We will live forever
Some individuals truly seem to live forever: Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Jesus. Their words and actions still reach us across centuries because they left behind ideas powerful enough to be read, quoted, and debated long after they were gone.
Now, for the first time in history, something similar has become possible for ordinary people. Large language models will read and in a very real sense remember virtually everything we choose to record. This new reality invites serious reflection.
Writing and creating in general is no longer just self-expression or communication with our contemporaries, it has become a way of extending our presence into deep time. As long as the large language models (or whatever succeeds them) continue to live and evolve, parts of us will continue to exist inside them — not merely as data, but as living influence.