What is the 'digital man' who is popular all over the Internet?

Zhuangzi once said: "Life is just a game."

For this game, some people play it very hard Hi, I refused to quit at the end and always wanted to continue playing indefinitely. For example, Qin Shihuang always thought about panacea and immortality.

There are still some people who are not playing well and want to end it as soon as possible, reincarnate, and practice their accounts again.

However, the real world is so fair. No matter who you are, you only have one life, and you can neither "pull the hall" nor reopen the "dungeon".

Since then, human beings have begun to place this kind of beautiful wishes in literature, film and television works. To put it bluntly, it is fiction.

An expert once said: "What people lack in the real world will try to compensate in the virtual world. Fiction has always been the underlying impulse of human civilization."

In the fictional world, you can live forever if you want, reincarnate if you want, and occasionally you can play soul exchange and time travel, which is really fun.

Moonlight Treasure Box

In the late 20th century, the vigorous development of digital information technology gave people The imagination has gained more powerful wings.

The improvement of computer software and hardware capabilities has brought cool multimedia technology and 3D graphics display technology. With the support of these technologies, movie special effects have become more and more realistic, and computer games have attracted countless players to enjoy them.

People were surprised to find that in the fictional digital world, we can achieve "identity transformation" and "role playing".

Isn’t that the classic game “The Sims” produced by the American company EA? Players can create Sims according to their own preferences, live in the virtual world, and experience a different life.

The Sims, the favorite of old players

In addition to simple character modeling and character control In addition, there are also a small number of people who have a deeper thinking about the digital world. They opened up a bigger idea -

Can we humans directly transform ourselves into digital forms of life and survive in computers and networks? ​

In 1993, the movie "Ghost Computer" was released in the United States. In this movie, there is a serial killer who transforms himself into a computer virus on the Internet and kills people everywhere.

The movie caused a great sensation and even panic at the time. Many people believe that the human soul may really be able to wander around along the network cable.

In 1999, the release of Keanu Reeves’ classic movie “The Matrix” pushed people’s attention to the digital world to a climax.

One of the most classic shots in human film history

After entering the 21st century, information technology continues to Great strides forward. The emergence of cloud computing and big data technology and the continuous improvement of chip manufacturing processes have raised the computing power level of human society to a higher level and laid the foundation for the rise of two key technologies.

These two key technologies are digital twins and artificial intelligence.

What is a digital twin?

Everyone is familiar with artificial intelligence. Let me briefly introduce digital twins.

Digital twin is called Digital Twin in English. Simply put, it uses digital technology to create a virtual, digital "clone" based on a physical entity.

Digital twins are not simple 3D modeling. 3D modeling only copies the appearance, while digital twins not only copy the appearance, but also copy the dynamic information of the ontology and the external environment.

In other words, digital twins can "move". It can realize "dynamic simulation" of the ontology based on the sensor data on the ontology and the historical operating data of the ontology.

Digital twins were first proposed, not to create "digital life forms", but to serve the industrial manufacturing field.

In March 2011, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory explicitly mentioned digital twins for the first time in order to improve the maintenance of fighter jets. Later, GE and Siemens quickly followed up and applied it to the field of industrial digitalization to improve the R&D and design of industrial products.

Soon, it moved from the industrial field to many industries such as infrastructure engineering, transportation and logistics, and urban governance, becoming a popular technology that people are flocking to.

At the Beijing Winter Olympics held at the beginning of this year, digital twin technology showed its magical power.

Based on Intel’s own VSS digital twin venue simulation service, through virtual reality, computer graphics and other related cutting-edge technologies, Intel will combine the 12 competition venues and 3 Olympic Games venues of the Beijing Winter Olympics. The village and main media center were digitized, dynamic and three-dimensional, realizing the first application of digital twin technology in the Winter Olympics.

This system provides accurate simulation of the interior, exterior and event elements of the venue, assisted by a twin virtual three-dimensional world The operation in the real world has greatly reduced the workload of staff on-site inspection and review, and also simplified the construction and management process of venues, providing strong support to ensure that the Winter Olympics can be successfully held as scheduled.

Digital Cloning: The first experience of digital intelligent life

The rise of digital twins and artificial intelligence technology, coupled with the advancement of 3D graphics technology, It once again aroused the human impulse to create digital life.

For traditional digital characters, every move is designed (drawn), and the dialogue content is also fixed. Now that we have more advanced technology, can we make it "smarter" and more realistic?

So, digital humans were created.

Digital people are still virtual characters created on digital systems. As mentioned just now, the difference between it and traditional digital characters is that it has a certain degree of intelligence.

With the support of knowledge graph and artificial intelligence technology, digital people can use machine learning to train on massive data based on real-person behavior information such as video, audio, text, etc., so that they can behave more like real people.

Because of this, we can also call digital people “digital clones” (hereinafter still referred to as “digital people”).

Digital Human can be traced back to 2007. It developed a sound source library based on speech synthesis programs-"Hatsune" future". At that time, the relevant technology was not yet mature, so digital people basically appeared in two-dimensional images.

In 2016, the artificial intelligence virtual anchor "Kizuna Ai" was born, setting off a new craze for digital people. In 2021, after the concept of the metaverse became popular, digital people became the focus, attracting the pursuit of countless companies and capital.

According to data, there are currently more than 30,000 digital people in the world. These digital humans are widely used in education and training, finance and insurance, medical and health, classroom lectures, games, e-commerce and other fields, serving as virtual customer service, virtual tour guide, virtual host, virtual anchor and other roles.

Customer service digital person of a certain bank

These virtual people do not eat, drink or sleep. I don’t get upset and don’t ask for leave, I don’t get paid and don’t change jobs. I can be 007 every day and am very popular among enterprises. There are also many companies that even use digital people as their brand spokespersons, which greatly reduces the risk of "overturning" of their personal designs.

It should be noted that digital people are characters created based on digital technology. Therefore, the level of digital technology will make a big difference in the user experience of digital people.

In other words, the more advanced a company’s digital technology is, the stronger its digital people will be.

This is easy to understand. The stronger the algorithm and computing power of artificial intelligence, the stronger the digital human will be, and will eventually pass the Turing test.

Digital people also have a strong dependence on cloud computing technology.

The cloud is the carrier of computing power, and computing power is one of the three core elements of AI (computing power, algorithm, and data). Today, almost all enterprise digital systems (including digital human systems) are deployed in cloud data centers.

Therefore, providing strong cloud data center technical support is also the key to ensuring the smooth development of digital people.

​To create an excellent digital human, of course, the movements, demeanor and appearance must also be realistic.

Many movements of digital humans are based on the capture and collection of real-person movements. Intel's 3DAT (3D Athlete Tracking, 3D athlete tracking) is a representative of this type of technology.

3DAT technology uses AI algorithms to extract key skeletal points (rotation angles and angular velocities of core joints, knee joints, and hip joints) and posture trajectory information of real people for 3D reconstruction, which is accurate Capture every detail of real people.

This technology was successfully used at the Beijing Winter Olympics to help athletes improve their movements. At the opening ceremony, this technology was also used to capture the actors' position and posture data in real time and interact with the big screen, creating an excellent viewing effect.

There are still many technological empowerments in the digital human field.

For example, drawing CGI animations of characters’ facial features and expressions requires a lot of simulation and rendering work, and also requires powerful computing power support.

In short, computing power-related technologies such as cloud computing, graphics processing, and artificial intelligence are the foundation for the development of digital humans.

Digital immortality: the future exploration of digital intelligent life

Digital human technology has achieved great success, but it is not the exploration of digital life end.

In addition to appearance, behavior and knowledge reserves, there are still two most important and difficult factors missing for us to create the ultimate digital life, that is - emotion and self-awareness .

Emotion is the most complex characteristic of human beings. It has both innate and acquired factors. A long life experience and decades of memories shape a person's emotions. It is difficult for us to replicate emotions using artificial intelligence.

Several very popular film and television works about digital life in recent years are all about the awakening of emotions and self-awareness of artificial intelligence. For example, Dolores from "Westworld," Guy from "Runaway."

##In addition to the self-awakening of artificial intelligence, there is another theoretically feasible way, which is to use the brains of real people to Collect, save and transplant personal information - through a "brain information collector (similar to brain-computer interface technology)", the brain information of real people is continuously scanned and extracted, and this information is stored.

The American drama "Upload to New Life" adopts this idea. In the play, the protagonist Nathan was seriously injured in a car accident and uploaded his consciousness to the cloud to continue living in the digital world.

This creates a new field - digital immortality.

Digital immortality should be the ultimate form of digital life, that is, the "ultimate digital twin" with ontological thinking.

We might as well imagine more boldly: a few years from now, we will extract DNA and create a physical clone. . Then, the stored brain information and consciousness are instilled to create emotions. So, isn’t this rebirth?

In fact, it is currently feasible to clone physical humans through DNA technology.

However, countries around the world explicitly prohibit such behavior based on laws and ethics. The "brain information collector" just mentioned is not yet mature enough to clone digital humans, so there is a gap in the law.

So, what should we do if we can do it in the future? What rights do digital twins created in the digital world have? Is it possible to get married? Is inheritance possible?

If you think about it, it’s all a headache.

In fact, we might as well ask ourselves: What is the meaning of digitally cloning a person to achieve digital immortality?

Xiao Zaojun feels that this issue needs to be viewed from two perspectives.

First of all, from the perspective of the person involved, cloning oneself may be due to the instinct of a living body to continue its own DNA. If there are no heirs, it is hoped to find another way to continue to exist in this world.

From the perspective of relatives and friends, creating clones should be for memory and commemoration.

I personally believe that no matter how smart the artificial intelligence is, it is not a human being; no matter how realistic the digital twin is, it is not real.

Instead of being addicted to the virtual world, why not better grasp the precious time and emotional relationships in reality? As a living person, isn’t it a relief to sometimes have the courage to let a relationship end? ​

Okay, that’s the entire content of today’s article.

In short, we still have a long way to go in the face of digital cloning and digital immortality.

At this stage, our main task is to build a stronger digital infrastructure, reserve information and intelligent technology, and lay the foundation for future dream exploration.

What will happen in the future? Let time tell us the answer. ​

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