14th Dalai lama, painting at Samye Monastery, Central Tibet

His Holiness is a rare kind of religious leader, greater a spiritual symbol but to a great degree political as well. The fate of what happens to the Tibetans as well as the geopolitical and cultural future of the Tibet Autonomous Region depends to a great degree on the matter of who is to be the next Dalai Lama in this historical conflict. This article proposes a way to continue with the same.

If the institution of Dalai Lama itself is abolished, it would very much be in the interests of China. If both sides choose their own Dalai Lama, the institution will still be denigrated. But what if through a technological intervention, we can ascertain that while both the sides may or may not have their new Dalai Lamas, we do get to keep a copy of the 14th Dalai Lama’s evolving mind as an engine powering a his holiness’ holograph?

We are already seeing a rise in distributed AI companies which offer a platform where the machine learning is distributed, or decentralized, having an emergent property of “living on the Internet”. The specialized algorithms of the day replicate specific neural and learning patterns, what I am referring to is an Interactive Connectome build to replicate the intelligence and personality of the man whose “mind” has been copied.

A human connectome formed from brain data of 20 subjects, rendered using TrackVis software. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Medical Imaging technologies have also advanced to a degree that a map of the human brain can be prepared non-invasively. The developments in Brain-Computer Communications also give us the ability to track the behavior specific neural connections. And all these technologies can also be used to make an active image of a live person. Now the proposed AI could have two broad architectural approaches:

Affective Neuromorphic

Both approaches evolve into each other and are the requirements of a functional whole. The first way gives precedence to Affective Modeling — it is more concerned with the AI looking and behaving like Dalai Lama and less concerned with the emulation of his actual nervous system. While both would require the active participation of His Holiness, the first approach would require him the least of the two. The second approach begins at the other end, prioritizing the mind transfer tasks over and above the simulation exercise.

Consider the core attributes of the aforementioned ways.

While not jumping into the technicalities of construction or hypothesis’ on the advances of quantum computing, for superposition of brain activity is a quantum phenomena— it is safe to say that with an open-hearted funding towards the development & research, building an AI of a living person is technically very much within the reach. It will allow a living being to continue a purposeful identity beyond death. The question is, who needs it the most?