The ethics of human digital twins: Counterfeit people, personhood, and the right to privacy

In recent years, generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of large language models (LLM) have sparked the interest of society at large. The perceived capabilities of such systems have reignited discussions concerning the actual or potential threats posed by AI. According to Daniel Dennett, these systems make possible the creation of counterfeit people, who can pass as real in digital environments like social media. Dennett claims that by undermining trust in relationships, counterfeit people pose a threat to democracy and human freedom. While the idea of counterfeit people is worrisome in the context of digital manipulation, we claim that human digital twins have the potential to facilitate human rights violations that may pose even greater challenges. High-fidelity human digital twins necessitate encroaching into features that constitute a human’s personhood, such as physical aspects and mental contents. In view of that, their creation raises pressing issues of consent and violations of privacy rights. As a result, because rights to privacy are rights of persons, such violations will simultaneously be human rights violations. Even with consent to use an individual’s data, human digital twins may still cause issues of personhood. The rapid adoption of technologies that facilitate counterfeit people and human digital twins demands that ethical issues not be treated as aside concerns, but at the forefront of technology development.