The oldest joke in the book runs:
"Doc, it hurts when I go like this."
"Okay. Don't go like that"
"What I would like to see is the complete and total eradication of grief," says tech entrepreneur Justin Harrison. That's never going to happen. And the better his tech gets, the worse its central problem will be.
Harrison's venture offers mourners the chance to create an AI version of their loved one. You can have conversations with these "versonas" now. Someday, you'll be able to load the AI into a robot you could hug. This video from The Guardian suggests people could use this technology to reach emotional closure. But how many people would say goodbye when they could just start the AI back up again? A cybernetic ghost is the worst of both worlds. Your loved one is still gone, but there's less reason to move on with your life.
Grief can be agonizing. It's pain with a purpose - to help us accept and adjust to loss. We can put it off all of our lives, but we can't get out of it. Working through the process means wholeness. You know you've reached the end when you find happiness in your memories of your loved one, instead of sorrow.
These AIs won't eliminate grief. They'll help mourners stay trapped in one of grief's earliest stages - denial. Let's have sympathy and compassion for the bereaved. Let's hope the tech industry find ways to help people work through it.
"Doc, it hurts when I go like this."
"Okay. Don't go like that"
"What I would like to see is the complete and total eradication of grief," says tech entrepreneur Justin Harrison. That's never going to happen. And the better his tech gets, the worse its central problem will be.
Harrison's venture offers mourners the chance to create an AI version of their loved one. You can have conversations with these "versonas" now. Someday, you'll be able to load the AI into a robot you could hug. This video from The Guardian suggests people could use this technology to reach emotional closure. But how many people would say goodbye when they could just start the AI back up again? A cybernetic ghost is the worst of both worlds. Your loved one is still gone, but there's less reason to move on with your life.
Grief can be agonizing. It's pain with a purpose - to help us accept and adjust to loss. We can put it off all of our lives, but we can't get out of it. Working through the process means wholeness. You know you've reached the end when you find happiness in your memories of your loved one, instead of sorrow.
These AIs won't eliminate grief. They'll help mourners stay trapped in one of grief's earliest stages - denial. Let's have sympathy and compassion for the bereaved. Let's hope the tech industry find ways to help people work through it.
RSS Feed