Virtual and Digital Twins: Innovation, Ethics, and Data Governance
TL;DR
- Virtual twins, by embodying imagination and exploring possible worlds beyond mere replicas, enable the invention of novel solutions and business models, driving innovation beyond existing reality.
- Digital twins, by integrating real-time data with abstract models, create a fused representation that continuously dialogues with reality, allowing for sophisticated management of complex systems.
- The aerospace industry's adoption of virtual twins for end-to-end aircraft design and simulation, as seen with the Boeing 777, significantly reduces production errors and improves initial quality.
- The completeness of a digital twin's representation is a perpetual challenge, requiring continuous expansion to incorporate multi-disciplinary factors like material science, chemistry, and human behavior for accurate modeling.
- The primary challenge in digital twin adoption is not technical feasibility but practitioner and physician buy-in, necessitating the development of intuitive interfaces that integrate seamlessly with existing workflows.
- The commodification and packaging of personal data across platforms, often with locational components, raises significant privacy concerns and questions about who truly benefits from this data aggregation.
- Public ownership and buy-in of digital twin systems, particularly for urban and social applications, are crucial to ensure data control and equitable benefit distribution, moving beyond privately held data silos.
Deep Dive
Digital twins, dynamic data-driven replicas of complex systems, offer unprecedented capabilities for testing ideas, anticipating disruptions, and designing smarter systems across engineering, healthcare, and urban planning. However, their profound implications extend beyond technical application, raising critical questions about data ownership, privacy, and the ethical considerations of modeling human behavior. The true value and widespread adoption of these "virtual twins" hinge not just on technological advancement but on navigating the complex interplay between data, human trust, and societal benefit.
The distinction between digital and virtual twins highlights a crucial evolution in their application. While digital twins serve as precise replicas of existing systems--like a specific heart or aircraft--virtual twins leverage imagination and computational power to explore a realm of possibilities and invent novel solutions. This imaginative capacity is vital for innovation, allowing for the simulation of not just current realities but also potential futures. This is particularly relevant in complex domains like pharmaceuticals, where virtual twins can model various pathologies and treatment responses, or in manufacturing, where they enable end-to-end virtual design and simulation, as exemplified by Boeing's 777 aircraft, which was designed entirely virtually before production. This proactive identification of potential problems before physical manifestation leads to enhanced product quality and reduced downstream errors.
The application of digital twins in social systems, such as cities, presents a more nuanced challenge. While they can model physical infrastructure like roads and utilities, accurately capturing human behavior remains a significant hurdle. Current models often treat humans as abstract agents with predictable patterns, failing to account for the complexity of individual preferences, evolving behaviors, and the qualitative aspects of human experience. This gap between the potential of sophisticated modeling and the reality of human unpredictability means that while digital twins can optimize infrastructure and resource allocation, their ability to predict or fundamentally improve human well-being or societal happiness is limited and potentially fraught with ethical trade-offs. For instance, investing vast sums in urban digital twins might divert resources from more direct interventions, such as addressing food insecurity with immediate aid.
The most significant challenges surrounding digital twins lie not in the technology itself but in their societal integration and ethical governance. The increasing aggregation of personal data, often collected through mandatory app usage or seamless integration with everyday devices like smart scales, raises profound privacy concerns. The commodification of this data, where individual behaviors are packaged and sold across platforms, creates a scenario where "the product is us." This is compounded by the shift of data ownership from public, open-source platforms to private, industry-controlled walls, where access and control over information can be arbitrarily managed. This dynamic is particularly concerning when applied to social systems, where the potential for surveillance and the erosion of personal autonomy is significant. While industries like aerospace benefit from the predictive power of virtual twins, the application to human-centric systems demands a rigorous examination of whether the pursuit of efficiency and data monetization justifies the potential risks to privacy and individual liberty. The challenge is to ensure that these powerful tools are adopted in ways that enhance, rather than exploit, human well-being, demanding a greater emphasis on public buy-in, government stewardship of data, and robust privacy-enhancing technologies.
Action Items
- Audit urban systems: Identify 5 critical data gaps in human behavior modeling for city planning (ref: social science perspective).
- Implement privacy-enhancing technologies: For 3-5 sensitive datasets, establish explicit consent and traceability for data usage (ref: IP lifecycle management).
- Design public data ownership framework: Propose a model where citizens control personal data generated by urban systems (ref: magic wand wish).
- Develop virtual twin integration strategy: For 2-3 healthcare use cases, define how patient consent models complement twin data (ref: clinical trial processes).
- Create data governance policy: For 1-2 consumer-facing applications, define data sharing limitations and user rights (ref: GDPR principles).
Key Quotes
"What I'm more familiar with would be almost the exact metaphor of of a twin right an exact replica of a system that we work with so if you take a jet engine for example or a heart you could imagine having an artificial heart that does all of the things a heart does but is not actually a heart right and in that case it becomes super useful because you can try new things right you can operate you can try medication you can poke at the heart but you're not actually hurting a real human heart"
Rachel Franklin explains that a digital twin is conceptually an exact replica of a system, like a jet engine or a heart. This replica is useful because it allows for experimentation and testing of new interventions or scenarios without impacting the real-world counterpart, thereby mitigating risk.
"The first approach of digital twins is really about what digitalization is about, which is a replica. The little difference that we are making in my company and we prefer the more virtual is because we don't want to do just a digital photograph or a digital let's say a copy of something that is coming from reality. We want to use the power of imagination and the power of possible worlds and want to explore them."
Patrick Johnson differentiates his company's "virtual twin" concept from a standard digital twin by emphasizing its focus on imagination and exploring potential future states rather than just replicating current reality. He argues that this approach allows for the invention of new possibilities beyond what currently exists.
"I think where I land at the moment with digital twins is that on the academic side there's just a lot of hype but I think that the hype is unavoidable because that's the way science works... I think it is the nature of how we work with anything analytical or technical but I also think that it's the journey and not the destination."
Rachel Franklin acknowledges the significant hype surrounding digital twins in academia but suggests this is a natural part of scientific advancement. She views digital twins not as a final product but as a journey towards desired future states, such as more efficient and inclusive cities, highlighting their role in identifying current limitations and research gaps.
"Today Boeing is calling that a virtual twin. The benefit of that is manifold because they were doing that in a virtual world first there was almost no errors in the parts definition and the engineering work which means that the quality of the first 777 was better than the hundredth 767 at production time."
Patrick Johnson uses the Boeing 777 as an example to illustrate the benefits of virtual twins in manufacturing. He explains that designing and simulating the aircraft entirely in a virtual environment before production led to a higher quality initial product by minimizing errors in part definition and engineering work.
"The first very concrete and remember I start always by saying it's a representation choice so you put in the twin what you decide to put there and therefore the other way around what you don't put into twins translate into non answered questions... there is the exhaustivity or the completeness of the representation that is the first issue. It's a never ending story basically."
Patrick Johnson identifies the completeness of the representation as a primary challenge for virtual and digital twins. He explains that the choice of what data and aspects to include in a twin dictates the questions that can be answered, and the pursuit of a comprehensive representation is an ongoing and complex endeavor.
"The product is you. The product is us. And they're making money off of it. And so I think the thing about apps and phones that we're not thinking about very often is that not only are we are they making money off of our individual relationship with that company but the data are being packaged across platforms and then sold on for someone else and often there's a very high locational component to this."
Rachel Franklin expresses concern about the commodification of personal data through apps and phones. She argues that companies profit not only from individual user interactions but also by packaging and selling this data, often with location-specific information, to third parties without users fully understanding the extent of this data aggregation and resale.
Resources
External Resources
Books
Videos & Documentaries
Research & Studies
Tools & Software
Articles & Papers
- "Digital Twins and Virtual Twins: What Are They and What Do They Do for Humans?" (Harvard Data Science Review Podcast) - Episode title and topic of discussion.
People
- Rachel Franklin - Executive director of the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University, guest discussing digital twins from a social science perspective.
- Patrick Johnson - Executive vice president of Corporate Research and Science at Dassault Systèmes, guest discussing digital twins and virtual twins from an industry perspective.
- Liberty Vittert - Host of the Harvard Data Science Review Podcast.
- Shalin - Editor in chief of the Harvard Data Science Review.
- Rebecca McCloud - Executive producer of the Harvard Data Science Review Podcast.
- Tina Toby - Producer of the Harvard Data Science Review Podcast.
- Aaron Keiswetter - Producer of the Harvard Data Science Review Podcast.
Organizations & Institutions
- Harvard Data Science Review Podcast - Platform for the discussion on digital twins.
- Harvard University - Affiliation of Rachel Franklin.
- Dassault Systèmes - Company where Patrick Johnson is executive vice president.
- Center for Geographic Analysis - Department at Harvard University where Rachel Franklin is executive director.
- Boeing - Company mentioned for its use of virtual twins in aircraft design and manufacturing.
Courses & Educational Resources
Websites & Online Resources
- hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu - Website for the Harvard Data Science Review.
Podcasts & Audio
- Harvard Data Science Review Podcast - Podcast featuring the discussion on digital twins.
Other Resources
- Digital Twins - Central concept discussed throughout the episode.
- Virtual Twins - Related concept discussed, differentiated from digital twins.
- AI (Artificial Intelligence) - Discussed in relation to hype and practical application.
- Smart Cities - Precursor concept to digital twins in urban contexts.
- Generative AI - Specific type of AI discussed.
- V R Twin (Virtual + Real Twin) - Term used by Dassault Systèmes for their approach.
- Écorché - French term for anatomical drawings used as a historical representation standard.
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) - Mentioned in the context of data privacy rights in Europe.
- Privacy Enhancing Technologies - Technologies discussed for data protection.
- Industrial or Intellectual Property Life Cycle Management - Jargon used by Dassault Systèmes for data management.
- 21st Century Data Oil - Metaphor for the value of data.
- Food Insecurity - Example of a wicked challenge where digital twins could be applied.
- Open Data Platform (Paris) - Example of publicly available city data.