It's my first day "mindfiling," and I guess that's the sort of maturity you'd expect from a healthy 28-year-old considering his mortality. Mindfiling is a practice from the techno-religious faith movement Terasem, which celebrates personal cyberconsciousness. Its motto is "life is purposeful, death is optional, God is technological, love is essential." Mindfiling is a central daily act of uploading data about yourself to be stored until the resulting model of your mind and consciousness can be reconstructed and uploaded into an artificial body. It may be an act best understood in light of Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, in which he predicted A.I. would replicate and even outstrip human intelligence by the 2020s.

This year has seen both artificial intelligence (AI) along with bots dominate tech news based on the advancements that have been taking place in both areas. We're just beginning to see the possibilities and implications that both of these technologies will bring in our near futures. People have been contemplating ways to leverage these technologies for creating a presence for people that have died long before they began dominating the news. Several years ago I discovered Lifenaut and found myself intrigued and imagining a future where a digital version of myself would exist long after I died. The service allows you to upload documents, photos, videos, additional data as well as connect to your social accounts.

This year has seen both artificial intelligence (AI) along with bots dominate tech news based on the advancements that have been taking place in both areas. We're just beginning to see the possibilities and implications that both of these technologies will bring in our near futures. People have been contemplating ways to leverage these technologies for creating a presence for people that have died long before they began dominating the news. Several years ago I discovered Lifenaut and found myself intrigued and imagining a future where a digital version of myself would exist long after I died. The service allows you to upload documents, photos, videos, additional data as well as connect to your social accounts.

The Vermont countryside provides a beautiful backdrop to the headquarters of the Terasem Movement Foundation, where Bruce Duncan is busy working on changing the future as we know it. Seeker Stories correspondent, Laura Ling, visited Terasem and Duncan to get a sense of what could be around the corner in artificial intelligence. There, Ling met Bina48, a social robot considered to be one of the most advanced of her kind in the world. She runs on a type of software called a character engine, which allows her to interact with humans at an unprecedented level. It may even allow her to evolve.