Artificial Intelligence Has Caught Up With My Fiction

Ten years ago, I wrote my first novel, Death Never Sleeps, about an underworld figure, Alex Nicholas, who duplicates himself on a computer through a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. 

Soon after, Alex Nicholas is murdered in a New York restaurant. But he returns when his brother, Michael, discovers him on his laptop computer.

Although the reviews were excellent, some of them said “far-fetched,” “unrealistic,” “too far out”—you get the drift.

Not anymore. 

Now many experts believe we will be able to upload our minds, our entire consciousness, to the Cloud and achieve immortality. Like Alex Nicholas, we’ll have access to everything in the Cloud, even Wikipedia.

We could live out our human life—and then become immortal, in the Cloud. Just like Alex did ten years ago.

The idea is that our consciousness is the product of our neural activity, and if the “data” in our brain (memories, thinking patterns, knowledge patterns, etc.) could be “copied” in a digital format, we could live on forever in the virtual world. 

The good news is we wouldn’t have to count calories or work out to stay fit. The bad news is we would never again taste a great roast beef, a baked potato with all the trimmings, and a slice of homemade apple pie. And forget about a martini.