Digital twins to be the new trend? - 11th July 2022

Technological replicas of actual physical objects, called 'digital twins', are purposefully designed to help develop or in some manner produce feedback for their real-life original. Nowadays, such twins abound, existing as digital versions of cars, bridges, human organs and so on.

Initially, such twins were sophisticated 3D computer models, but thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) working in conjunction with 'the internet of things', which links up physical objects to the network via a system of sensors, a twin can be generated digitally. It can thenceforth both continually learn from and at the same time enrich the original partner.

Rob Enderle, a technology analyst, is confident that digital twins able to reason will appear "before the end of the decade". "The emergence of these will need a huge amount of thought and ethical consideration, because a thinking replica of ourselves could be incredibly useful to employers," he states.

"What happens if your company creates a digital twin of you, and says 'Hey, you've got this digital twin who we pay no salary to, so why are we still employing you?'" Enderle predicts that the question of proprietorship will become one of the defining questions.

The existence of avatars suggests we're already on the way to human twinning, though this technology is at present rather clunky and primitive. While in Meta (formerly Facebook's) virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds a user is able to assemble a face resembling one's own, for example, as yet the technology is limited to providing only the upper body, and not the legs.

Even though Sandra Wachter, senior research fellow in AI at Oxford University, recognises the appeal of a digital twin of a human being, she regards it as "reminiscent of exciting science fiction novels." She adds, "at the moment, that is the stage where it is at."