Question 1

What is Ankh?

Accepted Answer

Ankh is an app that helps you create and preserve data from your life.

There's a very small chance you will be fully recreated with the help of this data - in the far future: a digital resurrection.

Ankh does not transmit your data to servers - you (with your phone) are the only one with access to it. Need more info? Check out our privacy policy.

It's unclear how much data is needed (but your DNA is likely required, ideally full genome and mtDNA).

That said, Ankh is a springboard for your data collection journey. With a lot of luck and tenacious use, it might be enough.

Question 2

What isn't Ankh?

Accepted Answer

Digital resurrection is a rarely discussed topic, so it's helpful to understand what Ankh isn't:

1. Not a digital twin / clone service
Ankh does not create a chatbot imitation of you for others to talk to, now or after you're dead. If we include a chatbot later, the main purpose would be to better interview you - to help pump more data about your personality.

2. Not a cult
Although the theme is how to avoid death, there's no elaborate belief system. It's currently unknown whether tons of data and DNA would be enough to fully restore someone's personality in the far future. The only belief involved is whether this very unlikely technological attempt to avoid death is worth your time.  For a bit more, see:
FAQ: Is Ankh a cult?

3. Not a data collection scheme
Ankh currently does not collect or store your answers and data. We've carefully selected which analytics data is sent to preserve privacy. See our privacy policy and FAQ for much, much more on this topic: 
Privacy policy
FAQ: Are you stealing / selling my data? 
FAQ: I don't believe you're not stealing my data, prove it

4. Not a DNA collection scheme
We mention DNA a lot in our materials. So, are we collecting it? Nope. In theory, if a user digitizes their DNA and adds it to Ankh, it would remain on their device - we don't collect or store it.

Looking far ahead - DNA data is very important. Ideally, Ankh would help users collect and process DNA samples eventually. This could be with a partner company that can demonstrate they are maximally privacy preserving (no retention of DNA data, sample destruction).

5. Not life extension
At least not in the classical sense: Ankh does not provide services that slow aging or extend lifespan biologically. No cryonics are offered. Maybe an attempt at digital resurrection counts as life extension, but that's splitting hairs.

6. Not just journaling
Creating and collecting data with Ankh often resembles journaling. But that's not the point: your recollection of experiences is a tool to reveal your personality. Ankh also sometimes asks weird, intrusive, or oddly specific questions. Ankh encourages the exploration and recording of new experiences.

7. Not therapy
We hope using Ankh is a positive experience, but it is not designed with therapeutic outcomes in mind. If you need help, please talk to someone qualified.

8. Not guaranteed to work
Currently, we think the odds of digital resurrection via Ankh are greater than zero - but extremely small. Even mundane things can go wrong, like the data or humanity going kablooey. Please keep this in mind when deciding whether Ankh is worth your time.

9. Not the best possible personality pump
We aim to set a high-water mark for how well a tool can extract personality data. It's clear that much more invasive methods (say, a constantly recording wearable) could do a better job extracting personality. Don't do that, by the way - see the FAQ: 
FAQ: Is it okay to record my interactions with other people?

Oddly, maybe human personality is actually super simple and Ankh is overkill. Someone or something digs up your pants from a landfill in a few thousand years and scrapes together your DNA. Then they get your chat, browsing, call, CCTV, and credit card records from an archive. Next thing you know, you're digitally resurrected and working at 'early 20th century organic meme farm #10946.' Wild. For more on landfills and joke farms, see the FAQ: 
FAQ: What if I die suddenly?
FAQ: Can I opt out of digital resurrection to a hellscape / nightmare?
FAQ: What's an optimistic scenario of Ankh working?

10. Not for everyone
Although we think digital resurrection is a worthwhile pursuit, it's not for everyone. A lot of people will find it impossible to make collecting data part of their weekly routine. Moreover, pursuing digital resurrection might go against the spiritual goals of religious individuals. See the FAQ: 
FAQ: How often and for how long do I need to use Ankh?
FAQ: Why does Ankh discourage religious or spiritual users?

Question 3

What exactly does Ankh do?

Accepted Answer

Ankh helps you create and preserve data by asking you various questions. It also offers activities (think: minigames) and challenges you to create data, often by recording yourself doing things.

Ankh does not currently sync to a cloud, so your answers and data remain on your device. An end-to-end encrypted storage and syncing feature is planned, as a paid service.

Currently, Ankh also helps you securely store data with some additional features like Export, Shredcryption, etc.

Question 4

What is digital resurrection?

Accepted Answer

When we use this term at Ankh, we specifically mean the hypothesis that enough data (including DNA) makes it possible to bring back someone to life entirely, possibly with a biological body, and likely missing some memories. This would only be achievable, with staggering technological advances, by a far future civilization or entity.

It's very dubious whether any amount of data is enough. Might be worth gathering some data, though, just in case you die one day.

Other usages of the term include making imitations of dead people via Large Language Models (LLMs), but we think that's a bit silly.

Question 5

What is shredcryption?

Accepted Answer

Shredcryption is an additional privacy measure offered by Ankh. Basically, it encrypts selected answers (and data) and then throws away the decryption key. This is a form of time capsule a.k.a. time-lock puzzle encryption. It's carefully designed to be resistant to decryption for (hopefully) over 100 years, but not millions of years.

In the far future, advanced processors and novel decryption algorithms may decrypt the data more quickly, to aid in recreating you.

The original data you shredcrypt is deleted and only the shredcrypted copy remains - inaccessible to everyone, including you.

Some questions are very private and they will default to using shredcryption. Or, if you think an answer is particularly naughty, you can manually enable shredcryption.

You can find out more about how it works here.

Question 6

Is Ankh a cult?

Accepted Answer

No, Ankh is not a cult.

Fair concern! Although the theme is how to avoid death, there's no elaborate belief system. It's currently unknown whether tons of data and DNA would be enough to fully restore someone's personality in the far future.

The unknowns of digital resurrection are clarified repeatedly in the app and in discussions in the Ankh Discord (our discussion community - see for yourself if it's cult-y, or not).

Furthermore, we discourage confusing digital resurrection with religion or spirituality, see:
FAQ: Why does Ankh discourage religious or spiritual users?

The only belief involved is whether this very unlikely technological attempt to avoid death is worth your time.

To alleviate other similar concerns, check:
FAQ: What isn't Ankh?

Question 7

Could Ankh actually work?

Accepted Answer

It's unclear how nuanced and complex personalities truly are.

The hope with Ankh is that, along with DNA, a large enough batch of data - such as recorded experiences - can precisely determine "you" - but minus many memories.

If personalities are exceedingly complex, then this won't work. However, close friends can quite accurately predict one's behavior. They do this with only sparse data and aren't perfected personality re-creation machines - so it seems there's hope.

Concerns about the loss of memory are valid, but society considers loss of long term memory a fate better than death. If resurrected, new memories and experiences would further shape your personality whether you suffered memory loss or not - possibly gently polishing away any memory related discrepancies.

More optimistically, the fidelity of your digitally resurrected self may be so great that no power, analysis, nor wisdom could claim otherwise. Maybe it truly is you again, as much as you remain yourself after a long, dreamless sleep or coma.

Consider it another way - could a hyperintelligent, tireless interviewer - with thousands of hours of shadowing you - pin down your exact personality? Especially if they also had the means to harness your genes? It may not be that far fetched.

Question 8

Where can I ask more questions / give feedback?

Accepted Answer

Join the Ankh Discord and chat with us directly!

(It's also a place to share feedback and discuss digital resurrection, futurology, etc.)

Question 9

Why won’t this work?

Accepted Answer

Here's a list of reasons why Ankh won't work. Feel free to discuss other ideas in the Ankh Discord.

Materialism / physicalism is wrong
Many people can't picture personality and consciousness as being made of simple matter: atoms, brains, etc. Perhaps they're right, and recovering personality from data and DNA is hopeless.

Novel situations defy analysis
Even with years of data, it may be impossible to accurately predict a person's reactions to very novel situations - war, parenthood, grief, power, cashier, space travel. This may be enough to invalidate such an undertaking.

Deep qualia defy analysis
Perhaps the properties of conscious perception, a.k.a. qualia (how one perceives a color, friendship, place, etc.), are more complex, individualized, or interconnected than what recent science seems to point towards. This would put the requisite amount of data collection ever out of reach, at least without invasive procedures.

Spotless minds
A future civilization may consider common quirks and personality flaws unacceptable, such that anyone getting digitally resurrected would have to be altered to an unrecognizable form - one unacceptable to the former user themselves.

Too dumb to revive
Would any civilization be interested in reviving its long-distant relatives? Would we revive hominids en masse today? And would it be a cruel fate to come back as a hopelessly dumb curiosity? Or, if your intelligence is greatly uplifted soon after, how much of "you" would be left?

Unobtainable data, deep epigenetics
Perhaps even with all the data collected and your DNA, key information may be missing, like the conditions of the mother's womb. Perhaps there's some difficult-to-model - but definitely present - epigenetic effect on personality locked in the brain's cells. The fidelity of the resurrected user would then be more like an identical twin with some insider knowledge.

Unobtainable data, unforeseen biometrics
Maybe much more data, or different kinds of data are needed, like biometric readouts during new and exciting situations. Even the most persistent Ankh users may simply not come close to covering the broad variety of data needed to recover personality - like mapping the entire world but forgetting New Zealand. Or some subtle yet important facet of each personality slumbers deep within the mind, and is too easily missed, but unmistakably evident when missing.

Unobtainable data, beyond audiovisual
Perhaps a certain smell, taste, texture (or even pheromone) reminds you of a person or experience. These are hard to describe and record with Ankh, perhaps only being weakly inferable from situations and interactions. Which weird bathroom smell reminded you of some past experience? Is recalling the situation enough? Perhaps this missing "color" to the data would always compromise the fidelity of the resurrection.

Not enough compute
No civilization or entity may have the necessary resources or computational power to attempt digital resurrection en masse. Perhaps it will only be demonstrated on a few people - with much better data from later centuries. Or due to continued scarcity, it's a privilege only wealthy futurelings can afford. Pray for rich descendants.

Not enough civilization
No civilization or entity may succeed at existing for long enough to attempt digital resurrection.

Data loss
All data stored by Ankh or successors may be lost in some near-civilization-ending event, cultural revolution, or simply via misguided theft or vandalism (like ancient tombs). Or reality itself may end due to some reckless use of technology or factors beyond anyone's ken.

Immortality is banned
Future civilizations may decide immortality is undesirable or a limited privilege. The waiting queue to be digitally resurrected may be longer than any civilization exists. Or - more bleakly - what if Ankh is part of a legal formality: "You have the legal right to hear this in person - thus you have been temporarily digitally resurrected. By Galactic Treaty 97118, the pursuit of life extension or immortality (including via digital resurrection) is illegal and punishable by immediate termination. You and your data records will now be terminated." Zap.

In with the new
If population is somehow limited in the far future, even to quintillions, morality may dictate that we have had our go at existing: that it's always better to make room for a newborn, new personality, than let an old one occupy it.

Personality is pointless
A future civilization or entity may have all the necessary capability and resources to perform digital resurrection, but may consider individuality, personality variations, or perhaps "any cause at all" pointless. Perhaps with advanced knowledge comes complete apathy. Or, a future civilization with complete mastery of engineering minds may find it more interesting to create new minds, rather than resurrect simple, well-understood old minds. Maybe all of us from the 21st century are too predictable and alike - easy to digitally resurrect but super boring!

Question 10

If the odds of success are so low, why should I use Ankh?

Accepted Answer

Your alternatives aren't that great yet: hypothetical life extension tech, cryonics, etc. may also not deliver or are too expensive. If you do nothing, you eventually just die. Maybe any chance at all, like Ankh, is worthwhile to you?

Ankh can also be supplemental - an accurate personality record can support other life extension approaches in cases of dementia or brain damage. It's unknown whether cryonics repair in the future could benefit from checking against a personality record. Life extension doesn't prevent you from dying in a car crash, choking to death on a burger, or getting murdered over the centuries.

Question 11

If the odds of success are so low, why did you make Ankh?

Accepted Answer

In the worst case, Ankh is a baseline, a digital resurrection high-water mark to be improved upon. This may inspire a better approach within our lifetime. In turn, such a successor ends up digitally saving lives.

Also, collected data is additive - a better future approach to data collection would still find some use for data collected today. How much better do audio recordings need to get? Will brain scans really get that much better in the coming decades?

Question 12

What references from psychology literature justify the question set you chose?

Accepted Answer

None, currently. We have it in mind.

It's a valid concern. That said - consider that modern psychology does not aim to reconstruct fine-grained personality features (currently an impossible task). Can modern psychology guide what constitutes a better or worse question for far future analysis?

Similarly, modern personality tests seek to establish very coarse-grained personality traits: for example, does a particular person more commonly "think" or "feel"? These traits are likely easy to derive from the massive amount of answer data you provide via Ankh.

In other words, could a sufficiently diligent expert discern these typical personality test traits from hours of your voice recordings? Seems plausible. So this insight, from modern psychology, may be redundant.

Question 13

Should I tell my friends about Ankh?

Accepted Answer

Most likely no. Beware telling randoms you use Ankh. Trying to cheat death is often seen as taboo, vain, foolish, or bad-weird. Maybe tell them if they're enthusiastic about futurology or sci-fi.

Question 14

What do you mean when you say Ankh probably won’t work?

Accepted Answer

Think of it like a lottery whose jackpot is cheating death (instead of millions of dollars). The odds are so low it's fine to simply say "no, it won't happen."

But, the chance isn't zero. The entry fee with Ankh is time and effort. It may be worth entering for a chance at a true digital resurrection.

Question 15

How is Ankh better than cryonics?

Accepted Answer

Ankh is not better than cryonics. Can you afford cryonics? Also, cryonics involves putting all your eggs (well, egg) in one basket.

There are also risks to cryonics not working: you die somewhere you can't be preserved quickly enough, the company fails, or some unknown calamity or decree destroys your remains. Data can be more resilient, at least, than tissue.

But, if you can also use cryonics, definitely go for it as well - it's the best bet. One cool thing about cryonics is that if data centers of the future utilize ultra-cold computation, you can simply pack cryonics customers around them at little additional cost. You might end up packed next to a shard of your Ankh data.

Question 16

Why the name Ankh; what's with the logo?

Accepted Answer

The ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol, has meant "life" and "rebirth" for millennia. We think it suits the aim of life beyond death and the long term storage requirements.

The original ankh symbol ( ☥ ) may represent a sandal and the footprints one leaves throughout life (the origin is not known for certain).

Our current logo is inspired by it. If you overlap the pieces they resemble the ankh. It also suggests a kind of person shaped mold that a person's data would be "poured into," perhaps symbolizing a form of recreation or reforging.

Truth be told, the mysticism associated with the word "ankh" has presented challenges. Some users arrive with esoteric expectations. Some are put off by it. Perhaps the best solution is a rebrand. TBD.

Please see: FAQ: Is Ankh a cult?

Question 17

What are your goals?

Accepted Answer

First, to give users a small chance to live again, if they put the work in and the stars align.

Second, to make money by providing this service. Hopefully, fear of death is a good motivator.

Question 18

How will Ankh afford thousands of years of data storage?

Accepted Answer

Who knows. If the project isn't successful, then we won't be able to pay for it.

Some portion of fees will be set aside to long term data storage projects. These will be cold storage solutions that won't require electricity. If we get to the point where we can launch the data into space, presumably no additional investment will be needed for it to linger on, at least for a long while.

If the Ankh project fails, another company may be willing to preserve the data for you. Or you can attempt to preserve it yourself, or within your family, if you have one.

See:
FAQ: How will my data and DNA survive to the far future?

Question 19

What's an optimistic scenario of Ankh working?

Accepted Answer

One scenario where digital resurrection is desired and welcomed is if there's need to bolster cultural and creative output.

Consider a far future civilization which has finished discovering science and technology.

The greatest trade asset may be culture and creative works. This is even more likely if there are extraterrestrial civilizations or distant colonies with contact mostly limited to signal transmission rather than transport.

In such a scenario, there's much incentive to bring back genuine members of Earth's past eras, including today's era. "Experts on the 90s", etc. Although not all resurrectees would go on to contribute new, creative works, many might. Others would provide the necessary ecosystem for creatives of that era to thrive.

This would potentially multiply the variety and value of creative output. The desire for creativity could also curb bad outcomes such as intellectual slavery, so as to not stifle, bridle, or degrade creative output. In other words, you'd be brought back for your ability to create (or at least discern) fresh memes, shitposts, and react content in this era's style.

On the other hand, if artificial intelligence can fuel this creative exploration adequately, and there's no demand for "genuine" creativity from a bygone era, then this point is moot.

Question 20

Is this just a journaling app?

Accepted Answer

This is similar to journaling but more proactive. The app challenges you with varied questions and activities.

Also, journaling is typically just written or voice notes after events happen. Because recordings (audio and video) are so data-rich, Ankh tries to encourage more of that. Just writing a few words about your day probably isn't going to cut it for digital resurrection.

Question 21

What if I die suddenly?

Accepted Answer

Well, hopefully you left your device unlocked, or left instructions to unlock it - and those instructions mention to recover the data in your Ankh app via Settings and Export.

Otherwise, hope no one flashes your phone's memory and that a far future civilization or entity is interested in whatever landfill it ends up in (and can crack your phone's native encryption, which at that point is the least of your problems).

If your cause of death also destroys your phone, then your data's odds of recovery also go way down. Maybe a partially destroyed phone's storage will survive via the aforementioned landfill scenario.

Though landfills may be mined for raw materials in the near future, before the data value is appreciated. This question wasn't about landfills, but if you need more landfill-related futurology discussions, join the Ankh Discord.

Question 22

What happens if Ankh shuts down?

Accepted Answer

Currently, your data already only exists on your device, so it's up to you to preserve it.

Once you feel you've gotten a lot of data in the app, make sure you use the Export feature to preserve it on separate devices. Ensure the devices aren't in the same place as your phone (think: fire).

Let's say Ankh begins offering end-to-end encrypted storage down the road. If Ankh shuts down, the data stored on our servers will, hopefully, be transferred to a benevolent archival organization. The passwords for decrypting the data remain with the users (or their bereaved families), so it can't be exploited. That is, unless the user made arrangements to release the passwords to Ankh, or the hypothetical successor archival organization, sometime before or after their death.