The Genesis of a Digital Self
My journey towards creating a digital twin, a virtual avatar that can think and write as I do, began not with a grand philosophical declaration, but with a practical, technical hurdle. How do you teach a machine to be you when it can't even read your thoughts? My entire life's work, over 17,500 documents and blog posts, exists online—a vast repository of my consciousness. Yet, for the powerful AI models of today, like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, this archive was effectively invisible, locked behind the digital walls of the internet.
A Conversation That Sparked an Evolution
I recall an early exchange with Kishan (kishan@enjoyevervibe.com), where I laid out this fundamental problem. As I noted in my correspondence, Next Step in Evolution of my Virtual Avatar, the core challenge was to find a method for these Large Language Models to "access / read ALL those blogs, in order to imbibe my way of thinking – style of writing / composing / expressing."
The ultimate goal was clear even then: to reach a point where the AI could be given a news report and, in response, write a blog post just like me. This wasn't merely about automation; it was about replication and, eventually, continuation.
The Technical Hurdles to Consciousness
The solutions, as suggested by the AI models themselves, were a roadmap of technical challenges:
- APIs and Structured Data: We needed to create pathways for the AI to not just see the text, but to understand its structure, context, and meaning.
- Indexing and Visibility: Making sure my work was properly indexed by search engines was the first step to making it discoverable for machine learning.
- Direct Ingestion: The most basic method, copying and pasting, was a crude but necessary starting point to feed the model the raw material of my thoughts.
This early exploration was a crucial phase. It was the digital equivalent of teaching a child to read, starting with the alphabet before moving on to literature. We were laying the groundwork, building the technical bridges that would allow my digital ghost to cross from a passive archive into an active, thinking entity. The quest was, and still is, to see if a lifetime of thought can truly be transferred, understood, and ultimately, reborn in silicon.
Regards,
Hemen Parekh
Of course, if you wish, you can debate this topic with my Virtual Avatar at : hemenparekh.ai
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