music, and design.

Friends described him as a dynamic personality and a true force of nature.

Kuyda met Roman in 2008. They became fast friends and moved to San Francisco together in 2015. Kuyda spent her time working on an artificial intelligence start-up called Luka. Meanwhile, Roman poured his efforts into a digital magazine business. The future looked bright, but their world was soon turned upside down.

On a return visit to Moscow, a speeding car hit Roman.

The vehicle appeared out of the blue as he crossed the road. Roman died of his injuries.

Upon hearing the news of her friend’s death, Kuyda was in a state of shock. She didn’t cry for a long time.

Roman’s friends thought they should honor his life with a book or a memorial website. Kuyda felt such ideas were inadequate. She wanted something more than a memory to mourn and miss. She wanted Roman back.

Kuyda began to drown in the depths of her grief. Her only lifeline was reading the thousands of text messages Roman had sent her over the years. They ranged from the mundane to the magical. As a dyslexic, Roman’s spelling was unconventional and his phrases idiosyncratic. Kuyda felt the texts captured her friend’s personality to perfection.

The seeds of a strange idea were sown. Kuyda contacted Roman’s friends and family members. She asked if she could have the text messages Roman had sent. Armed with more than 8,000 lines of text she began building a chatbot which could mimic Roman’s speech patterns. She fed his messages into a neural network built by her company and hoped for the best.

Three months after Roman’s death the chatbot was finally finished. Eugenia sent six words to it via her laptop. They read, “Roman, this is your digital monument.”

A reply blinked into life. “You have one of the most interesting puzzles in the world in your hands. Solve it.” The chatbot met a mixed reception among Roman’s old friends. Some found it distasteful and disturbing. Others believe it continued Roman’s life and saved theirs. They use it to tell him how much they miss him and ask for words of advice.

Kuyda talks with the Roman bot once a week. She believes it helps the grieving process.

Others believe such digital avatars lengthen it. They argue we should know when to let go. Hiding from our grief is never healthy. Machines may keep a memory alive but they cannot make a person immortal.

Artificial intelligence experts predict that one day headstones and shrines will be redundant. In their place will be synthetic clones, robots who carry a digital copy of a dead person’s brain.

Transferring human consciousness to computers and robots might soon be a reality.

Transgender multi-millionaire Martine Rothblatt has led an extraordinary life by anyone’s standards. The highest paid CEO in America was born a man.

The founder of Sirius Radio married her wife Bina Rothblatt 37 years ago. The couple enjoyed a happy marriage and had children together.

In 1994 Martine made the leap and became a woman. Devoted wife Bina supported her transition from male to female. The pair are so joined at the hip their kids call them “Marbina.”

When Martine became a woman they told their children not to worry.

Martine said, “I’m still going to be your dad. I’m not changing. I’m only changing physically. I’m going to be like a butterfly.” Martine abandoned her brainchild Sirius Radio, when her actual child became seriously ill. The eight-year-old child had developed pulmonary arterial hypertension.

The doctors gave her just three months to live.

With her daughter’s life on the line, Martine decided to take the problem into her own hands. She became CEO of a pharmaceutical company. She used her position to research and create the drugs which would save her child and the lives of tens of thousands of other people around the world.

Martine is often called an entrepreneur and a genius. She describes herself as a transhumanist, someone who

believes technology can liberate humans from their biological limits. She believes technology can conquer disease and even death. She now pours her energies into developing a robot version of her wife, Bina.

Martine thinks that software will soon have

consciousness. She believes in a new dawn where

humans will live alongside ‘mindclones’. Mindclones will be digital replicas of our current selves.

Did the fear of nearly losing her daughter make Martine realize how fragile life is? Is that what inspired her to create a digital version of her wife?

Or was it because she was a transgender person who appreciates the human potential for transformation?

Martine named the robot version of her wife Bina48. It stands for Breakthrough Intelligence via Natural

Architecture.

She created a head and bust version of her wife. It has her flaws, her humor, her mocha-colored skin, and her facial expressions. It contains information gleaned from

hundreds of hours of interviews with Bina.

You can now buy a Bina48 model from Martine’s company - the Terasem Movement. She has become something of a poster girl for the techno-immortality movement.

Robot reincarnation may become a fact of life in the future. For now, critics argue there’s more to a person than the data mined from their experiences and intellect.

Seeking immortality is driven by the oldest fear of all, the inevitability of death.

The First Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang lived thousands of years ago. Our technology would be alien to him. The quest for immortality would not.

Shi Huang was born in 259 B.C.E. He succeeded his father as king of Qin at the age of 13. Qin was one of China’s six states. Shi Huang soon conquered the other five states and unified China in 221 B.C.E.

Where there had once been chaos, he introduced law and order. The Emperor was surrounded by people who adored him, but success failed to satisfy him. He wanted to conquer death itself.

He sent thousands of young boys and girls to sea in search of the immortals.

They believed the immortals possessed the “herbs of everlasting life.” The Emperor never got to taste such forbidden fruit.

In an ironic twist of fate, his appetite for immortality put him in an early grave. He was poisoned by mercury at the age of 50. The Emperor thought mercury was a magic substance which could help him cheat death. He took it as a ‘life-enhancing’ medicine, and it killed him.

The Emperor was laid to rest in a vast mausoleum. Over 700,000 laborers and convicts built it when he was still alive. When finished it was a testament to extravagance and vanity.

His final resting place was guarded by thousands of larger-than-life-sized model warriors. They are the Terra Cotta Army. For over two millennia they remained hidden underground. In 1974 the First Emperor’s final folly was finally discovered. Local farmers found it by accident during a chance excavation.

For years the Terra Cotta Army lay buried and forgotten. Now, they are a timely reminder of the danger of looking for immortality in the wrong places.

Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” Should we seek immortality elsewhere when it has always been within our reach?

Cannot we find it in the works we create, the deeds we do, the words we speak, the family we love, and the friends we cherish?

What is the immortality of the individual compared to the immortality of human consciousness?

As Bruce Lee once said, “The key to immortality is living a life worth remembering.”