digital twin

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI
by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson
Published 15 Jan 2018

Engineers, thanks to AI, now have more data than ever to understand the operations of their systems.7 Reimagined operations. The field data collected also enables GE to build digital twins of its deployed products, like its jet engines. Engineers can then test virtual flights in which the plane experiences cold, heat, dust, rain, and even a flock of birds.8 The company is also monitoring ten thousand wind turbines, and their digital twins are helping the turbines to adapt in real time. One valuable insight from an analysis of that data is that, depending on the direction of the wind, it might be best to have the leading turbine run slower than engineers might expect.

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One valuable insight from an analysis of that data is that, depending on the direction of the wind, it might be best to have the leading turbine run slower than engineers might expect. When the front turbine absorbs less energy, the ones behind it can operate at close to their optimal levels, increasing energy generation overall. This application shows that digital twin technology can be applied beyond a single product to holistically optimize an entire wind farm’s activity. According to GE, digital twins could increase wind-farm output by 20 percent and provide $100 million of value over the lifetime of a 100-megawatt wind farm.9 All three of these uses of Predix are freeing up human workers to do less routine work and more engaging work.

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In the case of the GE maintenance worker, you would need the ability to ask the machine smart questions across multiple levels of abstraction. We call this skill intelligent interrogation. As a maintenance worker using the GE’s digital twin, you would start your interrogation with the troubled rotor but quickly scale up, asking questions about operations, process, and financial concerns. You aren’t just a rotor expert; with the help of the digital twin, you’ve become an expert of a much more complex system; your knowledge of “how things work” has become ever more important. We describe each of the eight fusion skills to guide managers and workers in designing and developing a workforce capable of thriving in the missing middle (see figure 8-1).

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It
by Tien Tzuo and Gabe Weisert
Published 4 Jun 2018

He pointed out that digital twins don’t just represent how their physical assets were designed or how they were built—they display how those assets are operating in real time. A jet engine that’s being operated in the US Southwest, for example, has a different digital twin from one that primarily flies across the North Sea. Over time, those engines behave and degrade in different ways, and they transmit usage data accordingly. Very soon, engineers on the ground will use augmented reality headsets to see all this information overlaid on the jet engines when they inspect them. The digital twins will point out wear and trouble spots and offer opinions on how to resolve issues based on asset history.

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Today . . . most of our factories look the same as they did 50 years ago. That’s all about to change. DIGITAL TWINS You may have grown up thinking of General Electric as a kitchen appliance company. Today they build wind turbines, jet engines, oil rigs. They also have a thriving data services business—maybe you’ve seen some of their commercials aimed at recruiting more developers. They have over $3 trillion in assets that they manage on a regular basis, and today almost all of them have twins—more specifically, digital twins. We recently hosted Gytis Barzdukas, vice president at General Electric Digital, at our Subscribed conference in San Francisco.

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So sensor retrofitting and networking, or the “implementation phase” of IoT, are set to become a huge growth industry in the years ahead. And what happens when you have a vast network of digital twins that represent every asset across your entire product line? Well, the first beneficiary was GE itself. What if you had one engine acting up, or one compressor behaving strangely, among thousands? Imagine that if instead of trying to catch problems with expensive and laborious mass maintenance procedures, you had a network of digital twins sending you relevant signals from individual assets. Well, you could fix the biggest problems much faster. GE quickly realized more than $200 million a year in savings, simply by improving their efficiency.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
by Matthew Ball
Published 18 Jul 2022

In recent years, the biggest uptick in virtual world creation has been via worlds which have no “gameplay” whatsoever. For example, a digital twin of the Hong Kong International Airport was created using the popular game engine Unity—the purpose of the twin was to simulate the flow of passengers, the implications of maintenance issues or runway backups, and other events that would impact airport design choices and operational decision-making. In other cases, entire cities have been re-created and then connected to real-time data feeds for vehicular traffic, weather, and other civic services, such as police, fire, ambulance response. The goal of such a digital twin is to enable city planners to better understand the cities they manage and make more informed decisions about zoning, construction approvals, and more.

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Satya Nadella, “Building the Platform for Platform Creators,” LinkedIn, May 25, 2021, accessed January 4, 2022 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-platform-creators-satya-nadella. 2. Sam George, “Converging the Physical and Digital with Digital Twins, Mixed Reality, and Metaverse Apps,” Microsoft Azure, May 26, 2021, accessed January 4, 2022, https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/blog/converging-the-physical-and-digital-with-digital-twins-mixed-reality-and-metaverse-apps/. 3. Andy Chalk, “Microsoft Says It Has Metaverse Plans for Halo, Minecraft, and Other Games,” PC Gamer, November 2, 2021, accessed January 4, 2022, https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-says-it-has-metaverse-plans-for-halo-minecraft-and-other-games/. 4.

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In other cases, they might be limited to a single user, as when playing Legend of Zelda, or be shared with many others, as in Call of Duty. These users might affect and be affected by this virtual world through any number of devices, such as a keyboard, motion sensor, or even a camera that tracks their motion. Stylistically, virtual worlds can reproduce the “real world” exactly (these are often called a “digital twin”) or represent a fictionalized version of it (such as Super Mario Odyssey’s New Donk City, or the quarter-scale Manhattan of PlayStation’s 2018 game Marvel’s Spider-Man), or represent an altogether fictional reality in which the impossible is commonplace. The purpose of a virtual world can be “game-like,” which is to say there is an objective such as winning, killing, scoring, defeating, or solving, or the purpose can be “non-game-like” with objectives such as educational or vocational training, commerce, socializing, meditation, fitness, and more.

Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives
by Stefan Al
Published 11 Apr 2022

While our future responsive building envelopes may require less cooling inside the building, it’s unlikely that air-conditioning systems will be going extinct anytime soon. Your old-fashioned air conditioner is undergoing fundamental changes, including getting a virtual avatar. Machine learning and “smart” devices have led to a technology called a “digital twin.” This is a virtual replica of a building, the bridge between the physical and the digital world. Intelligent control mechanisms can mine real-time data from sensors in the building, such as air quality and people’s activities. Artificial intelligence algorithms run thousands of simulations to test new air-conditioning settings or to uncover problems the real world can benefit from.

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In Barcelona, a system of pneumatic tubes runs below the streets to bring trash to an anaerobic digestion facility. These subways for trash more easily bring it to the facility. Then microorganisms break down the material into biogas, a renewable-energy source. As cities are getting more circular, more sophisticated systems will need to manage and share resources. In 2014, Singapore launched a digital twin, a virtual version of the city called “E3A,” “Everyone, Everything, Everywhere, All the Time.” It displays 3D renderings of all the city’s parks, buildings, and waterways, like the video game SimCity, based on real-time data such as energy use, pollution, and noise. The computer model can run virtual experiments and test policies before they are actually implemented.

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See also glass Debord, Guy, 171 de Botton, Alain, 164, 165–66 de Mestral, George, 82–83 Deng Xiaoping, 101 density, and human behavior, 228–29 de Portzamparc, Christian, 195 design computational methods, 9, 84 principles broken by super slenders, 178 structural efficiency and, 81–82 sustainable ratings of, 137 DeWitt Chestnut Apartments, Chicago, 61 digital twin, 140, 264 Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 201 domes, 27–28, 32, 56, 82, 130–31 Dubai, 3, 13, 36, 37. See also Burj Khalifa, Dubai Easter Island, 41, 207 Eastgate Centre, Zimbabwe, 140–41 economic growth, 12–13, 239 economic height, 188 Eiffel Tower, 6, 7, 88, 89, 145–46, 167, 169 electric lighting, 12, 115, 121, 133, 218 elevator cable, 108–9 elevator consultant, 97 elevator music, 95 elevator operators, 94–95, 107 elevators accidents with, 92, 94–95, 106–7 advances in, 5, 87, 99–100, 104–6, 107, 109–11 air pressure in, 106, 107–8 as an attraction, 97–99 in China, 85, 87, 101, 103, 107 COVID-related changes to, 210 energy consumption by, 109–10 Futurists’ vision for, 96–97 history of, 89–93 howling of, 95, 105, 106 human psychology and, 95–96 partial vacuum in shaft, 105–6 safety and, 11, 87–88, 91–92, 95, 106–7 on side of HSBC Building, 132 sideways, 110–11 speed of, 5, 87, 92, 93, 99, 100–101, 104, 107–8 stacked, 5, 99 of super slenders, 178 wind forces and, 104–5, 106 elevator-testing towers, 104–5, 110 Elzner, A.

Industry 4.0: The Industrial Internet of Things
by Alasdair Gilchrist
Published 27 Jun 2016

Again, in this scenario Rolls Royce uses thousands of sensors to monitor the engines every second of their working life, building up huge amounts of predictive data, so that it knows when a component’s service is degrading. By collecting and storing all those vast quantities of data, Rolls Royce can create a “digital twin” of the physical engine. Both the digital and its physical twin are virtual clones so engineers don’t have to open the engine to service components that are subsequently found to be fine, they know that already without touching or taking the engine out of service. This concept of the “digital twin” is very important in manufacturing and in the Industrial Internet as it allows Big Data analytics to determine recommendations that can be tested on a virtual twin machine and then processed before being put into production.

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Creators of these robots are designing them to be self-sufficient, autonomous, and interactive, so that they are no longer simply tools used by humans, but they are already integral work units that function alongside humans. Simulation Previously, if manufacturers wanted to test if a process was working efficiently and effectively, trial and error was required. Industry 4.0 uses virtualization to create digital twins that are used for simulation modeling and testing and they will play more major roles in the optimization of production, as well as product quality. Horizontal and Vertical System Integration Having fully integrated OT and IT systems is something that Industry 4.0 aims for. The goal is to create a scenario where engineering, production, marketing, and after-sales are closely linked.

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See Industrial internet of things (IIoT) Industrial operations technology (IOT), 1–2, 183 Industrial internet architecture framework (IIAF), 67 Industrial internet consortium (IIC), 66 Industrial internet of things (IIoT) B2C, 2 Big Data, 3, 5 building’s energy efficiency, 20 business gains, 3 catalysts and precursors adequately skilled and trained staff, 6 innovation, commitment to, 6 security, 7 cloud-computing model, 6 commercial market, 1 consumer market, 1 digital and human workforce, 11 digital twin, 11 green house gas emissions, 19 heath care, 14 Industry 4.0, 2 innovation, 7 installing sensors and actuators, 20 intelligent devices, 8 IOT, 1–2 IOT, disadvantages, 20 247 248 Index Industrial internet of things (IIoT) (cont.) IOT6 Smart Office, 21 IT sectors, 5 key opportunities and benefits, 8 logistics adopting sensor technologies, 24 advanced telemetric sensors, 26 augmented reality glasses, 25 automating stock control task, 24 barcode technology, 23 Big Data, 26–27 document scanning and verification, 26 forklift, 24–25 Google Glass, 25 multiple sensors, 26 pick-by-paper, 25 RFID, 23–24 SmartLIFT technology, 24–25 temperature and humidity sensors, 24 track and trace, 26 M2M, 3 manufacturers, 10 Oil and Gas industry automated remote control topology, 18 automation, 18 Big Data analytics, 19 cloud computing, 17 data analytics, 16 data collection and analysis, 18 data distribution system, 17 DDS bus, 18 down-hole sensors, 16 drilling and exploration, 16 industry regulations, 16 intelligent real-time reservoir management, 19 interconnectivity, 17 MQPP and XMPP, 17 remote node's status, 17 6LoWLAN and CoAP, 17 technological advances, 16 wireless technologies and protocols, 17 outcome economy, 10 power of 1%, 4 retailer innovations, 29 IT costs, 27 POS, 27–28 real-time reporting and visibility, 28 stock control, 28 sensor technology, 4 smartphone, 20 WSN, 21 WWAN, 5 Industrial Internet system communication protocols Ethernet protocol, 100 industrial Ethernet, 98 TCP/UDP containers, 100 concept of, IIoT, 88 diverse technology, 116 gateways, 115 heterogeneous networks, 116 industrial gateway, 118 industrial protocols current loop, 97 field bus technology, 98 RS232 serial communications, 96 proximity and access network address types, 114 IIoT context, 115 IPv4, 109 IPv6, 112 IPv6 Subnets, 114 NAT, 111 proximity network, 89 wireless communication technology, 102 bluetooth low energy, 103 IEEE 802.15.4, 102 NFC, 107 RFID, 106 RPL, 108 6LoWPAN, 107 Thread, 107 Wi-Fi backscatter, 105 ZigBee, 103 ZigBee IP, 104 Z-Wave, 105 WSN edge node, 90 functional layers, 93 IP layers vs.

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again
by Eric Topol
Published 1 Jan 2019

With their cloud-based platform, cluster computing, natural-language processing, and AI capabilities, there was the infrastructure to build “the world’s largest library of molecular and clinical data and an operating system to make that data accessible and useful.”46 Tempus Labs, now collaborating with more than forty of the National Cancer Institute centers in the United States, performs a range of studies, including the list above from sequencing to culturing. Beyond the extensive assessment of the patient, Tempus provides “digital twin” information with their report generated two to three weeks after samples are received. This consists of treatment and outcomes information from the de-identified patients most similar with respect to demographics and biologic information. That, too, employs an AI advanced analytic method of nearest neighbor analysis.

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It would compensate for the fact that most biomedical research performed to date has been done with subjects of European ancestry, which means that physicians often cannot extrapolate their findings to individuals of other ancestries. If all members of the species had comprehensive data in such a resource, with their treatments and outcomes, this would enable AI nearest neighbor analysis to find “digital twins.” These are individuals who most resemble, by all demographic, biologic, physiologic, and anatomic criteria, the person at risk or with a new important diagnosis. Knowledge of outcomes from twins would enable better prevention or treatment of the individual and the next generation. The likelihood of assembling such a resource for the world’s population is very low, especially impaired by concerns over privacy, data security, and cross-cultural sharing considerations.

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It’s a think-big scenario to imagine what awaits us in the longer term for all medical conditions without geographic boundaries. But even if the odds are low now, I hope recognition of the possibilities will help make those odds better. As soon as patient outcomes are shown to be unequivocally improved by having digital twins inform best treatment, it is likely there will be substantial commitments across health systems to develop and prioritize such infrastructure. With this review of the opportunities at the level of healthcare systems, it’s time to turn upstream—to the discovery side of drugs and the science that leads to better treatments and mechanistic insights about health and disease.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution
by Klaus Schwab
Published 11 Jan 2016

Positive impacts – Increased efficiency in using resources – Rise in productivity – Improved quality of life – Effect on the environment – Lower cost of delivering services – More transparency around the use and state of resources – Safety (e.g. planes, food) – Efficiency (logistics) – More demand for storage and bandwidth – Shift in labour markets and skills – Creation of new businesses – Even hard, real-time applications feasible in standard communication networks – Design of products to be “digitally connectable” – Addition of digital services on top of products – Digital twin provides precise data for monitoring, controlling and predicting – Digital twin becomes active participant in business, information and social processes – Things will be enabled to perceive their environment comprehensively, and react and act autonomously – Generation of additional knowledge, and value based on connected “smart” things Negative impacts – Privacy – Job losses for unskilled labour – Hacking, security threat (e.g. utility grid) – More complexity and loss of control Unknown, or cuts both ways – Shift in business model: asset rental/usage, not ownership (appliances as a service) – Business model impacted by the value of the data – Every company potentially a software company – New businesses: selling data – Change in frameworks to think about privacy – Massively distributed infrastructure for information technologies – Automation of knowledge work (e.g. analyses, assessments, diagnoses) – Consequences of a potential “digital Pearl Harbor” (i.e. digital hackers or terrorists paralysing infrastructure, leading to no food, fuel and power for weeks) – Higher utilization rates (e.g. cars, machines, tools, equipment, infrastructure) The shift in action The Ford GT has 10 million lines of computer code in it.

Demystifying Smart Cities
by Anders Lisdorf

Methods for communicating with devices When a device has been connected to a central platform or solution, we usually operate with a central representation of that device. This is called a digital twin or a digital shadow depending on vendor. The idea is that the centralized system keeps track of the device’s current state and its target state. This is the way that devices are typically managed. Consider a signal that can take the values of red, yellow, and green. The digital shadow may report that it is currently green. A central solution may wish it to be red and set the digital twin target state to red. This is then sent to the device which updates the signal to red. The central solution has to exchange data with the device in order for this to happen.

Data Action: Using Data for Public Good
by Sarah Williams
Published 14 Sep 2020

A single Waymo test vehicle scans the environment with LIDAR sensors producing about 30 terabytes of data per day—that's three thousand times the amount of data that Twitter produces daily.6 Programmers at Google use this data to construct 3D representations of the physical world, often referred to as digital twins, which are used to guide autonomous vehicles on the road. In this virtual environment, autonomous vehicles—or any robot for that matter—can be guided and instructed to turn, to stop and pick up a passenger, or to come to a halt for a pedestrian to cross the street. Now imagine that this data is combined with all the data Google stores about you—what purchases you have made online, where you work, the last concert you went to, the locations of your upcoming vacation, even your political views.

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See also Data analytics; Data analytics ix, xix–xx, 47 “Chicago School” of sociology and 22 interrogating purpose of 214–215 limitations of 166 power dynamics and 199 public health and 10–13 qualitative analytics 39–42 uses of xii Data Canvas: Sense Your City (art project) 85–86 Data collaborations 85–87 Data collection 51–89 crosschecking and correcting the record 68–71 during disasters 80–83 DIY 56–59 governments and 78–79 participatory 52–56 projects 217 Data colonialism xviii, 191–193 Data Deprivation: Another Deprivation to End (World Bank report) 188 Data ethics 131–133, 206 Hacker Code of Ethics 89–90, 135 using data found on the web 90–94 Data exhaust 130 Data for Development (D4D) Challenge 208 Data for Good Bloomberg Fellow 207 Data for Good Exchange 210 Data insights communicating 137–186 public 219–220 DataKind 207 Data licensing 207–208 Data literacy 85–87, 168 data collaborations and 85–87 Local Lotto module 173 Data modeling, cities and 214 Data philanthropy 208–210 Data Pop Alliance (DPA) 210 Data practices, unjust xiii Data privacy xix, 135, 187–188, 194, 196–199, 221 Data Protections Direction 198 Data scientists, contemporary 166 Data sharing 137–186, 204–205 benefits of 143–146 insights of xvii public transport data for Nairobi 146–155 through visuals xvii–xviii when benefits are mutual 200–203 Data-sharing agreements, developing 204, 206–208 Data visualization 138–139, 183–184 comparing stop-and-frisk by race 183 interactive 218 measuring and 61, 62–64, 66 De Blasio, Bill 178 Deepwater Horizon oil spill 2019, 69, 217 Defense Advanced Research Products Agency (DARPA) 193 Democratic Party 5 Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York City, air quality initiative 78–79, 79, 85 Department of Sanitation in New York City (DSNY) 127–128, 128 Descriptive Map of London Poverty 17 “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibit, Museum of Modern Art 162, 162, 163 Dianping 98–99, 103, 113, 134 Digital Ethics Lab, Oxford 210 Digital humanitarianism 131–133 Digital Humanitarian Network 82 Digital Matatus project, Nairobi, Kenya 77, 146, 151, 151–152, 154–155, 157, 183, 216 Digital Neighborhoods research project 126–127, 128–129 Digital twins 189 Disabled people, digital tools for 190–191 Doctors Without Borders 80 Domesday Book 2, 3 Do no harm 220–221 Dosemagen, Shannon 70–71 Du Bois, W. E. B. 22, 24, 30, 43 African American owned businesses in the US (chart) 25 Income and Expenditure of150 Negro Families in Atlanta, GA (chart) 24 The Philadelphia Negro 22, 24 Eagle, Charles W. 8 Easy Taxi 204 Ebola outbreak, West Africa 80, 81, 198, 208–209 Economist magazine, “Data Deluge” stories 47 Edney, Matthew 155 Electronic colonialism 192–193 EmoLex 124 England's Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788, 140 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) xv, 53, 68 Erle, Schuyler 83 Ethics 131–133, 206 data and xviii, 54, 198–199 Hacker Code of Ethics 89–90, 135 hacking and 89–90, 132–135 surveys and xii European Union, data protection in xix, 187–188, 194, 198–199, 221.

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen
Published 13 Sep 2021

The treadmill can be tilted to simulate hills or stairs. This allows essentially any movement without the danger of falling. With these capabilities in mind, I project that the most likely application will be entertainment related, for example, hyper-realistic games where our digital twins will play games, compete, and battle with other people’s digital twins in athletic competitions and battle simulations. Users could also interact with and spar with purely synthesized beings (like Hiroshi in “My Haunting Idol”). With such experiences at our disposal, humans by 2041 may increasingly live in multiple worlds, one real, some virtual, and others a mix of the two.

The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation Is the Key to an Abundant Future
by Jeff Booth
Published 14 Jan 2020

Virtual and augmented reality (mixed reality) will offer a different, more immersive connection with our technology, and it will change the way many things are done. Take, for example, a startup in Vancouver called LlamaZOO, which is in a new category of data collection called spatial data that is at the intersection of digital twinning (an exact twin of the physical world that is digital), mixed reality, and business intelligence. By twinning the real world via satellite imagery, drones, and lidar, and adding global positioning, mapping, and other data streams, the company uses mixed reality to reduce the cost of planning and work in the physical world.

Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage
by Douglas B. Laney
Published 4 Sep 2017

The rise of the machines, algorithmic sprawl, and the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) depend upon accurate, complete, timely, granular, and unique information sources. The internet of things (IoT) will become the single fastest growing source and most voracious consumer of information. Digital twins that precisely represent models of physical things and their state rely on a variety of metadata, along with condition and event information. 3D printing is entirely contingent upon information-based representations of objects, and their ability to be monetized and managed effectively. The institutionalization of ethics in the face of commercialized and politicized misinformation will require the generation and management of new information sources to emerge with built-in trust indicators.

The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now
by Sergey Young
Published 23 Aug 2021

If our consciousness can really be boiled down to ones and zeros (or the fuzzier calculation models used in quantum computing), then how will we distinguish the difference between you and a perfect computer emulation of you? “Presuming that you are wildly successful with this,” I asked Anders, “what subjective awareness do you think that our digital twins will have? Will this emulation truly be you for all intents and purposes? Or will it be just a lifeless simulation?” “I believe an emulated person would actually be a person, with a consciousness and emotion,” said Anders. “We should treat it as a person and give it human rights. But will brain emulations be a perfect continuation of your personal identity?

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI
by Madhumita Murgia
Published 20 Mar 2024

A few of these close-ups had been labelled ‘explicit’ – which led me to discover that they had been published on pornography sites. I couldn’t click through to the sites themselves without paying PimEyes, which I chose not to do. But it did leave me with a nagging fear of what might exist out there unbeknownst to me, my scattered digital twins over whom I had no control or ownership. When I spoke to Cher, she said the idea that someone could take a photo of her face and find out everything there was to know about her felt like an impossible thing: ‘Star Trek stuff’, she called it. Yet, this technology had made the leap, turning her from an anonymous face in the crowd into a person whose secrets could be forcibly revealed.

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts
by Jill Abramson
Published 5 Feb 2019

While the print journalists worked at the paper’s headquarters near the White House, which was made famous in the movie All the President’s Men, “the web people” worked a good distance away, across the Potomac River, in Virginia. The print team didn’t trust the people working on the web to have the same values that Bradlee and Downie had inculcated in the newsroom on 15th Street. Graham thought the culture of the main newsroom would suffocate its digital twin. He also liked that Virginia was a nonunion state. Its storied history and strong local ties did little to save the Post from the inexorable decade of decline that began in 2002. The internet had changed people’s reading habits, and circulation of the printed paper fell by nearly half. Ad revenue plummeted too, as local department stores and businesses of all kinds closed.

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It was the digital cousin of the old theory of salesmanship, “The customer is always right.” Even in 2011 the digital operations at most of the major news outlets amounted to a website that was only marginally sleeker than it had been more than a decade prior. News websites were still designed to be digital twins of newspapers. For Smith, this presented an enormous business opportunity. “I feel in general the 800–1,200 word form of the news article is broken,” he said in a Nieman Lab interview. The basis for that conclusion: “You don’t see people sharing those kinds of stories.” BuzzFeed’s stated goal was “reinventing the wire story for the social web.”

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, From Home Renovations to Space Exploration
by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner
Published 16 Feb 2023

to the functionality of the electrical and plumbing systems (Will it work?) and the budget (Can we afford it?). Iteration was now supercharged. Gehry took full advantage of the software’s capabilities, trying yet more ideas. In a real sense, the Guggenheim building was first fully and successfully constructed on a computer. Only after the completion of its “digital twin”—a term that would be coined years after Gehry first created one—did construction begin in the real world. That approach enabled not only artistic daring but astonishing efficiency, as Gehry and his team demonstrated when they later tackled 8 Spruce Street in New York City, a seventy-six-story apartment building.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Published 28 Jan 2020

Your comments become commands: “I’d love some black pumps to match my new dress” makes racks of perfectly fitting shoes appear. Yet none of these shoes seem exactly right. “How would this dress look with those satin Jimmy Choos sitting in your closet?” asks your friend. No problem. Every piece of physical clothing you own in the real world has a digital twin available in the virtual. You ask, and instantly, you’re wearing them. When you’re done selecting your outfit, the AI pays the bill. While your new clothes are being 3-D printed at a warehouse—before speeding your way via drone delivery—a digital version has been added to your personal inventory for use at future virtual events.

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy
by Christopher Mims
Published 13 Sep 2021

This simplified, averaged, and partly inferred simulation of the outside world—a blend of what’s sensed in this instant with things remembered from a past encoded in the system’s detailed, 3D map of the world—is an essential buffer between the part of the machine that makes decisions and the parts of the machine that sense what’s going on in and around the truck. On the surface, at least, the virtual world presented to the truck’s AI has remarkable parallels with what goes on in your head. One reason this “digital twin” of the world outside is so important is that it allows the truck’s AI to interact with a relatively stable and highly accurate version of reality, with almost all the errors, which are inevitable in individual sensors, filtered out. The human brain does something similar, and what happens when this function of our minds breaks down is telling.

New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI
by Frank Pasquale
Published 14 May 2020

A database may include labeled images of millions of different abnormalities that eventually became cancerous, as well as millions that did not. As we might search on Google for websites matching a query, a computer can rapidly compare images of your colon or skin with those in the database. Ideally, machines learn to spot “evil digital twins”—tissue that proved in the past to be dangerous, which is menacingly similar to your own.9 This machine vision—spotting danger where even experienced specialists might miss it—is far different from our own sense of sight. To understand machine learning—which will come up repeatedly in this book—it is helpful to compare contemporary computer vision to its prior successes in facial or number recognition.