‘Forever embalmed in binary data’

In a quiet suburban town in England there is a pub called the Blue Unicorn. Originally the Red Lion but renamed by its new owner – ‘I don’t want to manage one of five hundred pubs called the Red Lion,’ he declared when he completed the purchase of the place – the pub is mostly a drinking establishment but with a nod to those who want to eat on weekend days if the part-time chef, a bricklayer renowned for his ability to lay a straight wall without the use of a spirit level, bothers to turn up. Sitting in the corner of the lounge in an area referred to as the Snug is an elderly man wearing a woolly hat, a high-necked fisherman-style ribbed sweater, and nondescript dark-coloured trousers. His fingers lie lightly, immobile, on the keyboard of a portable laptop. He looks up and glances at the array of Toby jugs, shaving mugs, Victorian kitchen utensils, plates carrying images of royal personages, and horse brasses that adorn the walls around him. ‘Remnants of yesteryear,’ he muses. Slowly, he takes a sip of the beer in the glass beside the laptop and, as if inspired by the taste, starts typing on the keyboard using only his index fingers.

The door at the entrance to the pub opens and a young man enters, a youth barely out of his teens, casually dressed, sporting a stubble beard and fashionable Turkish-style haircut.

‘Hi, Gramps,’ he says, spotting his granddad in the Snug. ‘I thought I’d find you here. How’s it going? What’s with the laptop? What are you doing? Wanna another beer?’

Gramps looks up from his keyboard. ‘Luke, my boy,’ he exclaims to his grandson. ‘You’re back from university for the Christmas break? Nice haircut! Yes, I’ll have a half of the guest IPA – Hippy Hop, it’s called. Suits my image, haha. Thanks.’

Luke acknowledges the reply, moves to the bar, asks for and receives the beers from the server, and joins his grandfather. ‘So, what are you writing, Gramps?’ he asks again.

‘I’m writing my obituary,’ Gramps replies. ‘I’m writing about my life so that you, or whoever reads it at my funeral, gets it right. I don’t want a public orator, a funeral celebrant, making me out to be who I wasn’t, and I certainly don’t want to besmirch my digital immortality.’

‘Your what?’ Luke says. ‘And what’s all this about your funeral? Are you thinking of dying soon? That’s pretty morbid, Gramps.’

‘Well, yes and no, Luke. No, I’m not thinking of dying anytime soon, but it will happen in your lifetime. My mortal life will come to an end. But I’ve been reading and thinking of my digital afterlife, what’s left of me in the digital cloud, what might be termed my digital immortality. Did you know there is already a thriving digital afterlife industry; companies that take over and take care of all the digital data that relates to you stored in vast databases somewhere: your emails, text messages, postings on social media platforms, photos you’ve sent to others, videos you’ve posted on YouTube, messages you’ve pre-written before death to be delivered to family and friends after death, blogs you’ve written and posted on a personal blogging website, ebooks you’ve self-published on ebook websites, even your private data such as bank account records and medical records.’

Gramps pauses and takes a swig of his beer.

‘Yes, I’m familiar with some of this,’ replies Luke. ‘We’ve started discussing cloud computing and database security on my computer science degree course.’

‘Good’, replies Gramps. ‘Then you will have heard of datafication, right?

‘Yes. It’s the recording, analysis and archiving of all digital data about someone’s life to allow informed decisions to be made,’ confirms Luke.

‘That’s correct. It’s the basis for my digital afterlife,’ Gramps continues. ‘When I die, unless I take specific actions to remove all digital data that relates to me, my digital data does not die. It survives and can be used to recreate me as a speaking avatar that can look like me or whatever other form the recreator fancies – Winston Churchill, a green face Jake Sully from the Avatar movie, or even, heaven forbid, Donald Trump! Chatbots like DuoLingo and ChatGPT can already understand and answer questions in human-like conversations. In the future, they will also engage in conversations based on opinions I’ve expressed in the past and which are available in my datafication. It’s a future me, Luke, forever embalmed in binary data, available to interact with you and others, full of accumulated knowledge and wisdom, a digital god, Luke. That’ll be me!’

‘Forever embalmed in binary data! I love that phrase, Gramps, but it’s a scary thought: no disrespect. But hang on a minute. I have a ton of questions. Who guarantees the security and integrity of all this datafication? What about your human rights? Copyright, privacy, consent, dignity, autonomy? Are they preserved after death? In fact, can you have human rights after death? You are no longer a human!’

‘These are big questions, Luke: ones that some of us are struggling to answer before anarchy reigns in the land of digital datafication. Let’s take the human rights one. The United Nations Human Rights Office has produced a long list of basic human rights: freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion, the right to be educated and to work, access to health care, freedom from discrimination in matters relating to race, colour, religion, disability, nationality, sex and sexual orientation, language, and many other rights of life and liberty. What happens to these rights when we die? There are some obvious immediate post-death rights: the right to a proper burial and respect for our organ donation wishes, the right to proper disposal of our property, the passing of the copyright of our creations to our nominated descendants, and so on, but these are transitory. Copyright on things like books and graphical images runs out after seventy years. But what about stuff lying about on memory sticks and external hard drives sitting in drawers in our desks? All those text messages? All those emails? All those photos on our smartphones? Our purchase record in Amazon’s order details for our account? Our bank records? Even our browsing history?’

‘Wait a minute, Gramps. What you are saying is that we need to think about and take care of all this data before we die, right?’

‘Yes. Just as we plan what happens to our tangible worldly goods in a property Will, we should also plan what happens to our digital estate, if I can call it that, in a digital Will. It doesn’t have to be a separate Will – maybe just an extra clause in the property Will, but remember that UK Wills become public documents once probate has been granted – but it should define what data we are talking about, where it can be found, who can access it, whether some should be deleted, where it should be archivally stored and under what security measures in the future, and whatever else concerns us about our digital footprint.’

‘Jeez, Gramps, this is a minefield. If chatbots are allowed access to our datafication, there are a variety of security and integrity issues to think through. How safe is data stored in the cloud? Hackers can and do create data breaches. A mate at uni went onto the haveibeenpawned website recently and discovered his email address and passwords had been breached seven times, including within Adobe, LinkedIn and DropBox.’

Luke pauses, drinks from his almost empty beer glass, and then looks back at his granddad.

‘One thing my generation has learnt about the Web is that copyright is flouted with impunity. We see it every day in private sex tapes and the rise of revenge porn, uncontrolled distribution of sext messages and images, the ease with which any text or image can be copied and used elsewhere, the need for plagiarism detectors in schools and universities, text-spinning essay-writing services and now homework and term papers composed by apps like ChatGPT, and so on. This all points to a Wild West environment as far as inciting copyright law on the Web’s content is concerned. If it’s like this now, what will it be like when you become digitally immortal and chatbots can raid the cloud for your datafication content?’

‘I agree,’ says Gramps. ‘Can you ever truly delete a digital file containing sensitive content such as an intimate photograph? If you visit sites containing adult material, does deleting your browsing history truly remove the record of the sites you visited and even what videos you viewed? It may do so on your tablet, but what about at the other end?’

‘Good question, Gramps. I don’t know the answer but let’s get back to the idea that I can command a generative AI app to create a conversational chatbot of you and ask your advice on something I value your opinion. Let’s pick an example. Let’s say my future partner and I are considering starting a family. I know you have already written about the long-term effects of climate change on the future of our planet; the current drop in fertility rates and its impact on society; and the changing modes of marriage and partnerships in one of your self-published books, all of which would influence your advice right now, but what about your future advice? The situation might be very different. The predicted global effects of climate change may not have materialised, or have done so ferociously. The impact of the drop in world fertility rates caused by low sperm counts and socio-economic factors may have been overcome, or not. Polygamous communes may have replaced the concept of monogamous partnerships. Many things might have changed. How should I view your advice delivered by your avatar, Gramps?’

‘With a healthy dose of scepticism, Luke! I would expect my response will be based on my datafication tempered by the AI tool’s assessment of how the world has changed since my data was frozen following my death. But who or what organisation will be charged to look after my data after my death? Can the organisation guarantee the security and integrity of my data? Can an AI chatbot be manipulated to produce a biased view, one that services a government dictate, for example, or that unwittingly produces misinformation or knowingly produces disinformation? Who monitors the accuracy, honesty and sincerity of the words coming out of my avatar’s mouth? And given that the software and algorithms behind the chatbot are subject to constant change, who checks for consistency of advice over time?’

‘It sounds as if you are making a case to be a digital minimalist, Gramps, a technophobe, a digital Luddite? One who deliberately refrains from posting anything controversial, never opens email attachments or embedded hyperlinks, never uses social media, never posts a blog, and is always careful to be politically correct when answering emails. Someone who stays off the digital grid. Am I right?’

‘No, Luke. In the Western world of civilised countries, staying off the digital grid is impossible unless you become a recluse and live in a cave. You will be known to the tax authorities, health organisations, money-handling institutions, educational establishments, local borough councils, and even your local supermarket if you register for a rewards card. Every time you use your credit card, the transaction is entered into a database. Even drawing out cash to use instead of a credit card leaves a trail, as does the use of any smart device such as a smartphone. And who these days does not install a Wi-Fi system in the home that links to many in-house smart devices – laptops, tablets, smartphones, televisions, printers, smart energy consumption meters and heating controllers, washing machines, dishwashers, even your oven and microwave units? And then there’s a vast network of surveillance cameras aided by facial recognition systems ready to catch and identify us when we venture out into a shopping centre, catch a train or bus, drive along a motorway, pass a house with a home security system installed, or enter almost any public building. The Internet of Things is all around us, monitoring, recording and storing our every move.’

‘Gramps, I am now thoroughly depressed. Let’s drink up and go home. It’ll soon be Christmas; a time for merriment, family disputes, mince pies, and pressies under the tree. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts and temporarily forget the perils of digital immortality. Tomorrow is another day. Those of us still alive can choose to talk to those who used to be alive, or not, as the case may be. But, hey, here’s a question, Gramps. Will your avatar give me money to buy a snazzy sports car?

‘Let’s go, Luke. I’m not mellow enough to give you money, neither now nor when I’m immortalised in the digital cloud. But you never know how I might react once an avatar has replaced me and… Oh, but wait, I won’t have any money unless I hold some back in my Will to be dispersed by my avatar as it thinks fit. Hmm. There’s a thought. Let’s go.’

And with that, Gramps and his grandson, Luke, finish their beer, pick up their belongings, shout goodnight to the server behind the bar, exit the pub and begin walking the short distance to Gramps’s son’s, Luke’s father’s house where they are spending Christmas. As they do so, the CCTV camera in the pub’s entrance captures and stores their image; their respective smartphone service company records their connection transfers from one network mast to another; their location-based family-sharing app monitors their movement and shares it with everyone else in their group; and their health informatics mobile app records the route they take and the number of steps they make.

All this data goes into a server owned and maintained by a cloud storage provider, adding to the data already there and which, one day, will be made available to those who want to know their whereabouts on that day.

It’s a scary thought.

–ooOoo–

Source and Authenticity

This fictitious conversation between Gramps and grandson Luke was stimulated by an article, The Creepy New Digital Afterlife Industry, written by Wendy H Wong and published in the November 2023 issue of IEEE Spectrum, pages 38-43. Wendy H Wong is a Professor of Political Science and Principal’s Research Chair at the University of British Columbia. Professor Wong’s Spectrum article summarises her 2023 book We, The Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age, published by MIT Press. I found her IEEE Spectrum summary to be simultaneously educational, fascinating and disturbing. If you would like to dig deeper into the capabilities of current digital afterlife apps and companies, google the following names mentioned in Professor Wong’s article. They are a representative sample of this burgeoning industry.

HereAfter AI, MyWishes, Hanson Robotics, Bcelebrated, Directive Communication Systems, GhostMemo, Lifenaut, My Wonderful Life Planning Tool.

Professor Wong also mentions Microsoft’s patent for a conversational chatbot. To find out more, read the CNET article titled Microsoft patent details tech that could turn dead people into AI chatbots.  Fans of the British television series, Black Mirror, will recognise the parallels between Microsoft’s patent and the Be Right Back Black Mirror episode.

We’re not talking science fiction here, folks. Digital reconstruction of dead people based on the data they left behind after they’ve shuffled off their mortal coil is fast becoming a reality. When it arrives, who will you choose to speak to first?

(^_^)