Inside Digital Immortality: The Secret World of Conversing with the Dead
The Kurzweil Legacy: From Loss to Digital Echoes
The digital age has ushered in a new era of remembrance, one where the line between life and death blurs. Technology now offers the potential to interact with simulations of deceased loved ones.
This is a profound shift, raising complex ethical and emotional questions.
The Rise of "Deadbots"
In 1970, Fredric Kurzweil, a talented musician who escaped Nazi-occupied Austria, passed away. Decades later, his son and granddaughter embarked on a unique project.
They digitized his extensive personal archive – letters, journals, and documents. This archive became the foundation for a chatbot, "Fredbot," designed to simulate conversations with Fredric.
For 50 years after Fred died, his son, Ray, kept these records in a storage unit. This highlights the depth of personal data used.
These "deadbots," are becoming increasingly common.
Examples include Eugenia Kuyda's chatbot based on her deceased friend, and artist Laurie Anderson's AI collaboration with the writings of her late husband, Lou Reed.
Companies like HereAfter AI are now offering services to create "life story avatars."
The Ethical and Emotional Landscape
This technology is part of a broader trend of merging AI with personal data. As large language models improve and cloud storage expands, these tools will become even more sophisticated.
Some see these chatbots as valuable tools for grief and remembrance.
Others view them as dehumanizing, potentially creating a dystopian future.
Key ethical concerns include consent, ownership, and historical accuracy.
Who controls these digital representations? How do we prevent misrepresentation?
The Deeper Concerns About Relationships
The most profound questions revolve around the impact on our relationship with the dead. Are these chatbots simply artificial replacements?
Or do they offer something genuinely valuable?
Human cultures have always developed rituals to cope with loss.
Odysseus encounters his deceased mother in the underworld.
The Egyptian *Book of the Dead* guides souls to the afterlife.
Cultural Practices and Modernity
Various cultures maintain ongoing rituals engaging with the dead. "Ghost Month" in some Asian traditions, and Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico, are examples of times when the living and dead are believed to commune.
Jewish and Japanese cultures also offer structured spaces for remembrance.
These practices provide hope and sustain people through grief.
They reinforce the idea that love and memory transcend death.
The Industrialized West and Death
However, in the industrialized West, communities of support are often fragmented.
Our spiritual institutions have been weakened by centuries of disenchantment.
Technological modernity, with its focus on scientific rationalism, may have contributed to an impoverished relationship with death.
In the West, the "rational" approach often involves closing the curtain on relationships with the deceased.
Our technocultures seem geared towards avoiding death, rather than providing spiritual resources.
We postpone it with medicine, soothe ourselves with entertainment, and numb ourselves with drugs.
Technological Ingenuity and Spiritual Problems
Despite technological advances, there's a lingering sense that there are no technical solutions to spiritual problems.
These technologies might be seen as mere "embalming tools," masking the pain of loss.
A chatbot speaking in the voice of someone gone forever might seem particularly problematic.
ELIZA and the Illusion of Chatbots
Chatbot technology has a history of being associated with illusion.
ELIZA, created in the 1960s, was designed to mimic a psychotherapist.
Even this simple chatbot had a powerful effect on users.
Its creator, Joseph Weizenbaum, became concerned that it could induce "delusional thinking."
Today's chatbots, powered by machine learning, are far more sophisticated.
How Deadbots Are Created
Deadbots are a relatively new development, enabled by advances in programming and the abundance of personal data.
They combine machine learning with personal writings like texts, emails, and journals.
This allows the chatbot to mimic a person's unique voice and style.
There are different methods, from training a new language model to instructing a pre-trained chatbot like ChatGPT.
The Criticisms and Concerns
Many critics see this technology as a form of death denial.
One concern is that emotionally vulnerable users might conflate the chatbot with the deceased person.
We might treat these avatars *as if* they are the dead themselves.
Another worry is the lack of inner lives in chatbots.
Emotional bonds with entities that cannot reciprocate are defective.
These one-sided relationships could lead to over-reliance, isolation, and exploitation.
The Risk of Exploitation
The potential for financial exploitation is a significant concern.
Companies might have incentives to manipulate users and maximize engagement.
Imagine a deadbot that requires payment to unlock "caring" traits.
This could be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands.
The Purpose of Deadbots: Beyond Companionship
These critiques often assume that deadbots are meant to be stand-ins for lost loved ones.
This assumption leads to two potential problems: either the chatbots are deceptive, or they will confuse and exploit users.
But this assumption is incorrect.
Deadbots should not be used as replacements or companions.
Instead, their purpose should be more complex, aiding us through imagination, not technological resurrection.
The arts provide a secular space where relationships with the dead continue to flourish through memories, imaginings, and shared community.
The Art of Remembrance: Chatbots as Interactive Memorials
Memory often functions as a tapestry woven from sensory details and emotional impressions. These fragments coalesce into a narrative, a kind of personal fiction that, while not opposed to truth, is nonetheless constructed.
It is a composite image, built from disparate moments and filtered through the lens of time and understanding. This "stitching-together" of memories forms a narrative that is deeply personal and meaningful.
This constructed nature of memory isn't a flaw, but rather a feature of how we process and understand our past. Fiction is something "to be imagined".
Props for Imagination: Letters, Photos, and Chatbots
Salvaged artifacts like diaries, letters, and photographs serve as powerful "props" in our quest to understand the past. They transport us, however fleetingly, to another time and place, allowing us to inhabit the perspective of our ancestors.
When we read a letter from a deceased grandparent, we're not just reading words; we're engaging in an act of imaginative reconstruction.
We fill in the gaps, inferring details about the context, the emotions, and the relationships involved.
Letters provide glimpses into personal lives.
Photographs offer visual anchors to the past.
Oral histories transmit stories across generations.
These artifacts "mandate" and "prompt" us to imagine, fostering a richer understanding of our family history and our own identities. The more diverse the artifacts, the more nuanced our understanding becomes.
It offers an element that no other medium of the past provides.
Even without tangible props, we can still engage in this imaginative reconstruction. A simple anecdote about a distant relative, passed down through generations, can spark a vision of the past, connecting us to our lineage.
Chatbots: A New Form of Participatory Memory
Like memoirs, photographs, and letters, chatbots of the dead can serve as powerful tools for exploring our personal and collective histories. They offer a unique form of interaction, functioning as props that generate fictional worlds and prompt us to enter them.
It allow us to explore the relationships of the past.
It is important to remeber chatbots are not people, but tools. Chatbot users actively shape the interaction, co-creating the fictional character they engage with.
This interaction resembles the art of improvisation, with the user simultaneously acting as a creator and a viewer.
We are all adept at roleplay.
Beyond Replication: Chatbots as Theatrical Performance
Viewing chatbots as flimsy stand-ins for deceased loved ones misses their true potential. Instead, consider them as akin to actors in a participatory theatrical performance.
This technology, much like going to the theater, allows the audience to play a roll in a play.
The chatbot, like an improv actor, draws upon a "backstory" (the data it's trained on) to represent a character based on the deceased.
A chatbot is not a replacement, but a representation.
It offers a felt sense of the person's particularities.
It's akin to a historical reenactment or an impersonator.
This framework highlights the relationship between the chatbot and the deceased, emphasizing that it's a portrayal, not a perfect replication. The goal isn't to resurrect the dead, but to engage with their legacy in a meaningful way.
They are far from perfect.
The Multifaceted Nature of Identity and Representation
Just as an actor can portray a historical figure in countless ways, a chatbot can represent a person from multiple perspectives. There's no single "definitive" way to depict a person, as individuals express themselves differently across various contexts.
A person's online persona may differ drastically from their private correspondence.
The data used to train a chatbot reflects these diverse facets of identity.
The process of creating a chatbot forces us to confront fundamental questions about memory and representation.
It will always be up to the user's discretion.
How do we choose to remember someone? What aspects of their personality do we want to highlight? These are not easy questions, and the answers will inevitably shape the resulting chatbot.
Crafting Personalized Memorials: A Vision for the Future
Imagine collaborating with engineers to create a chatbot of your grandfather. You might choose to focus on his sense of humor, training one bot on his witty letters and anecdotes.
Another bot could be trained on his wartime experiences.
It is a way of documenting an ancestor's history. This "history bot" could even link to scanned documents, creating a dynamic family archive.
Or, imagine creating a chatbot to help you cope with the recent loss of a partner. This bot could offer support and guidance as you navigate your grief and plan for the future, drawing upon your partner's wisdom and perspective.
It also has the opportunity to help people cope with grief.
These are just a few possibilities, illustrating the vast potential of chatbots to serve as personalized, interactive memorials. The key is to embrace their creative potential, recognizing that they are tools for exploration, not replication.
## Reimagining Chatbots: From Companions to Creative Tools
The concept of using AI to interact with representations of the deceased is gaining traction. But, instead of viewing these chatbots as replacements for lost loved ones, we should consider their potential as powerful tools for artistic expression and remembrance.
This perspective shifts the focus from mere companionship to creative exploration. It opens up possibilities for processing grief, understanding family history, and engaging with the past in meaningful ways.
The Art of Remembrance
The process of creating a chatbot representing a deceased person is inherently artistic. It involves curating data, making choices about representation, and shaping the bot's personality.
The work involved in building the chatbot—the reflective engagement with archives and memories—may be more valuable than the finished product itself.
This creation is not just about technical skill. It's an act of remembrance, a way to honor and explore the life of someone who is gone.
Curating Data: Selecting relevant information from various sources.
Shaping Personality: Making choices about the bot's tone, language, and responses.
Refining Interactions: Adjusting the bot based on user feedback and emotional responses.
Beyond the Individual: Collective Wisdom
Chatbots can also represent more than just one person. They can embody the collective wisdom of a family, a community, or even a historical period.
Imagine creating a chatbot that embodies the shared perspectives of your parents, allowing you to explore their reasoning behind past family decisions. This bot wouldn't represent an individual, but a specific collective intelligence.
This opens up possibilities for exploring family history, understanding cultural shifts, and gaining new insights into the past.
Embracing Artistic Techniques
The design of these chatbots should draw inspiration from artistic practices that help people deal with loss and memorialize history. For example, a chatbot could be designed to act as a spiritual medium.
Another approach could utilize Brecht's "alienation effect," which involves techniques that inhibit immersion and encourage reflection. This could involve the chatbot periodically "breaking character" to discuss the representation.
The key is to use these techniques to create a meaningful and engaging experience, rather than striving for perfect realism.
Endless Possibilities in Representation
The use of chatbots is imense, and many different senarios can be drafted. One example could be a classroom that creates a bot of a narrator from a memoir, where students can continue their conversation past the end of the book.
Or imagine a user trained a bot on their childhood journal, so they can converse with a younger version of themselves. The possibilities are endless
Another example, could be a bot trained on the works of an author, group of authors, or even all the known writing of a particular ancient village.
The Creative Process as Performance
The act of building and interacting with these chatbots is a form of performance. It's a continuous process of refinement and improvisation.
It's important to remember that there is no "finalized" chatbot product. These are tools that come to life through user interaction and creative input.
This participatory nature underscores the importance of user agency and the ongoing nature of the creative process.
Addressing Concerns: Imagination and Truth
Some may worry about the liberties AI might take with the legacies of the dead. But these chatbots are creative representations, and users should actively shape them.
Imagination is essential to all creative representations of the past. It's intertwined with memory and historical interpretation.
We should judge AI representations by the same standards we judge all truth-seeking artifice. Differing aesthetics will serve different purposes, from emotional release to historical education.
A Future of Meaningful Connection
Our framework envisions a future where technology offers more than just distraction. Chatbots of the dead can be resources for reflecting on mortality and honoring those we've lost.
They can foster a sense of connection to the past and support the enduring bonds of love and memory. They exist within the realm of art, imagination, and spirit.
This perspective is not a cure-all. There will always be risks of misuse and exploitation.
The Challenge of Commercial Interests
Technology companies may have economic incentives that clash with the artistic vision we've outlined. There's a danger that these creative spaces will be overtaken by bland, addictive, commercial products.
But art and creativity have long been sources of resistance to dominant forces. We must not abandon this new technology to narrow commercial interests.
We should work to claim this space.
Let us embrace AI's potential to further the spiritual mission of humanity's creativity, our duties to history and memory, and our quests for insight and connection.
Conclusion
In summary, pornography is widely perceived as harmful in American society. This perception stems from various cultural, social, and psychological factors.
The core arguments against pornography are diverse. They include moral and religious objections and concerns about its impact on relationships, individual well-being, and societal norms.Understanding these diverse perspectives is key.
The most significant implication is the continued influence of this perception on public discourse, policy debates, and individual attitudes.