Posthumous AI
To close out the week of artificial intelligence hallucinations, it seems worth considering the potential at hand for resurrection and immortality. Leave enough records of your writing and speaking, of your still and moving imagery, and some AI bot will have the capacity to bring you back to life from the Beyond.
The initial version of this potential came in the form of fear and hand-wringing headlines in recent years. For a while it seemed that stories about computer-generated fakes were the main feature: the idea that pop culture and (of course) political figures would be convincingly spoofed and mimicked by software as they did and said things that were compromising and unflattering. It’s easy enough to imagine the possibilities for fake video and audio to implicate target figures.
But once we’re dead and gone, with nary another mortal care, our nearest and dearest could train AIs to produce our facsimiles and make them capable of looking, sounding, and appearing to think like we might have. At the very least, to make us sound and look like our survivors would like to think we would have looked and sounded.
Think of it: You can be brought back to virtual life, better than never before!
I found an interesting song. Here’s the link, if anyone’s interested:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V0HCZ4YGqbw
Sounds like an inefficient coping mechanism. I hope mine says that.
“Turn me off. I’m not Jack. I’m a bunch of ones and zeros. Go live your life and stop lying to yourself.”