The future of our digital twins

You and your digital twin - 11th July 2022

'Digital twins' are an exact copy of a real object. The thing could be a car, or a bridge or a heart, for example. They're already used in different workplaces.

Digital twins can help improve or correct the real thing. The digital twin learns from its real partner. But it can then use that information to make the first twin work better.

And now it seems that digital twins of humans are possible. Technology expert Rob Enderle believes that these will be with us by the end of the 2020s.

Enderle's sure digital twins will raise difficult questions. Imagine, for example, that a business creates a digital twin of an employee. It can think, and it can solve problems at no cost. Why would a company keep the real person? The question of who owns a digital twin will be an important one.

We've started the scientific journey with avatars in video games. These are a kind of twin, but there's a long way to go. So, Professor Sandra Wachter from Oxford University doesn't think we need to worry yet. She thinks that human digital twins are from science fiction.