Gods of the Digital Era or a Repeating Loop

 

Gods of the Digital Era or a Repeating Loop

At what point does a man become a god? This isn't the first instance in which this question has been raised. It often crosses my mind when reading a book or watching a movie or TV show. Recently, I went to the cinema to see Deadpool and Wolverine. Beforehand, I watched a lot of promotional materials, such as Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman's Hot Ones episode on YouTube. As I sat there watching, a thought crossed my mind: the characters created by these people will now be around forever, or at least as long as humanity remains in its current or future state.

With the advancements in AI and the direction it's heading, characters like Deadpool will be around forever. Today, you could prompt a GPT model that could emulate Deadpool's traits. In the near future, you could prompt an AI to make a video, do the voice, and create and react to live material. Imagine a live stream with an AI-generated Deadpool that perfectly emulates the character portrayed by Ryan Reynolds. Sure, there will be barriers such as copyright, but no one is saying it couldn't be licensed. This also makes me think of public domain characters and what the limitations are on creating AI versions of those characters.

Humanity as Digital Gods

So, what does this have to do with humans being gods of the digital era? I raise this question because we, as humans, have the creativity to create characters, and as time goes on, we are gaining the ability to create the tools to bring these creations into the real world with their own simulated thoughts. It's an interesting thought, as we have been creating characters in books and movies that can now pretty much have a mind of their own. Take Deadpool, for instance—not only does the movie version exist, but a cumulative effort has been made since the character's inception to flesh him out, with contributions from various artists and writers over the years. This well-developed character now exists and can be augmented to behave on its own.

The Repeating Loop

This concept also ties into simulation theory. Have we done this before, and do we do this over and over? Does humanity constantly evolve to the point where we can create simulated lives, and do they reach matrix-level detail, only to then do the same? This could create a never-ending fractal of boxes within boxes. We could all be fragmentations of variants of a single entity. Deadpool works well with this idea because of the Deadpool Corps, which shows that humans will create variations of a single character.

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Anyway, it's early, and I haven't had enough caffeine yet. Maybe it's too early to be thinking about all of this. LOL. 

- Circuit Surfer ⎐⎏⎐⎏