While we’re going with fictional examples, the John Keats cybrid in Dan Simmons’s Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion is pretty much exactly this suggestion.
Steve Fever is this suggestion, exactly. It is a fairly disturbing account of an unFriendly AI attempting to resurrect a dead man using this method. Recommended.
This is also a primary plot point of the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica. This also comes in Charles Stross’s Accelerando up when some evil AIs decide to do this to most of humanity based on our historical records. The full text of the novel is at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html Search for “Frequently Asked Questions” to find the relevant section.
There is also another similarly interesting plot thread in the story which can be summed up by this excerpt:
The Church of Latter-Day Saints believes that you can’t get into the Promised Land unless it’s baptized you – but it can do so if it knows your name and parentage, even after you’re dead. Its genealogical databases are among the most impressive artifacts of historical research ever prepared. And it likes to make converts.
The Franklin Collective believes that you can’t get into the future unless it’s digitized your neural state vector, or at least acquired as complete a snapshot of your sensory inputs and genome as current technology permits. You don’t need to be alive for it to do this. Its society of mind is among the most impressive artifacts of computer science. And it likes to make converts.
I have no doubt that this sort of thing has been occasionally explored in fiction. That said, there’s a big difference between considering an idea in fiction and considering acting on an idea in real life.
And in Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe there are two major types of simulations of people, the alphas are a very accurate model from a fast, destructive scan of the brain, while the betas are essentially this.
This post is in dire need of a reference to Hofstadter’s I am a Strange Loop.
Also maybe Halperin’s The First Immortal which explicitly considers the possibility raised here.
Also maybe Lion Kimbro.
While we’re going with fictional examples, the John Keats cybrid in Dan Simmons’s Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion is pretty much exactly this suggestion.
Spoiler warning for a Greg Egan short story...
Steve Fever is this suggestion, exactly. It is a fairly disturbing account of an unFriendly AI attempting to resurrect a dead man using this method. Recommended.
This is also a primary plot point of the Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica. This also comes in Charles Stross’s Accelerando up when some evil AIs decide to do this to most of humanity based on our historical records. The full text of the novel is at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html Search for “Frequently Asked Questions” to find the relevant section.
There is also another similarly interesting plot thread in the story which can be summed up by this excerpt:
It might be time to take this thread to TV Tropes.
I have no doubt that this sort of thing has been occasionally explored in fiction. That said, there’s a big difference between considering an idea in fiction and considering acting on an idea in real life.
And in Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe there are two major types of simulations of people, the alphas are a very accurate model from a fast, destructive scan of the brain, while the betas are essentially this.