I asked Dad, since he was clearly in such a candid mood. "My worst quality is that I am a perfectionist. I can't stand messiness and untidiness, and that always presents a challenge, especially with being married to Jane." Then he laughed--and for a moment I forgot I wasn't really speaking to my parents at all, but to their digital replicas. This Mum and Dad live inside an app on my phone, as voice assistants constructed by the California-based company HereAfter AI and powered by more than four hours of conversations they each had with an interviewer about their lives and memories. The company's goal is to let the living communicate with the dead.

A digital twin is a copy of a person, product or process that is created using data. This might sound like science fiction, but some have claimed that you will likely have a digital double within the next decade. As a copy of a person, a digital twin would -- ideally -- make the same decisions that you would make if you were presented with the same materials. Read more: What are digital twins? This might seem like yet another speculative claim by futurists.

Michelob Ultra and ESPN have decided to use AI to answer an enduring question: what would happen if tennis legend John McEnroe played against himself? An upcoming ESPN special entitled "McEnroe vs. McEnroe" will feature the 63-year-old star, who retired from singles competition in 1992, playing against a complicated, AI-trained version of himself. According to TechCrunch, the process for the actual game is fairly involved. After the real McEnroe sends a ball over the net, the AI avatar responds to its direction and "swings" -- at this point, a new ball is launched from a ball cannon, which is obscured by a smokescreen. The positioning of the ball cannon and smokescreen are designed to make the ball appear as if it's coming off the avatar's racket.

Technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives. Once a week in The Future Of, we examine innovations in important fields, from farming to transportation, and what they will mean in the years and decades to come. The case was complicated: Shoulder arthroplasty, to deal with an advanced case of arthritis affecting the patient's glenoid -- the ball part of the ball-and-socket joint in the shoulder. To handle the case most effectively, the surgeon wanted assistance from the best. But the best was physically half a world away.

The SETI Institute, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit that seeks to explore and explain the nature and origins of life in the universe, is gearing up to host the fifth iteration of its competitive, NASA-funded summer program, the Frontier Development Lab. FDL brings together a diverse cadre of researchers each year since its inception to rapidly leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced computing capabilities--all to ultimately help America's space agency accelerate its own research and discoveries. While SETI envelops the "search for extraterrestrial intelligence," its inside efforts touch a range of areas across space, science and beyond. But the 2020 program might run a little differently than those that came before. "Now, what's interesting is, we may--for the first time actually--undertake the program virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic," Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the SETI Institute, told Nextgov recently. "All indications are that this is going to be with us through at least the early part of the summer, and it may preclude the in-person working system that normally is characterized by the FDL program."

Dr Eric C Leuthardt, 45, is a neurosurgeon at Washington University in St Louis. He is also the co-founder of NeuroLutions, a research laboratory developing direct interfaces between mind and computer. Leuthardt is pioneering the use of electrical brain implants to help restore motor function to the paralysed limbs of stroke victims. He is also helping to develop electrode systems that can directly decode the unspoken "inner voice" of the mind, and use it to direct external action; for example, Leuthardt's subjects have been able to control the cursor of a Space Invaders video game just by thinking. He has published two science fiction novels aimed at "preparing society for the changes" that his work predicts.