A DAY IN THE LIFE IN 2045
[This piece was submitted to the Future of Life Institute as part of a global AI World Building competition. The full submission containing more material was selected among the top 20 finalists. If you are reading this before June 15 2022, like the finalist announcement on Twitter and send us your feedback via the main website. If you are reading it in the far future, carry on…[edit, the piece won 4th place! ]]
Vasquo, Dar es Salaam, Songhai Region
When Dusk Turned into Dawn
There he was, tormented to despair. The night deepened with each hour, yet his mind’s light continued to flicker, denying him sleep. It was not a malady that kept him awake for he was in good health, he thought. Nor was it any external disturbance, for that part of Dar es Salaam was so pleasantly quiet that he could discern the faint roar of the ocean from the comfort of his bed. It was the dread of his recent actions – a little click of a button – that assailed him.
As he has always done since childhood, whether on a peaceful summer morn or on a freezing evening as a storm pelted the earth with bullets of ice, Vasquo resolved to take a walk to dampen the ferment of his mind. Many who have seen him sauntering through the streets, oblivious of the elements, have thought him mad. He would sway from path to path if he was lost in a dream from which he could not awake. But soon, touched by the miraculous tranquillity that solitude brings, his mind would clear, his spirits would settle, and eventually, his feet would lead him back home. And so, in search of his cure, he jumped out of his bed with patent distress, threw a coat hastily over his shoulders and without any thought about laying his course, plunged into the darkness of the night. Like clockwork, his retinal eyepiece roared to life, projecting the layout of the paths ahead of him with sharp clarity, illuminating any difficulties that may beset his path.
The sparse raindrops that were carried from the ocean fell like diamonds from the sky, coloured to a brilliant shimmer by Dar es Salaam’s scintillating lights. He steadied his step on the slippery pavements, exhaled, and allowed his mind to wander. He looked upward towards the majestic web of the Starlink network and then cast his eyes around. The low hum of autonomous vehicles was music to his ears, drawing his mind away from his distress. He saw their drunk occupants laughing and kissing their way towards some festal indulgence that befits the cold, Friday night, and suddenly he remembered his loss. The light rain, he smirked, was not as soothing as Adira’s warm kisses. Ah, Adira! Unwilling to accept the momentary distraction, his mind thrust Adira into the world around him, reminding him that it was a friendship he was unable to preserve that had denied him sleep.
With science, humanity had created the world in the image of its gods. Many maladies could now be dispelled with the rapidity of a miracle, hypersonic transport systems put the winged sandals of Hermes to shame, and the counsel of pedestrian AGIs was often far wiser than the musings of King Solomon. However, despite humanity’s earnest efforts, mortality remained unconquered. No matter how transhuman, no matter how long life was lengthened, death was inevitable. And with every remembrance of our dead, our hearts die anew, with distractions offering us merely a second of respite before remembrance forces us to die again. As he wandered throughout the night, he must have died a few thousand times. And with each step, his mind replayed Adira’s beautiful voice that was untainted by pain even on her deathbed, as she whispered “If it will make you happy, ReCreate me”.
ReCreate had emerged not long ago from Nairobi’s silicon savannah. It was a powerful multi-modal media generation tool that ran using an implementation of a generality measure 7 AGI agent. As soon as ReCreate had been announced, he had quickly acquired a beta subscription, training it to generate texts, images, videos and voices of his favourite historical thinkers for his amusement. When supplied with a sufficiently representative dataset, say Einstein’s complete audio-visual and text catalogue, ReCreate could generate new media that would mimic Einstein’s original’s cadence, physical form, voice, and wit with uncanny precision. Even his jolly and womanising nature and the swiss-Germanic affectations of his accent emerged from the ReCreation. Although ReCreate was largely an amusing indulgence, often referred to as the ‘deeper fake’ in the Metaverse, it was not lost on him that maybe, just maybe, ReCreate could do so much more…
And so, after Adira’s death, armed with both her permission and her passwords, he had compiled Adira’s total digital footprint: every picture and video that she had ever captured, every message and tweet that she had ever penned, from her childhood pictures posted by her parents to the remote comments that she had littered across every corner of the web and the metaverses. In total, just 1.5 terabytes of data, yet encompassing every single bit and qubit that her lovely soul had ever created.
With tears running down his eyes, he had logged into his ReCreate account and submitted the data, and now the seemingly endless wait had kept him awake for 4 days straight. All he wanted was to see her again, to hear her sweet, angelic voice in its full authenticity. He wanted to cheat death and bring her back to life, even if for a single moment. Moving on would be settling for too little, especially when science could let him chance at a miracle that could not have been offered to someone who needed it more woefully.
Suddenly, his eyepiece came to life with the notification “Training complete” in his visual field. Ignoring the cold chill that ran down his spine, he turned around and bolted at full speed back to his house, slammed the door shut behind him and initiated his Neuralink. “Nod to continue”, the eyepiece showed. Hesitating, he turned and looked outside. The sky was still dark. But soon, when dusk turned into dawn, he felt the heaviness lift from his heart with each ray of light that brightened the sky. Then he nodded. And alas, there she was, as vivid as the morning sun, standing in front of him as if she had never left.