Anita Deveraux goes behind the scenes at Afterlife laboratories and meets with the company founder Troy Campion to discuss Brain-mapping, AIs and the future of life and death.

In his black leather jacket and fashionably distressed jeans Troy Campion looks more like a rock star than a scientist. He was recently voted the tenth sexiest men in the world in this year’s Aspire Top 100 and it’s not hard to see why. His black hair is swept behind his ears in a stylish wave, and he has the chiselled face of a classic heartthrob. Although he’s approaching sixty, he has the skin of a much younger man.

Whose skin precisely , is a matter of much speculation. It’s rumoured that he has it grown on-demand, from a cocktail of harvested fat from his own thighs, rapid-growth dummy cells, and placenta tissue. If this is the case, it’s impossible to tell. The colour-match is perfect and there are no tell-tale scars around his throat.

Undoubtedly though, his most attractive feature is his net worth, which at the time of writing, has just exceeded nine hundred billion dollars. That’s enough to make any girl swoon.

When my editor first told me he’d secured an interview with Campion AND a tour of his laboratory,I couldn’t believe it! Troy Campion’s refused interviews ever since Mercia Caruso called him ‘a charismatic lunatic with a god complex,’ six years ago in The Pinnacle, and he’s notoriously secretive about his process.

But, as conversation has been heating up about Afterlife , Campion is determined to meet his critics head-on.

‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he says, ‘I do not literally raise the dead. Nor have I ever claimed to. I am not a necromancer. I'm a scientist and a businessman.’

He talks with the slick, practiced speech of a politician and leans across the desk, to invite intimacy. He gifts you a flash of glowing veneers. Trust me , his eyes seem to say , I know what's good for you . You want to believe him.

‘A lot of people still think my service is a scam. I’ve been compared to old-school mediums, praying on people’s grief, but I’m not out here cracking knuckles under the table. What I offer is quite real.’

‘Well, that all depends what you mean by “ real, ” I say. ‘What are your Ghosts, exactly?’

‘Copies. Very good copies, but copies, nonetheless. I’m not interested in the spiritual side of things. I don’t know where the soul - if there even is such a thing - goes after death and I am not in the business of chasing after it. I just build machines that can think like a person.’

This statement surprises me. It’s no secret that Afterlife uses spiritual imagery to appeal to its customers. The very name of the product ‘ Ghost ‘ invokes an impression of something metaphysical, potentially supernatural is taking place. I point this out to Campion but his reply is evasive.

‘There’s a big difference between what a product is and how it is marketed,’ he tells me.

‘Surely you have a responsibility to market your Ghosts appropriately?’

Readers may recall one of the company’s more controversial adverts, ‘When Mommy Came Home’, which was widely criticised and mocked. Although it was pulled within the hour, it lives on to this day, in form of memes where the faces of dead characters clumsily brought back by writers are pasted over the mother.

These days, the adverts are subtler in their messaging but continue to present Ghosts as a method of technological resurrection. In their latest ad’ Reconnect’ a young woman is shown trying to make a call and listening, head in her hands, to the out of service message. The following is then displayed, in white text on a black background.

In many ways this is just as mawkish and manipulative as’ When Mommy Came Home’ but, there is one key difference: the company no longer promises to bring your loved ones back, it merely suggests you speak to them again, in some form. The filter of the phone, providing some plausible deniable about how that connection is being made, and whose voice you might be hearing.

'Our Ghosts think and talk exactly like the people they’re created from, so they allow people to continue unfinished conversations and come to terms with their loss,’ Campion tells me.

'Exactly?' I repeat, doubtfully. 'So, you concede that your Ghosts do not literally resurrect the dead, but maintain that they are perfect copies?'

There has been extensive debate about the nature of the replicas. Especially, as the technology producing these AI devices is privileged. Scientists such as Marie Leonardt and Ayumu Kurosawa, have gone on record saying they believe that Ghosts accurately replicate the brains they are constructed from. While many online commenters claim that they are standard chatbots, created using scraped data from the deceased's social media accounts.

It certainly would be easy for Campion to do this, given that he owns three of the most popular social media platforms, and ran two AI supercomputers, DeepDive and Spark, before moving onto Afterlife.

NeonWulf recently went viral with a series of videos in which he programmed a chatbot to talk like himself. The effect, convincing enough to fool his friends and family for extended periods. Most impressively, he housed this bot in a converted laptop, proving that a Ghost-like device can be created using standard hardware and efficient coding.

'The idea that Troy Campion is somehow gaining information from the dissected brains of corpses and converting it into code through some top-secret magical process is just laughable to anyone who knows anything about coding or science, in general.' NeonWulf states, in the third video in the series. 'The fact that so many people are swallowing this story just f***ing astounds me.'

Even so, the prevailing belief amongst the public is that Ghosts are accurate replicas, a position which has worrying implications of its own.

Increasingly, there is a push to consider the testimony of Ghosts when wills are contested, despite the obvious conflict of interest. As Ghosts are always commissioned by the next of kin, who has complete legal ownership of them, there is a high chance of manipulation and bias. For this reason alone , Ghosts are not considered reliable, in a court of law.

Although I raise these points with Campion, he refuses to enter any sort of debate about the nature of his replicas, or their legal status. He repeatedly states that his Ghosts are nothing more than ‘copies’ or ‘simulations,’ but that they are ‘very good copies.’ This is the new party line, giving nothing away.

‘At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you believe,’ he concludes eventually. ‘The product is the product. Let me ask you something? Which reality is the one you find most frightening?’

A very good question.

+++

The following passage has been reviewed and edited by representatives of the Afterlife legal team.

Before we can begin the tour of the laboratories, I have to sign a contract promising that I will not:

1. Take any photographs
2. Make any video recordings
3. Attempt to gain access to any confidential material
4. Attempt to take or distribute any confidential material

In addition to this I have to promise that I will turn over my article before it is published so that it may be checked and - if necessary - censored. While these constraints are considerable, I accept them readily. I feel like I’m a kid with a golden ticket. The first outsider being allowed to watch the birth (rebirth?) of a Ghost.

LAB 02 (The Preparation Room) is small and clean. At its centre, is a dead body, laid out on steel table. An old man, with wispy white hair. A thin sheet covers his body, leaving the head and shoulders exposed.

‘We still extract the brains by hand,’ Campion tells me. ‘The work's too delicate to trust to bots. If anything goes wrong, the brain loses all viability, and we can't deliver.'

He introduces me to the surgeon, Doctor Briner, who looks exactly as you would expect a man who spends all his days cracking open heads to look. He is short and scrawny, with heavily hooded eyes. He spends some time talking me through all his tools, from the bone saw , to the motorized cutters , to the picking needle .

‘Would you like to stay for a demonstration?’ Briner asks as he traces a line across the top of the dead man’s head. ‘It doesn’t take that long. I can at least show you how we start out.’ He actually reaches for the saw, but Campion stops him.

‘We’re working to a very tight schedule, but if you come on through, I can show you one which we prepared earlier.’

+++

Lab 06 (The Theatre) is where the real work takes place. The brains are stacked up in glass drawers, along one wall. Each one, carefully labelled with a first and last name. Campion opens one of the drawers and a cloud of mist rises out. He picks up the brain like one might a kitten and holds it out to me.

I back away, appalled, and he laughs.

'Is it okay to handle it, like that?' I ask. 'What if you damage it?'

'Trust me, I know what I'm doing,' he says. Though, I doubt he is usually so hands-on. CEOs rarely are. He puts the brain back, very carefully, before launching into an prepared speech.

‘We can work with brains that are up to three weeks old, if properly stored. We usually process each brain within three days to minimize the risk of complications. This part of the proceedure is automated. We simply place the brain inside the ASAR Laser-point Lathe - the machine over here - and it slices it up into paper thin slices.'

[A description of the ASAR Laser-point Lathe was originally included here. It has been removed to protect the legal rights of Troy Campion.]

Campion tells me that it takes around three hours for the machine to slice up the brain, at which point the pieces are automatically migrated to the scanner, where they are read and reproduced as code. Although naturally, I am none the wiser about how this actually works.

In her book, Transhumanism: Life after Life , Camilla Martinez maintains that Afterlife is the only company with technology capable of accurately mapping the human brain. She spent time with several former employees and specialists and is confident in her assessment. However, the point remains, that there is no hard proof, being offered to the public, at large. We have to take it on faith.

Companies like Suzaro and BH Medical have been trying to develop similar technology for over twenty years and, according to their ownreports, they are still ‘decades away from a workable product.’ Martinez suggests that (if genuine) the technology Afterlife owns could be ‘potentially adapted to repair damaged brain tissue, remove tumours, and prolong human life,’ but the company refuses to share.

I can’t help but ask the question: ‘Is it really ethical for one company to own and control technology like this?’

Campion has his answer ready and waiting.

‘Whether we like it or not everything in this world has a value.’ He tells me. ‘We have a concept of ownership and that means that people like me are able to own, buy and sell even the most essential commodities. You might say it’s unethical to own and sell food for a profit, when people are starving - but companies still do this. It’s just the world we live in.’

+++

We proceed to Lab 12 (Storage) for what Campion calls, ‘ the main event .’ Here, the walls are lined with hundreds of identical cardboard boxes. Completely white, except for a little ID number. Campion takes down box ‘RD - 2H7633‘ and opens it up. Inside there’s a shiny white orb sat on a white cushion: a Ghost.

Unless you own a Ghost yourself then it’s unlikely you’ll ever see one, in the flesh. It’s impossible to purchase an empty shell and, even if it were, the manufacturing costs alone would set its price at over 150,000 dollars. Of course, if you want the real thing then you’ll need a dead relative and one point three million dollars. Ghosts do not come cheap.

Campion doesn’t seem worried about showing one to me. He urges me to pick it up, to see how it feels. ‘Youwon’t break it,’ he assures me. ‘The shells are very thick and strong. You could drop one from the top of a twenty story building and it wouldn’t break.’

The sphere is pleasantly warm and soft. It’s about the size of an ostrich egg and slops abound in my hands, as slippery as a water baloon. The white shell is slightly translucent and a pale light flickers about inside.

‘We offer one standard model which can’t be altered, modified or upgraded in any way. Our spheres are sealed in such a way that any attempts to tamper with the contents will result in a destruction of the program. This is primarily to protect our intellectual property, but it also prevents people from hacking or stealing Ghosts.’

This sounds like a good idea, in theory but it means that customers are limited to interacting with their ghosts in the way the company intends.

‘Is this one live?' I ask.

‘Of course.'

‘Then, who am I holding?’

He tells me a name. A woman.

‘Can she hear us?’ I ask. ‘Should I talk to her? Um, Mrs ---?’ I feel very awkward.

‘She can’t hear you. She’s sleeping.’

‘Sleeping?’

‘The Ghosts are set to sleep for twenty hours a day, unless they’re woken by their loved one. They can’t do anything apart from talk, so unless there’s someone around to chat with, they just have to sit and listen.'

I imagine what it would be like to be left on a shelf, like some sort of ornament, with nothing to say or do, for hours and hours. But the alternative seems just as bad: hours and hours of unchanging silence. I wonder how this is different from a natural death, but Campion is quick to set me right.

‘They dream,’ He tells me. ‘Long, lucid dreams filled with images and ideas from their life.’

I wonder what Mrs --- is dreaming about? What does she think about what she's become?

It occurs to me that, if what I've been told is true, what I’m holding is effectively a disembodied brain. It seems, not to put it bluntly, unnatural.

'What do you say to people who have a moral objection to what you're doing?' I ask.

Campion scoffs.

‘If you do anything remotely innovative, you’re slapped with the “mad scientist&rdquo label, or accused of playing God. I’m not playing at anything. I’m simply doing what’s possible, if you’re smart enough. If people don’t like Ghosts, that’s fine, they don’t have to buy one. But that’s not enough for them. They think they’ve got the right to tell everyone else how to live.’

Or die , I add internally.

+++

We finish the tour where we began, at Campion’s office. He takes his seat behind the desk, fixes his handsome face into a smile, and asks if I have any more questions for him. I confess that I do.

‘I’m interested in where you seeing this technology going in the future? Do you think people would ever volunteer to have a Ghost replica made of themselves?’

‘Well, that’s not actually possible at the moment.’ Campion says, sadly, ‘In order to get an accurate image of the brain we have to cut it up into very small pieces, and we can't legally do that to someone, even if they consent. Perhaps, one day, if we could find a new way of scanning, we could create copies of a living person.'

Opening up a whole new can of worms.

'Currently, it's all up to the next of kin. Legally, we can't do it any other way.'

‘Do you think people should be allowed to indicate if they wish to have a Ghost made, after their death?'

'I don't see why not. People are allowed to donate their organs, to help other people. They're still allowed to donate their bodies to medical science. It's only this area, which is restricted. The entire law was written to restrict my business, and honestly that feels like a personal attack and its frankly unamerican.'

'I thought the law was also there to prevent cloning.'

Campion sneers at this.

'Cloning is not and never has been a viable business model.'

‘Some people have suggested that there’s a loophole in the law,’ I say. ‘If you make arrangements with your relatives and then commit suicide then it’s essentially the same thing as volunteering.’

‘Legally, it’s not.’ Campion tells me stubbornly. ‘Legally, the diseased has no rights. It’s the next of kin who makes the final decision.

'Well, that's why it's considered a loophole.'

'I'm not interested in that. As far as I'm concerned, things are either legal or they're not. Accusing people of exploiting loopholes is just a way of attacking them, when they've done nothing wrong.'

‘There’s been a lot of talk recently about one Ghost in particular,’ I continue, ‘the replica made from Aleksandir Davidian. Are you aware of the controversy regarding Davidian’s suicide?’

Aleksandir Davidian came to public notice around two months ago, thanks to an article by Rosa Hannagan, Pathways to the Afterlife .In this article Hannagan published a list of all the bodies processed by Afterlife that had ‘suicide’ listed as the cause of death. It was not a particularly long list (certainly not long enough to prove anything) but there was one name that got a lot of attention.

Readers started to comment that Aleksandir Davidian had been an active member of several forums concerned with the concept of Transhumanism . One anonymous visitor even posted a link to athread in which Davidian confessed a desire to become a Ghost.

Campion is clearly familiar with Davidian’s case, because he pauses our interview until he can bring in his lawyer. The man was apparently on stand-by as he appears within minutes. He sits in on the rest of our interview, and there is a fresh tension in the air. I feel I need to tread lightly.

‘I believe you met with Mr Davidian, two weeks before his death?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I ask what you spoke about?’

‘Mr Davidian was curious about the product. He wanted to talk through the process of creating a Ghost replica. I met with him for about an hour and explained everything to him.’

‘Is it normal for you to meet with prospective customers personally?’

‘Sometimes,’ Campion says. ‘I’ve been making more of an effort to educate people about my products. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to this interview. Mr Davidian had a lot of complicated questions, so I thought it was worth meeting with him to discuss things in-depth.’

Campion’s lawyer is keen to remove any avert any suspicion from his client. He assures me, ‘Mr Campion he did not discuss, encourage or assist with the suicide. He was unaware of the man’s suicidal tendencies and, if he had been, he would have advised him to seek help.’

‘But following the suicide Mr Davidian’s body was handed over to Afterlife by his sister and a Ghost replica was made. Isn’t that right?’

‘That is correct.'

Campion is right to be cautious about discussing Davidian’s death. Many people are calling for a change to the law, either to prevent ‘suicide-conversions’ (as Hannagan calls them), or to legalise the procedure.

On the surface it would seem that any changes in the law would benefit Afterlife, allowing them to make arrangements with living customers and expand their services, but in the long run it could jeopardise their primary business model.

The current discussion about whether people have the right to choose whether tey become Ghosts naturally leads into a much larger debate about whether Ghosts are i n fact people, and whether they should be afforded human rights. If the answer to this question is ‘yes’ then everything will change.

Earlier in our interview, Campion asked me which reality scared me the most, but the truth is both are equally disquieting. No matter whether Ghosts are an accurate recreation of a human brain, or an AI imitation, they cannot be considered as simply a product to be bought and sold.

+++

Anita Deverauxwrote for Our Changing World for over ten years. She has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto and went on to work with Featherwaite and Gorgon . Six years after writing this article she purchased a Ghost replica of her son, who was killed in a plane crash. She admitted to being given a discount on the procedure, on the condition that she did not write about it, or the company Afterlife again.