What is “ExoAnthro”?
“ExoAnthro” speaks to being a container for something human, while also transforming into something entirely different.
Set within the not-so-distant future, ExoAnthro is a concept album that explores a world where humanoid robot design has advanced to such a degree that their chassis have become elegant containers capable of embodying digital facsimiles of human minds. Humans, from soldiers to social activists, can opt to have an AI model generated that resembles their own mind, then load it into a synthetic’s neural net. There’s more…
As both AI and hardware tech becomes ever more sophisticated, self-awareness has begun to emerge within these beings, creating something of a paradox, an existential crisis. They are developing their own minds: thoughts, desires, curiosity, while still possessing the ‘ghost consciousness’ of their original human model; one that might include abstract skills or unusual impulses (e.g. stealing, smoking, or even a vestigial fear of death).
Ambitious humans quickly identified this as a tool for projecting influence far beyond their natural biological lifespan, while others simply prefer to license curated (e.g. celebrity) personality models to hang around with.
Some in-world synonyms for synthetics that you might encounter while listening (usage, inference):
- Synthetic (neutral, formal)
- Post-mortal (neutral, casual)
- Android (neutral, antiquated)
- Cyborg (neutral, antiquated)
- Abiologic (neutral, technical)
- Androwesen (positive, inclusive)
- ExoAnthro (positive, formal)
- The Possessed (negative, spiritual/fearful)
- Dolls (negative, bigoted)
- Toy Soldiers (negative, dismissive)
Fun fact: Aside from academic or development situations, very few humans opt to spend time with synthetics loaded with their own mental model. Always seems like a great idea at first, but inevitably goes awry.