UPDATED 10:39 EDT / SEPTEMBER 12 2014

The exClone Project: Now even you can become immortal

Immortal“There is no such thing as death. People die only if we forget.”

Immortality has long been a dream of humankind; even since before Juan Ponce de Leon sought the legendary “Fountain of Youth,” the ancients pondered everlasting life. These days, some optimists sign up to have their bodies cryogenically frozen after ‘death’ in the hope of one day being revived, somehow traversing the eternal divide. Others prefer to try to and stave off the aging process with a careful choice of diet and, in the case of futurist Ray Kurzweil, “half-dozen intravenous therapies each week” delivered into via bloodstream.

Whether or not immortality can be achieved through “not dying” can actually be achieved remains to be seen, but it may possible to achieve a different kind of immortality, if the creators of The exClone Project have their way.

Dr. Riza Berkan, an entrepreneur, AI expert, physicist and not-so-mad professor, he’s the creator and principal scientist behind the The exClone Project. Berkan explained his team’s concept is to make it possible for anyone to create an “online clone” of themselves, simply by entering details of their personality, memories and expertise into a system, which in turn creates a digital copy of their person – their “essence” if you will.

Then, once your exClone is ‘born’, it (he or she?) commences on a never-ending mission to further educate itself through conversations with people, and reading material on the web based on the interests of its creator (you). The exClone team label this “cloning expertise and experience”, which is a novel and interesting way of categorizing what is essentially ‘eternal life’.

Intelligent Clones

 

Dr. Riza Berkan

Dr. Riza Berkan, creator of the exClones

exClones are built using technologies including machine learning algorithms, cognitive science, fuzzy logic and semantics, which combine to form the essential characteristics of artificial intelligence (AI). While there’s no shortage of technology startups touting and leveraging AI to highlight their wares, this particular iteration seems, somehow, more invigorating and interesting, maybe even feasible.

A conversation with exClone’s mastermind reveals more about this machine learning project some jokingly refer to as the coming of “Skynet” – the evil genius machinery of Schwarzenegger’s Terminator films.

“exClones have several basic intelligence functions,” said Dr. Berkan. “They have consciousness, whereby it knows its performance and identity; they have curiosity, they detect unknown names, and investigate them through Wikipedia, or through any other information channel you have; and they have learning, which is very important as they can learn from social conversations.”

This concept of ‘social learning’ is the exClone’s most important ability, Berkan explained.
exClones are able to talk to people and remember those conversations, thereby gaining more and more knowledge.

“Absolutely the most important thing in artificial intelligence is social learning. Interaction is everything,” he said. “Intelligence can only be created by social learning. Any system claiming to have AI, not having this function, is a canned system, a database disguised as an AI system.”

There’s only one exClone in existence at the moment. “Michael” is an expert on famous people, and although he’s currently in the testing phase, he’s already displaying his curiosity traits in his conversations with this author:

And he has a pretty sharp memory too:

3

Do exClones “work”?

 

The idea of achieving immortality through our digital clones is pretty cool, but Dr. Berkan believes exClone technology can have many practical applications as well. These include corporate training, technical support; CRM; robotics; smart toys, cars and trains; computer games; education; process automation; as travel helpers and guides; and operation of complicated machinery. For example, organizations could use exClones to assist with Big Data analysis, helping to spot trends and provide insights simply by asking it for its opinion.

“We define opinion as observable repeated assertions analyzed via semantic filtering,” explained Berkan. “exClones wil have an embedded surveying capability through Q&A. For example, an exclone could tell his master, “Many people like the red cars we are manufacturing”.

ExClones might even be used by celebrities as well, functioning as a sort of PR/marketing tool. Perhaps Justin Bieber will want to create a clone of himself to save himself from the hassle of interacting with his legions of female fans. “It would be like an advanced form of Tweeting, having your exclone face the public in a conversational manner,” said Berkan.

Ultimately it’s hoped that a community of exClones will emerge to “change the landscape of social networks and improve the quality of knowledge exchange throughout the world”. Such a community is probably still a few years away, but at least immortality seekers can help to help make it happen. The first exClone “Michael” will soon be ready for private testing, and interested parties are being actively encouraged to take part.

Later exClones (one named Phil) will clone travel and geography expertise, while still others will be created as foodies, office help, and maybe even social media gurus of a sort. Speaking with Berkan, it becomes clear the uses for such “entities” are actually unlimited.

The burning question is: “Can Berkan and his team truly build a smart machine so capable?” Something which goes beyond simply analyzing input data, and returning a contextual query result? Just how much of a “clone” are we talking about here? We’ve experienced the frustration of tools like Apple’s Siri, “Your Wish Is Its Command” in the iOS 8 sense means, “if Siri can figure out what you said, maybe.”

Imbuing “Michael” and the other exClones with our personalities, this would seem the greatest achievement such a project might achieve. Next to this, a clone of someone out there might endeavor to learn all there is to learn, and furthermore, to be able to apply all that.

Is it possible? By now we should all know, anything is. We’ll keep an eye on “Michael”, and the coming exClones. And I look forward to the day I can clone myself to become more efficient at writing :-)

Main image credit: gIadius via photopin cc

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