Ready for the ‘torment nexus’?

A Silicon Valley-based company called Uare.ai this week announced that it raised $10.3 million in initial funding, led by Mayfield and Boldstart Ventures, with other investors joining in. The company’s new platform, which it hopes to launch by next month, is a new kind of artificial intelligence — “Individual AI” — that enables people to create AI-based digital versions of themselves. 

The company wants you to share your memories, stories, expertise, and voice. After you do that, your digital “counterpart” will be able to talk like you, make decisions like you, and, according to a provably false claim by the company, “think” like you. (AI can’t “think.” AI systems operate by processing data and patterns without understanding, self-awareness, or the adaptive reasoning capacities that define human thought.)

The idea, according to company claims, is that its platform provides private models that “evolve” along with you and give you a “second brain” for, among other things, “connecting with others.” These connections come in the form of content creation, voice conversations and chat. 

The main technology feature of Uare.ai is something it calls the Human Life Model, or HLM. This is a proprietary system that encodes not just words but also the values, narrative, and decision-making patterns of a person. As a result, the AI built by Uare.ai doesn’t just repeat things you have already said, but says new things based on what you knowand believe. The company says that the AI will admit when it doesn’t know something. 

Uare.ai’s roots go back to its earlier form as Eternos, which was a platform for people to preserve their identity and memories for loved ones after death. Conceptually, they’re now doing something similar, but making one’s “deathbot” accessible to the living with the stated goals of legacy preservation, scaled mentorship, enhanced creativity, and new ways of monetizing knowledge.

Another obvious application is for a company to use your digital twin to do your job, without having to pay your pesky salary. 

They built the torment nexus

If the idea of a corporation providing digital twins of people sounds familiar, you’ve probably read it in dystopian science fiction. 

In “Neuromancer,” the 1984 cyberpunk classic by William Gibson (now being made into a 10-episode series by Apple TV+ and due in about a year), digital avatars or “constructs” exist for communicating with living friends and lovers on behalf of the person they were modeled after. In one scenario, a dead character named McCoy Pauley has a “construct” or digital twin that continues to interact with McCoy’s friends after his death. Because of a software glitch, the “construct” doesn’t know it’s a digital copy and the friends it interacts with are creeped out by it, but don’t have the heart to tell the digital twin that it’s not the “real McCoy.” 

The genre of dystopian sci-fi is littered with digital twin scenarios. 

“Permutation City,” by Greg Egan, explores the concept of consciousness uploaded to computer simulations, where AI replicas of people exist independently and interact online. 

“The Terminal Experiment,” by Robert J. Sawyer, depicts digital copies of a neuroscientist’s consciousness, with these AI replicas engaging in online activity and influencing events, sometimes unbeknownst to the original person.

Some of Philip K. Dick’s short stories, including “Impostor” and “The Electric Ant,” explore digital or virtual impersonation and substitution. 

The idea of looking at the technological elements of dystopian sci-fi and thinking, “Hey, that’s a great idea! Let’s build that!” is called a “torment nexus.” 

The term originated from a viral 2021 tweet by writer Alex Blechman that parodied the morally oblivious creation and marketing of dystopian technologies with the phrase containing the fictional product name: “Don’t create the torment nexus.” 

The “torment nexus” refers to a technology depicted in science fiction as a warning or cautionary tale that is created in the real world without regard to the warning. 

The torment nexus is a popular product

Before we start blaming the billionaires and the tech CEOs, we should consider our own enthusiastic embrace of torment nexus products. 

George Orwell’s “1984” envisioned a world where governments installed cameras everywhere to track citizens’ every move. But the public didn’t wait for Big Brother to start watching us. Instead, we bought video doorbells, security cameras, smartphones and other camera-based devices and happily post footage and images online for all to see, including governments. 

Other dystopian sci-fi describes a future in which authorities hyper-surveil citizens, collecting and tracking all their personal data, including location. But nowadays people volunteer their personal data, sharing the details of their lives on social media, and saying “Yes” to the harvesting of personal data from smart devices, health apps, and online services that ask to track location, biometric, and behavioral data and other information. 

Remember “The Truman Show”? It’s a 1998 psychological comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. It stars Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, an ordinary man who gradually discovers that his entire life is actually a reality TV show where the people he thinks are his friends, family, and neighbors are actually paid actors. Despite the horrifying concept behind this movie, millions of people turn their lives into reality TV shows where they are the main character on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Sci-fi classics “Fahrenheit 451” and “Brave New World” depicted dystopian futures where people are dumbed down by book bans, outright force or enervation through frivolous entertainment or drugs. Today, millions are knowingly dumbing themselves down by choosing obsessive attention to an endless series of seconds-long TikTok videos instead of reading books and by letting ChatGPT write and think for them.

In reality, nobody chooses to create a dystopian world. But worlds are created out of the countless everyday actions of everyone, including software CEOs. Each choice has its own logic or compulsion and feels non-contributory to the building of a cyberpunk nightmare. And so, we do it for expedience, impatience, ambition, boredom or other quotidian motivations. 

But all these choices add up. 

Who knows? Maybe millions of people will embrace the offering from Uare.ai. You might use the tool to help you with your work or become a content creator. Maybe Uare.ai will bring real benefits to your life and work. Or maybe you wake up one day and realize that, in fact,  you are AI.