The future of our digital twins

Are digital twins for real? - 11th July 2022

Imagine having a digital copy of yourself. This 'digital twin' could even teach you a few lessons to improve yourself! A wide range of digital twins can be found today, from cars to bridges and hearts.

They are accurate copies of the real things and they use artificial intelligence together with sensors, which connect the real object to the internet. The digital version is used to improve the original by giving it helpful feedback. Computer twins are used for solving problems, to increase efficiency and so on.

Technology analyst Rob Enderle now says digital twins of human beings will start to arrive "before the end of the decade". However, these twins aren't going to be problem-free.

Digital twins could be very useful to employers. Enderle asks, "What happens if your company creates a digital twin of you?" The business may eventually choose the unpaid copy over the real person. Who the digital twin belongs to will be just one key issue.

Avatars in video games are an early form of digital twin, but at the moment these are quite basic. For Sandra Wachter, a technology professor from Oxford University, the idea of a digital twin is at a similar point of development. According to her, digital twins still belong to the world of science fiction.