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Cunning clones Techno Talk Imagine that you could hold a conversation with holographic clones of your great-grandparents, asking them questions about their lives, loves, hopes and fears. It’s too late for us, but this may be a possibility for our own great-grandchildren. I n my previous column, I introduced a company called Proto (see their website at protohologram.com). Its claim to fame is the ability to generate artificial intelligence (AI) based full-size 3D volumetric holograms of people. They start by videoing a conversation with the person in question. Let’s consider William Shatner—who famously played Captain James Tiberius Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS)—as an example because they’ve already done him. The idea was to create a hologram of Bill that could attend shows and conferences and answer both Shatner- and Star Trekrelated questions. Proto’s AI used this video to create what I think of as a ‘voice clone’. The AI can subsequently use this clone to say anything it likes while sounding just like Bill. Their AI also creates what I think of as a ‘physical clone’ or a ‘body clone’, which it uses to generate the full-size 3D hologram. This hologram is generated on a frame-byframe basis in real-time. Any visual aspects of the hologram— lips, facial muscles, eye blinks, hand and body gestures—are synchronised with whatever it’s saying. Who are you? To be capable of holding a Turing test level conversation, the AI powering the hologram needs what I think of as a ‘knowledge clone’ of the person in question. In the case of Bill, the AI can build this knowledge clone by interviewing him, starting with basic questions like, “What’s your name?”, “Where were you born?”, “How old are you?” and “How do you pronounce ‘sabotage’?”. Each question can open new avenues of conversational exploration, just like a chat between two people. If they are lucky enough to get to meet Bill, many people want to pose Star Trek-related questions. Although Bill generally enjoys answering queries of this nature, he sometimes expresses frustration if he feels the questions are repetitive or overly focused on specific details. Unfortunately, fiddly details are what Star Trek fans like most. 56 The folks at Proto got around this by feeding the AI with every script from every episode, thereby allowing the hologram to answer any conceivable tribble-connected question without trouble (obviously everyone knows Season 2, Episode 15: “The Trouble with Tribbles”). Max the Magnificent In the 1974 film Young Frankenstein, Frederick sends hunchback Igor to the local “Brain Depository” to steal the brain of a deceased “scientist and saint” called Hans Delbrück. Unfortunately, Igor accidentally drops the glass jar containing the brain in question, so he grabs another close by. He tells Frederick the brain came from someone called “Abby Normal”, but later admits the jar was, in fact, labelled “Abnormal”. With Proto’s holograms, it’s possible to swap one knowledge clone (the ‘brain’) for another. Suppose that instead of loading our Shatner AI with Star Trek scripts, we instead fed it with books on infectious diseases. This would enable it to hold forth on medical matters (just don’t ask it about Tribbles). transportation hubs like airports (their human hosts always seem to be absent when I need them the most). Or how about having one at the end of every aisle in a gigantic hardware store? These AIs can see and hear you, so you could show them something and ask, “What’s the name of this and where can I find one?” With its subject matter expertise, the AI might respond, “That’s called a ballcock valve, and you’ll find them on the bottom shelf halfway down aisle 10 on the right.” A lot of people are embarrassed to talk to doctors about certain things. But experiments have shown that people are much more forthcoming with AIs, especially ones like Proto’s holograms. And, just like a human doctor, the AI could be watching the patient, observing things like involuntary movements of the hands or rapid blinking or… I can easily envisage these AI holograms in nursing facilities, especially those dealing with people suffering cognitive decline like dementia. Unlike human carers, an AI wouldn’t mind answering the same question multiple times or listening to the same story over and over (and over) again. Who said that? The Life of (a boy called) Clive Abby Normal The AIs powering Proto’s holograms can typically recognise and speak over 120 languages (excluding Australian, of course). Thus, if a Spanish fan approached our William hologram and asked, “¿Cuál es el verdadero problema con los tribbles?” (ie, “What’s the real trouble with tribbles?”), the AI could (a) respond in Spanish complete with apical-alveolar trills (ie, the rolling of the Rs) and (b) the hologram’s lips and other facial muscles would be perfectly synchronised with the words. What’s the point? You might be thinking, “This is all very clever, but what’s the point?” By this, you mean, “What could we use these AI holograms for?” To be honest, we are limited only by our imaginations. Mainstream uses for this technology might include information booths at I miss my dad. He passed away in January 2000. I would love to have access to an AI hologram of him—one that had spent weeks chatting to him and learning all about him. I know it wouldn’t be like really having my dad present, but being able to hold a conversation with him (even in holographic form) would soothe my soul, as it were. As I mentioned a couple of columns ago, I have almost finished writing a book called The Life of (a boy called) Clive. This describes my life growing up as a kid in Sheffield in the 1960s. Suppose we fed the contents of this book to an AI hologram of me. The AI could also interview me to fill in additional details. Long after I’m gone, my great-great-grandchildren could chat with my holographic AI to at least get a glimpse as to what I was like. It would be a form of immortality. It’s something to think about… PE Practical Electronics | April | 2025