“Hi, everyone. Nikita here. In this video, my avatar learns a backflip. The figure in front of you is the avatar. He is my clone. His body was digitized from a photo of me standing in the park, and his voice is the result of me speaking 15 minutes into a voice-cloning algorithm. His mouth is reacting to that voice, and his face listens to a number of inputs. About the backflip — I always wanted to do it, but I’m kind of scared. That’s why he is doing it. He might be able to do it with the help of machine learning. Machine learning means that he will practice a lot and try to learn from his mistakes, kind of like us. Like this, he already learned to run, walk, stand, and other basic movements. Unfortunately, he still cannot sit or turn, but maybe soon, but maybe soon. OK, let’s go. As an inspiration, we’ve watched a bunch of YouTube videos. Attempting a backflip is not exactly safe. You can break your neck or land on your head or land badly on your wrists. None of that is nice. But it is nice to have an avatar for that. He can do a backflip for you just like that, at any time, everywhere. How cool is that? I have seen some people start with a cartwheel. Maybe that’s what we should do. OK, that should do it. No idea if that actually helped. He is now probably more confused than before. Anyway, our goal is not a cartwheel. That must have hurt. We need something soft. Our avatar practices with the help of a six-core processor. It’s not the newest, but it still lets him jump six times per iteration. One iteration takes one minute. This is 360 jumps in an hour and 8,640 jumps in a day. I wouldn’t be able to jump so much myself. To be able to stand up, he needed about 12,000 repetitions. If he needs the same amount to do a backflip, he must jump for about a day if he doesn’t sleep or that we need to cool the processor. If we had a faster processor, he’d probably reach his goal as fast as the YouTubers. I don’t see any progress. We are already jumping for nine hours. It’s nearly 3,000 jumps, and there is no result. The YouTubers say that it’s all in the head. We fear injuries. My avatar gets a new body with every jump, so he shouldn’t be afraid of injuries. I think the solution is, as dull as it sounds, to just continue. I’ll play him some music.” [UPBEAT MUSIC] “Balance of last day — 8,280 jumps, and I feel we’re nearly there. Time for one last adjustment. Oof. What I take from this — it’s not always the mind that keeps you from reaching your goals. We are capable to so much more than we expect from ourselves. We just need to practice, practice, practice because practice makes perfect. My avatar made it. I am very happy.” [UPBEAT MUSIC]