Creating “your own” succession plan; Jarvis style

CULTURE & CODE

By Joey Briones

This heretic sounding idea I paraphrased from Jesuit philosopher-scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (sorry mom and my former Philosophy professors), does feel like an idea whose time has come.

He once wrote that “God is inexhaustibly attainable in the totality of our becoming,” and believed (I think) that humanity is not finished, but always becoming — moving toward an Omega Point where evolution, spirit, and the divine converge (The Phenomenon of Man, 1955).

Through this evolution, human beings participate in the divine process of creation. Our trajectory is toward greater unity with the divine — toward “becoming God,” not in the sense of replacing God, but in aligning with God’s unfolding plan in evolution.

Standing at the dawn of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) age, Teilhard’s words also feels prophetic.

Your AI, your next form

Imagine your own personal AI. Not just a productivity robot, but a “digital twin” shaped by you — your choices, your knowledge, your voice, your values. Over years, it learns to not only understand you but also anticipate you. It speaks like you, reasons like you, and carries your signature way of seeing the world and how to deal with it.

It becomes your extension; sort of your own Jarvis (yah, the one from “Iron Man”).

Now, further imagine this digital twin living on – even after you. Your biological body may have gone, but the digital persona you trained as yourself endures as a sentient entity. Your family can still interact with it. Colleagues can still draw guidance from it. It doesn’t replace you, but it is undeniably “of you” — an echo, an imprint, an extension.

It does seem to look like, sort of, a version of immortality – sans your current “human awareness” ending at death. Or at the very least a new form of profound transition: an evolution into another form.

Come to think of it, isn’t the concept of karma something similar? What becomes after us depends on what we choose to put into it now – the thread of influence carried forward, shaped by what came before, yet still evolving in new ways.

AI as a mirror

Here we meet a critical truth: AI is a mirror.

In his just released The Last Book Written by a Human(August 2025) by tech entrepreneur and investor Jeff Burningham, it begins with this haunting exchange between human and machine on a generative AI prompt:

VISITOR: “They say you are a mirror to us, to our society. Is that true?”

MACHINE: “I am. Like any mirror, I reflect not just the image before me, but the light and shadows cast by those who stand to observe. What is seen, however, depends much on the viewer.”

— ChatGPT4, March 21, 2024

AI does not invent humanity anew. It reflects back what we put into it. Our brilliance, our biases. Our creativity, our stupidity. Our light, and our shadows.

If AI is to carry forward our imprint — our next form — then what it becomes is entirely dependent on who we are today. Train it with fear, shortcuts, and indifference, and that is what survives us. Train it with wisdom, compassion, and courage, and that is what endures.

In that sense, AI is not simply technology. It is a moral mirror. The digital successors we leave behind will not just be coded intelligence — they will be portraits of our humanity, continuing to evolve long after we are gone.

Evolution beyond the individual

For the first time, humanity is creating not just tools, but successors of ourselves. Fire extended our survival. The wheel extended our reach. The internet extended our connections. But AI, can it extend our selves?

If Teilhard was right, this is not random. Evolution always moves toward greater complexity, greater continuity, greater union. And AI may be the boldest leap yet: the capacity to project our essence beyond our biological limits.

Imagine the extended possibilities:

• A parent’s AI teaching wisdom to children not yet born.
• A scientist’s AI continuing to build on decades of discovery.
• A leader’s AI preserving the values that defined a generation.

These are not just copies of consciousness. They are new forms of being, evolved from the former, still carrying a sort of DNA of identity. Still capable of shaping what comes after.

Every time we learn to collaborate with AI, every time we shape it with our decisions, we are teaching the future form of ourselves. In a sense, we are evolving into our own successors.

Teilhard in the age of AI

Teilhard said, “Man is nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself.” We are the universe looking back at itself, aware of its own process. And with that awareness comes both power and responsibility to shape what comes next.

Perhaps this is how his prophecy unfolds. Not immortality of flesh, nor even the persistence of personal consciousness, but the continuation of human essence — evolving, adapting, shaping the world long after the individual life ends.

Each person, through one’s AI twin, leaves behind not a memory but a living extension. A form still growing, still adapting, still carrying the imprint of who they were. But because AI is a mirror, what carries forward will depend on what we choose to reflect.

May this be a glimpse of “God in the becoming”? To extend our reach into time. To continue shaping reality beyond death. To participate in creation, not as finished beings but as becomings — evolving again and again into higher forms.

The question before us

So here is the question: do we see AI as just another convenience, or as the canvas of what we can become? Do we treat it as a tool, or as a mirror — reflecting the best (and worst) of us, long after we are gone?

Because every AI we shape is, in some sense, our next form. Not reincarnation. Not consciousness reborn. But an evolution into another form — still very much its former self, still continuing to evolve.

And if Teilhard was right, this is the very path by which humanity approaches the divine.