4 ms·

I’m far from the first to think of this. Several people — perhaps inspired by creepy Black Mirror episodes — have tried to fine-tune an LLM on their SMS or What

I’m far from the first to think of this. Several people — perhaps inspired by creepy Black Mirror episodes — have tried to fine-tune an LLM on their SMS or WhatsApp history in an effort to create a simulation of themselves. It's a much older concept than Black Mirror. Ever since Markov chain IRC bots got popularized in the late 90s and early 2000s, people have been trying to train their virtual doppelgängers. I'm sure it won't be long before you can pay to have a post-Mortem ghost of yourself duplicated in a cemetery seance style MMO to perpetually live on and interact with other people who have passed on.

HPMOR 3y ago
This actually seems like a really good startup idea.
- krainboltgreene 3y ago
  This is definitely what silicon valley would consider a good startup idea.
- fnorder 3y ago
  I'm petty sure that Ray Kurzweil was working on this very thing when Google brought him on.
  - mojomark 3y ago
    The documentary with him saving his father's writings and such was one of the saddest things I've seen - that moment has stuck with me for years. I suppose the people who will be paying for such a service will be the loved ones left behind, not the one's dying. I wonder if the doppelgangers will start to talk to each other in the graveyard in the middle of the night?
    - kevindamm 3y ago
      If two digitized ghosts are talking but no air gets vibrated, do they make a sound?
- Alpha3031 3y ago
  cripes does anybody remember Google People
  - Filligree 3y ago
    How could I possibly forget?
- spiritplumber 3y ago
  It's literally an episode of Max Headroom. https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.2.2:_%22Deities%22 https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.2.2:...
teitoklien 3y ago
> Pay to have a ghost of yourself duplicated in a cemetery. I mean, they already do it at funerals [1]. I don’t see why not, would make cemetery a fun hangout place to talk to people from history. [1](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FJRbRsBBY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FJRbRsBBY)
- Minor49er 3y ago
  Apparently this works by asking questions to someone while they are still alive. Then after the individual has passed, friends and family can ask questions to a video screen which will pick out the response that it feels is the most appropriate and play it. Though I'm sure we're not far off from a service that will do this through deepfake technology Makes me think of the 2004 movie The Final Cut where people get memory implants that record their entire lives for the purpose of creating a highlight reel of their lives after they're gone
- anjel 3y ago
  See also: Tupak; Coachella
skybrian 3y ago
If you want to include fictional antecedents, there is Dixie Flatline from Neuromancer.
- layman51 3y ago
  There’s also Ubik by Philip K. Dick where the recently deceased are able to communicate with the living AND aside from that also advertise a product.
  - fouc 3y ago
    I looked it up. Ubik was written earlier in 1969, than Neuromancer, which was written in 1984
    - skybrian 3y ago
      Haven't read Ubik. I'm under the impression it essentially happens by magic (fantasy)? Or is some fictional technology involved?
      - layman51 3y ago
        It is a kind of cryogenic technology where the person is “half-alive”. But still I guess the book itself does have magical elements in it such as psychic powers.
noduerme 3y ago
On the casino I used to run, I started a pilot program with a homemade poker bot (labeled as such, and only deployed on poker tables labeled as "bot friendly"). The bot had no set model of its own. It was designed to mimic specific players on the casino, regulars who had played 10,000+ hands and who agreed to have their history cloned, by ingesting their entire hand/betting history and looking for what they had done in similar scenarios as far as hole card value, probability, position, pot odds, table "heat" (a rolling average of over- or under-betting from other players in the previous hands based on what they showed if they showed down), etc. I got a few good players to agree to let me take all their data and make poker clones of them. What was really funny was watching them get baffled and often beaten in heads-up play against their doppelgangers. The bot never had more information about the game than any other player. But its betting style varied wildly depending on who it was based on. As a side, this also helped me build a real-time system to monitor potential collusion based on betting patterns that deviated from a player's normal behavior at times when they were sitting at the same table as someone else whose patterns deviated in their presence.
- digdugdirk 3y ago
  "On the casino I used to run"? That might be the most casual intro to what sounds like a fascinating corner of the internet I never experienced. Do you have any other interesting stories or references to that time of your life?
  - noduerme 3y ago
    I do, and I don't mind showing you them if you're interested, but why do you care? ah fuckit. SO yeah, I lived outside the US and ran a bitcoin casino for some years for non-US players, which was blocked to US IP ranges and required IDs to eliminate US customers (even though Bitcoin gambling still wasn't officially illegal at the time). My general idea was to make a casino for smart people who liked puzzles, so to that end I built games that would let people have an even-money chance if they played the game perfectly. The coolest thing that came out of this was one of my players went on to build an escape room in the Netherlands that used one of my games as a puzzle to solve to get out of the room. Here's some stuff from that casino (it was active from about 2010 to 2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJV40hu9J38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJV40hu9J38 https://youtu.be/rkRfSAtCYAw https://youtu.be/rkRfSAtCYAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD4GqCAAsmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD4GqCAAsmo
dontupvoteme 3y ago
As a coarse bare minimum this is from Neuromancer. I am not sure if Gibson found inspiration elsewear but this is pure flatline dixie. Fundamentally I suppose it's naught but whispers from the beyond.
- LightBug1 3y ago
  “Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I’m really just a bunch of ROM. It’s one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess...” The ugly laughter sensation rattled down Case’s spine. “But I ain’t likely to write you no poem, if you follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain’t no way human.”
jacquesm 3y ago
"Do me a favor, boy. This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this god-damned thing.".
a_bonobo 3y ago
There's this recent cool SF novel by the Polish (and undertranslated!!!) SF author Jacek Dukaj called 'The Old Axolotl'. In it, people used gaming systems to copy their 'beings' into machines before a planetwide wipeout event of biologic life. The machines, with the human simulacra within them, survive for hundreds of years. What's interesting about the books is that the machines feel human and have all the human emotions, but somewhat foreshadowing LLMs, they cannot learn like humans learn. The robot society is essentially stale, forever, nobody develops. (at least that's my interpretation as to why the robots fail in the book)
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  It's a great book, and totally agree the author is under translated!
  - kolinko 3y ago
    There were two Netflix miniseries related to the book, btw. Exploring the surviving humans on the planet.
    - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
      Ah, if you mean Into The Night, I enjoyed that, although the link to the old axolotl wasnt entirely obvious!
      - kolinko 3y ago
        Yes! And there was a second mini series connected to this one! Yakamoz S-245
bhoops 3y ago
there was a post on linked in around this https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-needs-die-anymore-nishant-soni https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-needs-die-anymore-nishant...
skywal_l 3y ago
See also `Revelation Space` series of sci-fi books by Alastair Reynolds. People are being simulated so their knowledge and wisdom can be tapped after their death. [0] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Gamma-level_simulation https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Gamma-level_simulati... [1] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Beta-level_simulation https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Beta-level_simulatio... [2] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha-level_simulation https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha-level_simulati...
- maxbond 3y ago
  A great short story in this universe on this topic is "Monkey Suit."

HPMOR 3y ago

This actually seems like a really good startup idea.

krainboltgreene 3y ago
This is definitely what silicon valley would consider a good startup idea.
fnorder 3y ago
I'm petty sure that Ray Kurzweil was working on this very thing when Google brought him on.
- mojomark 3y ago
  The documentary with him saving his father's writings and such was one of the saddest things I've seen - that moment has stuck with me for years. I suppose the people who will be paying for such a service will be the loved ones left behind, not the one's dying. I wonder if the doppelgangers will start to talk to each other in the graveyard in the middle of the night?
  - kevindamm 3y ago
    If two digitized ghosts are talking but no air gets vibrated, do they make a sound?
Alpha3031 3y ago
cripes does anybody remember Google People
- Filligree 3y ago
  How could I possibly forget?
spiritplumber 3y ago
It's literally an episode of Max Headroom. https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.2.2:_%22Deities%22 https://www.maxheadroom.com/index.php?title=Episode_ABC.2.2:...

teitoklien 3y ago

> Pay to have a ghost of yourself duplicated in a cemetery. I mean, they already do it at funerals [1]. I don’t see why not, would make cemetery a fun hangout place to talk to people from history. [1](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FJRbRsBBY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s2FJRbRsBBY)

Minor49er 3y ago
Apparently this works by asking questions to someone while they are still alive. Then after the individual has passed, friends and family can ask questions to a video screen which will pick out the response that it feels is the most appropriate and play it. Though I'm sure we're not far off from a service that will do this through deepfake technology Makes me think of the 2004 movie The Final Cut where people get memory implants that record their entire lives for the purpose of creating a highlight reel of their lives after they're gone
anjel 3y ago
See also: Tupak; Coachella

skybrian 3y ago

If you want to include fictional antecedents, there is Dixie Flatline from Neuromancer.

layman51 3y ago
There’s also Ubik by Philip K. Dick where the recently deceased are able to communicate with the living AND aside from that also advertise a product.
- fouc 3y ago
  I looked it up. Ubik was written earlier in 1969, than Neuromancer, which was written in 1984
  - skybrian 3y ago
    Haven't read Ubik. I'm under the impression it essentially happens by magic (fantasy)? Or is some fictional technology involved?
    - layman51 3y ago
      It is a kind of cryogenic technology where the person is “half-alive”. But still I guess the book itself does have magical elements in it such as psychic powers.

noduerme 3y ago

On the casino I used to run, I started a pilot program with a homemade poker bot (labeled as such, and only deployed on poker tables labeled as "bot friendly"). The bot had no set model of its own. It was designed to mimic specific players on the casino, regulars who had played 10,000+ hands and who agreed to have their history cloned, by ingesting their entire hand/betting history and looking for what they had done in similar scenarios as far as hole card value, probability, position, pot odds, table "heat" (a rolling average of over- or under-betting from other players in the previous hands based on what they showed if they showed down), etc. I got a few good players to agree to let me take all their data and make poker clones of them. What was really funny was watching them get baffled and often beaten in heads-up play against their doppelgangers. The bot never had more information about the game than any other player. But its betting style varied wildly depending on who it was based on. As a side, this also helped me build a real-time system to monitor potential collusion based on betting patterns that deviated from a player's normal behavior at times when they were sitting at the same table as someone else whose patterns deviated in their presence.

digdugdirk 3y ago
"On the casino I used to run"? That might be the most casual intro to what sounds like a fascinating corner of the internet I never experienced. Do you have any other interesting stories or references to that time of your life?
- noduerme 3y ago
  I do, and I don't mind showing you them if you're interested, but why do you care? ah fuckit. SO yeah, I lived outside the US and ran a bitcoin casino for some years for non-US players, which was blocked to US IP ranges and required IDs to eliminate US customers (even though Bitcoin gambling still wasn't officially illegal at the time). My general idea was to make a casino for smart people who liked puzzles, so to that end I built games that would let people have an even-money chance if they played the game perfectly. The coolest thing that came out of this was one of my players went on to build an escape room in the Netherlands that used one of my games as a puzzle to solve to get out of the room. Here's some stuff from that casino (it was active from about 2010 to 2013). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJV40hu9J38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJV40hu9J38 https://youtu.be/rkRfSAtCYAw https://youtu.be/rkRfSAtCYAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD4GqCAAsmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD4GqCAAsmo

dontupvoteme 3y ago

As a coarse bare minimum this is from Neuromancer. I am not sure if Gibson found inspiration elsewear but this is pure flatline dixie. Fundamentally I suppose it's naught but whispers from the beyond.

LightBug1 3y ago
“Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I’m really just a bunch of ROM. It’s one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess...” The ugly laughter sensation rattled down Case’s spine. “But I ain’t likely to write you no poem, if you follow me. Your AI, it just might. But it ain’t no way human.”

jacquesm 3y ago

"Do me a favor, boy. This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this god-damned thing.".

a_bonobo 3y ago

There's this recent cool SF novel by the Polish (and undertranslated!!!) SF author Jacek Dukaj called 'The Old Axolotl'. In it, people used gaming systems to copy their 'beings' into machines before a planetwide wipeout event of biologic life. The machines, with the human simulacra within them, survive for hundreds of years. What's interesting about the books is that the machines feel human and have all the human emotions, but somewhat foreshadowing LLMs, they cannot learn like humans learn. The robot society is essentially stale, forever, nobody develops. (at least that's my interpretation as to why the robots fail in the book)

MattPalmer1086 3y ago
It's a great book, and totally agree the author is under translated!
- kolinko 3y ago
  There were two Netflix miniseries related to the book, btw. Exploring the surviving humans on the planet.
  - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
    Ah, if you mean Into The Night, I enjoyed that, although the link to the old axolotl wasnt entirely obvious!
    - kolinko 3y ago
      Yes! And there was a second mini series connected to this one! Yakamoz S-245

bhoops 3y ago

there was a post on linked in around this https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-needs-die-anymore-nishant-soni https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-needs-die-anymore-nishant...

skywal_l 3y ago

See also `Revelation Space` series of sci-fi books by Alastair Reynolds. People are being simulated so their knowledge and wisdom can be tapped after their death. [0] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Gamma-level_simulation https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Gamma-level_simulati... [1] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Beta-level_simulation https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Beta-level_simulatio... [2] https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha-level_simulation https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha-level_simulati...

maxbond 3y ago
A great short story in this universe on this topic is "Monkey Suit."