Can artificial intelligence help us grieve our deceased loved ones by recreating their voices and appearances?
Technology experts and grief therapists discuss the idea after a suggestion that technology designed to emulate dead people could soon be released to the wider public sparked debate and controversy on Twitter doing.
“Start logging your parents, elders and loved ones regularly.” The post, tweeted by US-based computer scientist Pratik Desai on April 8, has since been viewed more than 11 million times. “With enough transcript data, new speech synthesis and video models, there’s a 100% chance that they’ll stay with you forever after they leave their bodies. This should be possible by the end of the year. ”
Many replies criticized Desai’s proposal, with some calling it “unhealthy and dystopian.” Others pointed to disturbing episodes of his sci-fi series Black Mirror on Netflix. In this episode, a character interacts with her AI-generated impression of her deceased boyfriend.
Desai later responded to the criticism by saying that he had seen an episode of “Black Mirror.” I sincerely apologize for that,” he tweeted.
As AI becomes more integrated into our daily lives, such as the growing popularity of chatbots, as a recent example, experts are beginning to wonder how technology can harm or benefit the grieving process. I have mixed feelings about what it brings.
Is it possible for someone to live with AI?
Richard Khoury, president of the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC), believes advances in AI technology will make it possible to impersonate dead people, but that’s not entirely true.
“When it comes to recreating real people, it’s my memories, my ideas, my personality that’s lost,” he said in an interview with CTVNews.ca. “This is not so much an AI problem (but) as a model documentation problem.”
Khoury said AI is nearly impossible to mimic a loved one because it must be trained by humans and collect data to inform its reactions.
Currently, state-of-the-art AI techniques are fetching information from the internet before responding to user queries, but their inability to distinguish between fact and fiction raises concerns about misinformation.
Start logging your parents, elders and loved ones regularly. With enough transcript data, new speech synthesis, and video models, there’s a 100% chance that we’ll live forever after leaving our bodies. This should be possible by the end of the year.
— Pratik Desai (@chheplo) April 8, 2023
A person must record every instance in their lifetime so that the AI can accurately impersonate them.
But even then, “what we record is very different from what we actually think,” says Khoury.
“We have more than just memories and the emotions associated with those memories,” he said.
There is currently a limit to the amount of context a chatbot can sort through. The background of a person’s life is too broad for current technology, he said, Khoury.
“I’m not saying we won’t be able to get as much context at some point in the future, but it’s not anytime soon,” he said.
AI cannot “think” on its own, it only makes decisions based on input and training from other humans. Because of this, Khoury says AI could only generate superficial copies of dead people.
“In my opinion, you can look at a digital copy of someone who has just passed away and chat with them as if they were still there, reminiscing about the old days…it’s like a really healthy grieving behavior. can’t hear
How AI will affect the grieving process
Andrea Warnick, a registered grief therapist based in Guelph, Ontario, says she is hesitant to use AI for a highly personal and sensitive process.
The grieving process is not linear and is very personal, she told CTVNews.ca in an interview.
“A lot of my work with people actually encourages them to get out of their heads and surrender to the process, and it’s messy and unpredictable,” she said.
In Warnick’s practice, we often see what she calls the “6 R’s” of mourning and encourage them as a healthy pathway to work through grief and loss.
According to research by US grief therapist Dr. Teresa Rand, it is when someone recognizes loss, reacts to separation, recalls experiences, lets go of old attachments, readjusts to a new world without that person, and is emotionally active. It starts with reinvesting your energy.
“In the early days there was a lot of variability, but you tend to get a lot of shock from just being diagnosed or just dying,” Warnick said. The feeling component can be bigger.”
Her practice of 30 grief therapists offers counseling to anyone grieving the loss of someone or coming to terms with their own expected death. Some of the technology used to help that grieving process could be amplified by AI technology, Warnick said, but she’s still not convinced.
“I’m equally fascinated and horrified by AI in general,” she said. It turns out that we are already quite mortal and live in a society that knows no grief.
“It’s not uncommon for people not to use the word death or dying, even in the healthcare field. It’s just wrapped up in euphemisms,” she said.
Throwing AI chatbots and avatars into the mix may result in some mourners having unhealthy coping mechanisms or avoiding the reality of loss altogether.
“I feel like it really leads to, ‘I’m not going to be sad. I’m going to stay connected to that person.'”
Conversely, though, Warnick said the technology, if used “cleverly,” could highlight treatment practices.
One of the techniques used in counseling is for people to practice writing two-way letters. One is himself and his other is what the dead person responds to.
Warnick said this could be an opportunity for AI chatbots to move the process forward.
“Some people are really open to the idea that they themselves can still hear and feel and receive what they put out,” she said.
For dying people, Wernick said, AI could serve as a memory technology that can edit people’s images and messages over the years.
“I think it’s certainly possible, but what we want to make sure is that we’re not actually inadvertently creating a barrier to a healthy grieving process for people who are grieving,” she said. said.
For now, AI could become part of a person’s grieving process, but Warnick said it would be beneficial if the technology helped people practice grieving.
“I think it will be very interesting to see how this goes,” she said. …so I actually spend a lot of time trying to make people understand that actually doing the grief gives better results.”
