Multimodal AI: The everyone "Walter Isaacson"
Walter Isaacson is the tech innovator’s Biographer of choice. He has profiled the lives of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and historical greats like Einstein and DaVinci too.
He doesn’t just write about tech innovators, he will go as far as following them around for years … listening in on all of their dealings and deeply interviewing their inner and extended friends and family.
The role of a biographer is incredibly important. They preserve the historical essence of unique and great people. They serve as as a bridge for the general public to inspire and empathize with the most influential people of our time. Many great people often have tough childhoods or unique circumstances which mold them. Through these stories, the general public may relate to them better and apply such boldness or heroism to their own lives.
It’s great reading different biographies but not everyone can afford or convince an established biographer to write something so detailed and comprehensive about them. At the same time, one could always attempt to write their own autobiography, but this is time consuming and requires a certain level of written craft not everyone is capable of. Also, the final product is different in my opinion because autobiographies can lack objectivity.
In my view, this kind of limitation will no longer exist thanks to language models. AI will not only have accumulated years worth of our deepest conversations, the tiniest details about our daily lives, footage of our best moments, but will be able to proactively interview our friends and family on our behalf. It would be able to create a living document deeply covering our entire lives with great analysis, emotional clarity, written craft, and comprehensiveness.
Everyone you know is on their own journey and hero’s arc. They are emotionally complex, have unique personalities, and are facing challenges. They are living beautifully enriched moments right now like enjoying the summer weather at the annual family barbecue, proposing to their long-time girlfriend/partner, or graduating from high school. How often do you hear about so called “ordinary people” who were independently supporting their parents as kids and then went off to pursue meaningful lives despite their initial circumstances. There is so much to glean inspirationally from everyone you meet.
Beyond just creating a biography about us, AI could generate a rich podcast series, synthesize films about our lives, write music and so much more long after we are gone. It may even learn to embody and take our place based on its deep understanding of who we are and a lifetime’s worth of our data.
I will close by suggesting something to you. I asked ChatGPT today to comprehensively write a biography about my life and times so I could test the current state of the art. Here’s the prompt I suggest you run:
Based on everything you know about me, write a comprehensive biography about my life and times
Let me know in the comments down below what you find out!