There death It is a certainty that concerns all of us and those around us. Its finality is terrifying, unless we use artificial intelligence to turn the full stop into a comma. According to a recent NPR report, a Chinese company called Silicon Intelligence is developing lifelike digital avatars of deceased relatives who can converse and interact with you in a sort of FaceTime from the afterlife.
Yes, it is as creepy as it sounds, but, apparently, the concept is gaining popularity.
Creating digital avatars of the deceased
The quality of a digital clone of a deceased person depends on the data available. The system needs photos, videos, and voice recordings of the deceased. In some cases, it relies on social media data to define the “deadbot” personality. This may seem comical, since no one is truly themselves on social media. It is unlikely that a deadbot based on grandma’s Instagram posts could actually resemble the real “grandma.”
Some of these deadbots can be connected to the Internet to understand current events and discuss them with you:
- Deadbot Grandma: “So Joe retired… wow”
- Grandson: “Yes, Grandma. He was getting too old.”
- Deadbot Grandma: “But he’s still alive, which is more than I can say for myself.”
If you look at the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptancethe last one is probably the most important. It means letting go, accepting finality. You can move on. That doesn’t mean you don’t miss that person, maybe every single day of your life, but you can also function without them and have long periods of time where you don’t think about them. At least, that’s the hope.
The Rise of the Deadbots
With these avatar digital or deadbot, you never move forward. I’ve lost loved ones and usually, at first, I think of something to say to them until I remember they’re gone. If I had a deadbot of my grandmother, that thought would be followed by an action. I would open the iPad and I would initiate a call from the afterlife or at least from Silicon Intelligence’s servers in China, and we would have a pleasant conversation and probably Enough strange.
In the report of NPRa Silicon Intelligence executive, Sun Kaiwho regularly speaks with a deadbot version of his late mother, describes the technology as something that almost transcends death:
“Whether she’s alive or dead doesn’t matter, because when I think of her, I can find her and talk to her. In a way, she’s alive. At least in my perception, she’s alive.”
Of course, Kai’s mother isn’t alive, but maybe she’s right. As more and more people converse with AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Co-pilot and Google Gemini, the difference between human and digital conversation is blurring. Some believe we have already passed the Turing test, which essentially says an observer may no longer be able to distinguish between a human conversation and a machine.
It is unclear whether the best AI chatbots have actually reached this threshold, and talking to a digital recreation of a dead person probably doesn’t satisfy neither this standard. HoweverI don’t think that’s the point. People anthropomorphize hardware and software all the time (think about how you talk to Alexa or Siri). For some reasonhumans are actually a lot to them ease in speaking with inanimate objects and people digital and, sometimes, develop relationships with them.
If the use of deadbot become widespread and start appearing on our tablets and in funeral parlors, where we could scan a QR code to to view Uncle Al’s digital likeness and start a conversation, I think people might hug them, even if they can’t Still hug their family members dead from time.
A body made of data
The main problem, however, is data. All of these systems require significant amounts of potentially private data to build these personas. digital. In our current political climate and new Cold War, Silicon Intelligence based in China has virtually zero chance of establishing itself in the United States. This will not stop other companies from launching services similar.
Just this week, Half has launched new AI tools on Instagram that let you upload images of your face and then apply them to great images. There is not much distance from this to keeping those images and possibly videos in an archive that combines with all the other data you have shared on Facebook, Instagram And Whatsapp to build deadbot for grieving families, bots that can live on Facebook and Messenger. I have no doubt we’ll soon see Messenger bots of deceased relatives.
“To die will be a great adventure,” said Peter Pan in JM Barrie’s book of the same name. second of what you believe, death is an adventure for the dead and for those who remain. One is full of certainties. What happens after death is a mystery, but our perception does not change: a person is here, and now he is no longer there. The adventure for the you livehowever, varies across those five stages of grief. But Nowwith this potential sixth phase (digital resurrection), the adventure continues, although I don’t know if it’s a journey we should take.
What do you think about this technology? Would you talk to a version digital of a loved one of yours deceased?
#Talking #Dead #Grieving #Aid #Step
