{"id":51146,"date":"2024-05-15T13:34:20","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T13:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/15\/should-we-use-ai-to-resurrect-digital-ghosts-of-the-dead\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T13:34:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T13:34:20","slug":"should-we-use-ai-to-resurrect-digital-ghosts-of-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/15\/should-we-use-ai-to-resurrect-digital-ghosts-of-the-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Should we use AI to resurrect digital &#8216;ghosts&#8217; of the dead?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/051024_kh_ai-grandparent_inline-rev.jpg?resize=680%2C365&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Should we use AI to resurrect digital &#8216;ghosts&#8217; of the dead?\" title=\"Should we use AI to resurrect digital &#8216;ghosts&#8217; of the dead?\" \/><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>When missing a loved one who has passed away, you might look at old photos or listen to old voicemails. Now, with artificial intelligence technology, you can also talk with a virtual bot made to look and sound just like them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The companies Silicon Intelligence and Super Brain already offer this service. Both rely on generative AI, including large language models similar to the one behind ChatGPT, to sift through snippets of text, photos, audio recordings, video and other data. They use this information to create digital \u201cghosts\u201d of the dead to visit the living.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n                        <style class=\"is-layout-flow 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*{color:var(--zephr-color-text-main)}.apple-pay-button{display:inline-block;-webkit-appearance:-apple-pay-button;-apple-pay-button-type:pay;width:440px;max-width:100%;height:45px;margin-top:20px}.apple-pay-button-black{-apple-pay-button-style:black}.zephr-payment-form-disabled-div{pointer-events:none;opacity:0.8}.zephr-payment-form-relative-container{position:relative}.zephr-payment-form-flex-container{display:flex}.zephr-form-input-inner-button{cursor:pointer;position:absolute;top:50%;transform:translateY(-50%);right:5px;padding:10px 5px}.zephr-payment-form-input-inner-text{color:var(--zephr-color-text-main);font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;font-family:var(--zephr-typography-body-font),\n            var(--zephr-typography-body-fallbackFont)}\n]]><\/style>\n                        \n                        <style><![CDATA[#zephr-payment-form-root > div {\n    background-image: url(https:\/\/sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg);\n    padding:20px;\n    max-width: 100%;\n   \n}\n\n#zephr-payment-form-root > div > button {\n    max-width: 50%;\n    margin-left: auto;\n    margin-right: auto;\n    border-radius: 1px;\n    background-color: #e04821;\n    color: white;\n}\n#zephr-payment-form-root > div > div.zephr-payment-form-custom-text.svelte-s692p7{\n    color:white;\n}\n#zephr-payment-form-root > div > label > span {\n    color:white;\n}    \n.zephr-payment-form-input-label.svelte-1ozx4pz span.svelte-1ozx4pz {\n    display: none;\n}\n\n.zephr-payment-form-custom-text.svelte-s692p7 {\n    color:white;\n}\n\nbutton.zephr-payment-form-button.svelte-1hlz8zp.zephr-payment-form-button-top-margin {\n    background: #d4441f;\n    font-weight: bold;\n    text-transform: uppercase;\n}\n\nlabel.zephr-payment-form-checkbox-label.svelte-1rzrrj8 {\n    color: white;\n    font-size: 1.6rem;\n}\n\n.zephr-payment-form-custom-text.svelte-s692p7 {\n    margin-top: .2rem;\n}\n\n.zephr-payment-form-checkbox-label.svelte-eq3e4e {\n    display: flex;\n    align-items: center;\n    font-family: var(--zephr-typography-body-font), var(--zephr-typography-body-fallbackFont);\n    color: white;\n    font-weight: bold;\n}]]><\/style>\n                        \n                        \n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>Called griefbots, deadbots or re-creation services, these digital replicas of the deceased \u201ccreate an illusion that a dead person is still alive and can interact with the world as if nothing actually happened, as if death didn\u2019t occur,\u201d says Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska, a researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge who studies how technology shapes people\u2019s experiences of death, loss and grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She and colleague Tomasz Hollanek, a technology ethicist at the same university, recently <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s13347-024-00744-w\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">explored the risks of technology<\/a> that allows for a type of \u201cdigital immortality\u201d in a paper published May 9 in <em>Philosophy &amp; Technology<\/em>. Could AI technology be racing ahead of respect for human dignity? To get a handle on this, <em>Science News<\/em> spoke with Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SN<\/em>: The TV show <em>Black Mirror<\/em> ran a chilling episode in 2013 about a woman who gets a robot that mimics her dead boyfriend. How realistic is that story?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska: <\/strong>We are already here, without the body. But definitely the digital resurrection based on huge amount of data \u2014 that\u2019s our reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my relatively short academic career, I\u2019ve been witnessing a significant shift from the point where digital immortality technologies were perceived as a very marginalized niche, to the point where we [have] the term \u201cdigital afterlife industry.\u201d For me as a researcher, it\u2019s fascinating. As a person, it can be very scary and very concerning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We use speculative scenarios and design fiction as a research method. But we do not refer to some distant future. Instead, we speculate on what is technologically and socially possible here and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SN<\/em>: Your paper presents three imaginary, yet problematic, scenarios that could arise with these deadbots. Which one do you personally find most dystopian?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska: <\/strong>[In one of our scenarios], we present a terminally ill woman leaving a griefbot to assist her eight-year-old son with the grief process. We use this example because we think that exposing children to this technology might be very risky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think we could go even further and use this \u2026 in the near future to even conceal the fact of the death of a parent or the other significant relative from a child. And at the moment, we know very, very little about how these technologies would influence children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We argue that if we can\u2019t prove that this technology won\u2019t be harmful, we should take all possible measures to protect the most vulnerable. And in this case, that would mean age-restricted access to these technologies.<strong\/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3139625\">Paren\u2019t is an imagined company that offers to create a bot of a dying or deceased parent as a companion for a young child. But there are questions about whether this service could cause harm for children, who might not fully understand what the bot is.<\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3139625\">Tomasz Hollanek<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SN<\/em>: What other safeguards are important?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska: <\/strong>We should make sure that the user is aware \u2026 that they are interacting with AI. [The technology can] simulate language patterns and personality traits based on processing huge amounts of personal data. But it\u2019s definitely <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/ai-large-language-model-understanding\">not a conscious entity<\/a> (<em>SN: 2\/28\/24<\/em>). We also advocate for developing sensitive procedures of retiring or deleting deadbots. And we also highlight the significance of consent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SN<\/em>: Could you describe the scenario you imagined that explores consent for the bot user?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska: <\/strong>We present an older person who secretly \u2014 that\u2019s a very important word, secretly \u2014 committed to a deadbot of themselves, paying for a 20-year subscription, hoping it will comfort their adult children. And now just imagine that after the funeral, the children receive a bunch of emails, notifications or updates from the re-creation service, along with the invitation to interact with the bot of their deceased father. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[The children] should have a right to decide whether they want to go through the grieving process in this way or not. For some people, it might be comforting, and it might be helpful, but for others not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SN<\/em>: You also argue that it\u2019s important to protect the dignity of human beings, even after death. In your imagined scenario about this issue, an adult woman uses a free service to create a deadbot of her long-deceased grandmother. What happens next?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska: <\/strong>She asks the deadbot about the recipe for homemade carbonara spaghetti that she loved cooking with her grandmother. Instead of receiving the recipe, she receives a recommendation to order that food from a popular delivery service. Our concern is that griefbots might become a new space for a very sneaky product placement, encroaching upon the dignity of the deceased and disrespecting their memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SN<\/em>: Different cultures have very different ways of handling death. How can safeguards take this into account?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska: <\/strong>We are very much aware that there is no universal ethical framework that could be developed here. The topics of death, grief and immortality are hugely culturally sensitive. And solutions that might be enthusiastically adopted in one cultural context could be completely dismissed in another. This year, I started a new research project: I\u2019m aiming to explore different perceptions of AI-enabled simulation of death in three different eastern nations, including Poland, India and probably China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SN<\/em>: Why is now the time to act on this?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nowaczyk-Basi\u0144ska: <\/strong>When we started working on this paper a year ago, we were a bit concerned whether it\u2019s too [much like] science fiction. Now [it\u2019s] 2024. And with the advent of large language models, especially ChatGPT, these technologies are more accessible. That\u2019s why we so desperately need regulations and safeguards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Re-creation service providers today are making totally arbitrary decisions of what is acceptable or not. And it\u2019s a bit risky to let commercial entities decide how our digital death and digital immortality should be shaped. People who decide to use digital technologies in end-of-life situations are already in a very, very difficult point in their lives. We shouldn\u2019t make it harder for them through irresponsible technology design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/artificial-intelligence-digital-ghost-ai\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When missing a loved one who has passed away, you might look at old photos or listen to old voicemails. Now, with artificial intelligence technology, you can also talk with a virtual bot made to look and sound just like them. The companies Silicon Intelligence and Super Brain already offer this service. Both rely on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/051024_kh_ai-grandparent_inline-rev.jpg?resize=680%2C365&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[169,247,51111,33853],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51148,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51146\/revisions\/51148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}