DeepSummary
The podcast episode discusses the emerging field of using artificial intelligence (AI) to create digital memorials or avatars of deceased loved ones. Jason and Melissa Gowan, who faced serious health scares, created AI personas of themselves through a company called You Only Virtual so that their sons could interact with them after their death. While they found comfort in this, Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska, a researcher studying 'digital death', raises ethical concerns about the impact on grieving, data ownership, consent, and whether profit or human values should guide its development.
Michael Bommer, who has terminal cancer, has also created an AI version of himself through a friend's company Eternos. He sees it as an 'intelligent digital memoir' to pass on his knowledge and experiences to his wife Annette and future generations, rather than true immortality. Annette views it as a tool she can choose to use or not, but not a replacement for her husband.
The episode explores the potential benefits and risks of this technology, highlighting the need for ethical considerations as AI enables new ways of memorializing and 'living on' after death. It raises questions about how we should approach this capability and whether profiting from it or promoting human values like empathy and care should take precedence.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Companies are emerging that use artificial intelligence to create digital memorials or avatars of deceased people based on their data.
- Some users find comfort in being able to interact with an AI version of their loved one after death, especially for advice or on important life events.
- However, researchers raise ethical concerns about the impact on the grieving process, data privacy and ownership, consent from the person being digitized, and whether this technology should be guided by profits or human values.
- There are differing perspectives on whether these AI memorials truly provide 'immortality' or are simply intelligent digital records to pass on a person's experiences and knowledge.
- The episode highlights the need for careful consideration of the ethical ramifications as artificial intelligence enables new forms of memorialization and 'living on' after death.
- While providing potential benefits, the development of this technology needs to be guided by principles like empathy, care and respect rather than solely profits.
- For users, the AI memorial is understood as a tool, not a true replication of the person, with varying expectations around its use and limitations.
- Overall, the episode explores a complex emerging issue straddling technology, mortality, grieving and what it means to truly 'live on' in the digital age.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “We built these versonas as a fail safe just in case, so that on big days like wedding days, or college graduation or high school graduation, or on a day you just need a pick me up from, from a parent who passed, we have that there, just in case you only.“ by Melissa Gowan
- “It will be crucial to seek this explicit consent whenever possible from the so called data donor, so the person whose data is used to create the griefbot, ideally before the death of that person.“ by Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska
- “I'm leaving it behind. Right. If it's used or not, if they hang it as a picture, like a picture of me at the wall or they put it in a drawer, I don't care. I cannot influence that. But I can leave it behind.“ by Michael Bommer
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Episode Information
Consider This from NPR
NPR
6/11/24
Then, an opportunity arose to build an interactive artificial intelligence version of himself through a friend's company, Eternos, so his wife Annet can interact with him after he dies.
More and more people are turning to artificial intelligence to create digital memorials of themselves.
Meanwhile Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska, a research assistant at the University of Cambridge, has been studying the field of "digital death" for nearly a decade, and says using artificial intelligence after death is one big "techno-cultural experiment" because we don't yet know how people will respond to it.
Artificial intelligence has opened the door for us to "live on" after we die. Just because we can, should we?
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