The personal digital twin, ethical considerations

Abstract

The personal digital twin extends to individual persons, a concept that originated in engineering to twin complex machines with a digital simulation containing a model of its functions to monitor its past and present behaviour, and repair, correct, improve or otherwise ensure its optimal operation. Several independent trends in technological developments are seen to converge towards the elaboration of the digital replication of individual human data and life history, notably in health industries. Among the main ones, we consider the ubiquitous distribution of digital assistants, the rapid progress of machine learning concurrent with the exponential growth of ‘personal’ Big Data and the incipient interest in developing lifelogs. The core hypothesis here is that among the psychological effects of the digital transformation, the externalization of cognitive faculties such as memory, planning and judgement, the decision-making processes located within the human person are also emigrating to digital functions, perhaps as a prelude to a later re-integration within the person via brain–computer interfaces. The paper concludes with ethical considerations about these ongoing developments. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Towards symbiotic autonomous systems’.

Shall the robots remember? Conceptualising the role of non-human agents in digital memory communication

“…Such production can take various forms: for instance, robotic agents can communicate with each other in order to construct memories about human individuals (e.g. in the form of personal digital twins; de Kerckhove 2021). The same principle can be applied to historical events, where information retrieval and generative AI agents can collaborate to retrieve information about specific episodes of the past to generate new narratives about it which then can be automatically uploaded and retrieved by robotic agents in the future.…”

Transforming agrifood production systems and supply chains with digital twins

“…This field of research proposes that individuals’ genetic profile and microbiome determines their metabolism, nutrient requirements, predisposition to nutrition-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, and response to dietary interventions 35 . To the extent that DTs could, in the future, simulate individual persons 36 , by combining omics data, including nutrigenomics and metabolomics, and drawing on medical and lifestyle records, including via IoT wearable devices, virtual representations of humans could generate scenarios on the health effects of their food choices, customize dietary interventions and transform preventive healthcare thereby reducing malnutrition.…”

State Perception and Prediction of Digital Twin Based on Proxy Model

“…During the usage of mechanical components, damages and even failures can occur due to external and internal factors, making it difficult to maintain a stable operating state over a long period of time [1]. As components are used over an extended period, the operating environment becomes increasingly complex, posing new challenges for equipment diagnosis and maintenance [2][3][4]. Currently, the maintenance of mechanical components is mainly based on after-the-fact maintenance and limited experience-based predictive maintenance, which limits the accuracy and effectiveness of component maintenance and can affect the operation of the entire equipment [5].…”