The personal digital twin, ethical considerations

The personal digital twin extends to individual persons, a concept that originated in engineering complex machines with simulation containing model of its functions monitor past and present behaviour, repair, correct, improve or otherwise ensure optimal operation. Several independent trends technological developments are seen converge towards the elaboration replication human data life history, notably health industries. Among main ones, we consider ubiquitous distribution assistants, rapid progress machine learning concurrent exponential growth ‘personal’ Big Data incipient interest developing lifelogs. core hypothesis here is among psychological effects transformation, externalization cognitive faculties such as memory, planning judgement, decision-making processes located within person also emigrating functions, perhaps prelude later re-integration via brain–computer interfaces. paper concludes ethical considerations about these ongoing developments. This article part theme issue ‘Towards symbiotic autonomous systems’.