While technology has helped humans be more productive and automation has replaced a lot of manual work, it hasn’t yet solved the problem of overcoming finite time.
We each are limited to 24 hours a day and can only be physically in one place at a time.
For people who sell their time—and that’s a lot of us–whether a coach, a lawyer or a medical specialist, it’s a significant limiting factor. Successfully scaling intelligence beyond the constraints of time hasn’t been possible.
Well, that is, until now.
Innovation Emerges From A Deep Human Need
In 2021, while working on his first tech startup, Dara Ladjevardian turned to his grandfather for advice; a successful businessman from Iran who was smuggled out during the 1979 revolution and started a new life in the United States.
Sadly, in 2019, Dara’s grandfather had suffered a stroke and gleaning his wisdom was becoming increasingly difficult. Inspired by Ray Kurtzweil’s book, How to Create a Mind, Dara worked on capturing his grandfather’s wisdom in code, enabling him to converse with and immortalize him through a digital twin.
Unbeknownst to him at the time, Dara utilization of an early large language model (LLM) would later become the basis of his next startup, Delphi, enabling people from all walks of life to create a digital twin of their mind.
Large Language Models Of The Mind
The broad availability of generative AI in late 2022, quickly demonstrated how humanity’s knowledge could be queried. LLMs would use the ingestion of a large corpus of historical data to enable insights to be served up on-demand.
While a question could be posed and an answer constructed from the documented wisdom of the crowd, could the same logic be applied to the mind of a single individual?
Would it be possible, for example, to ask for advice from an admired luminary when the possibility of getting time with them, never mind the enormous cost, would be unlikely?
Ladjevardian’s success creating a clone of his grandfather’s mind had answered these questions for him. Not only was it possible, but it could be the basis of a burgeoning business model.
Anyone would be able to upload, for example, their videos, written materials, and voice, and sell their wisdom to those who wanted to pay for it. Scaling and monetizing the mind, as exotic as it sounds, would potentially create a completely new and compelling medium.
To be clear, the notion of a cloned mind and its digital variations being provided as a software service wasn’t entirely original and some had tried it before. But success had been elusive.
An Idea Overcomes The Failed Attempts Of The Past
Much of the challenge in creating a compelling digital twin of a person’s mind was the availability of the necessary technology.
Fortunately, leaps in AI over the past decade, culminating in groundbreaking generative AI, would hold the key.
Another requirement would be a compelling business model.
With Delphi, Ladjevardian and his team believed they had both the tech and the business approach to make it work.
In fact, the timing of creating the company relative to the imminent release of popular LLMs in 2022 wasn’t a coincidence. Observing the uptick in numbers and velocity of published LLM papers, Ladjevardian noted, “something big is coming.”
There’s a lesson in there about identifying and acting on the signals in the noise.
The Business Of Digital Clones
Delphi enables anyone through a tiered subscription model to create a digital representation of their mind, such that they can scale and charge a fee for their expertise and be available to anyone through chat, voice, and video at any time.
A person who provides leadership coaching, for example, can advise whoever demands it, conceivably hundreds or thousands of times a day. If your clone doesn’t know the answer to a question, it can alert you and provide the option to follow up with the user and add the insight to the clone’s body of knowledge.
In addition, AI agents, called Delphi Actions, can trigger within a conversation initiating different tasks. For example, if a clone is being used for customer service—and it could be the company’s CEO!–a user might ask for information that the clone will email later on. The clone will then follow-up too to see if the user received the information and whether they have additional questions.
Today, the platform is used by people who generally fall into the category of experts: coaches, doctors, CEOs, authors, and content creators. Trainers also use it as a platform for instruction.
You might not be able to get chess techniques guidance directly from Magnus Carlsen, but if he decides to create a clone, you’ll be able to discuss moves with him for hours.
Ultimately, anyone who has some knowledge of value to share with others is a good candidate.
In The Future Everyone Will Have A Digital Twin
What will we do when our mind’s time is no longer a constraint?
How the role of a digital twin of the mind will evolve is still to be determined. Many people aren’t comfortable with the notion yet, including trusting it, and even more find the concept hard to grasp.
They also need to see its value. While there’s enormous novelty in talking with a clone, that won’t be enough to sustain the businesses that will play in this space.
Acceptance will come when a user sees how it can play a role in their life. For example, one of the more compelling uses right now is as a replacement for email. It can be more convenient for both sides–the sender and the receiver–if a short exchange with a clone can get a more satisfying outcome versus the frustration of several days of back-and-forth emails.
In the future perhaps everyone will have a digital twin for the reason of their choice.
They might enjoy sending their clone to a meeting that they’d rather not attend—something that is already possible today with Zoom integration for meetings that a person can’t attend.
Like all technology, people will likely find ways to use it that go beyond what is imagined today.
Finally, for some, this technology may provide a type of immortality. A clone will live on long after a person is gone. Ladjevardian’s grandfather passed away not long after his digital clone was created. Today, Dara still asks him for his sage advice which he is only too happy to provide.