Skanky Vamp
Sniffin' the Slayer
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2008
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An excerpt, reposted from CNN
If you could create a digital version of yourself to stick around long after you've died, would you want to?
The digital version could comfort your mother, joke with your friends -- it would have your sense of humor. But it would also have your other traits, perhaps the ones you're not proud of -- your stubbornness, your tendency to get angry, your fear of being alone.
Would you want this digital version chatting with your loved ones if you were unable to control what it said?
One entrepreneur has started asking these questions.
In November 2015, Eugenia Kuyda's best friend Roman unexpectedly passed away. She created an experiment to bring parts of him back to life.
Kudya had been working on an AI startup for two years. Along with a developer on her team, she used bits of Roman's digital presence from his text messages, tweets and Facebook posts -- his vocabulary, his tone, his expressions. Using artificial intelligence, she created a computerized chatbot based off his personality.
I had several long conversations with Roman -- or I should say his bot. And while the technology wasn't perfect, it certainly captured what I imagine to be his ethos -- his humor, his fears, how hopeless he felt at work sometimes. He had angst about doing something meaningful. I learned he was lonely but was glad that he'd left Moscow for the West Coast. I learned we had similar tastes in music. He seemed to like deep conversations, he was a bit sad, and you know he would've been fun on a night out.
But it was a bit of a mind-bender. He's not there -- only his digital traces, compiled into a powerful chatbot that appears almost like a ghost. Anyone could look at old texts from a friend who has passed away, but it's the interaction that's unsettling -- it feels like there's someone on the other end of the line.
The digital copy of Roman invoked a powerful response from the people closest to him.
The first time Kuyda texted Roman's bot, it responded, "You have one of the greatest puzzles on your hand. Solve it." It was weeks later that she was at a party and realized she'd been texting with her dead friend's bot for 30 minutes.
Many friends found Roman's bot comforting. They texted him when they thought of him.
"They would thank him; and say how much they miss him. I guess a lot of people needed this closure," Kuyda said.
Technology's impact on how we grieve is something James Norris has thought a lot about. He's the founder of Dead Social, a startup based on the idea that death doesn't have to be final.
His method is less sophisticated than Kuyda's. Dead Social lets people videotape a Facebook message to post once they're gone. The service instructs users on how to execute a digital will, pick music to be played at their funeral, and pre-program tweets to be sent after their deaths.
That means that five years after you die, you could send a tweet to wish your loved one happy birthday.
But would you want to? Are tweets from the grave a modern tool for grieving or simply digital ghosts that haunt your loved ones?
If you could create a digital version of yourself to stick around long after you've died, would you want to?
The digital version could comfort your mother, joke with your friends -- it would have your sense of humor. But it would also have your other traits, perhaps the ones you're not proud of -- your stubbornness, your tendency to get angry, your fear of being alone.
Would you want this digital version chatting with your loved ones if you were unable to control what it said?
One entrepreneur has started asking these questions.
In November 2015, Eugenia Kuyda's best friend Roman unexpectedly passed away. She created an experiment to bring parts of him back to life.
Kudya had been working on an AI startup for two years. Along with a developer on her team, she used bits of Roman's digital presence from his text messages, tweets and Facebook posts -- his vocabulary, his tone, his expressions. Using artificial intelligence, she created a computerized chatbot based off his personality.
I had several long conversations with Roman -- or I should say his bot. And while the technology wasn't perfect, it certainly captured what I imagine to be his ethos -- his humor, his fears, how hopeless he felt at work sometimes. He had angst about doing something meaningful. I learned he was lonely but was glad that he'd left Moscow for the West Coast. I learned we had similar tastes in music. He seemed to like deep conversations, he was a bit sad, and you know he would've been fun on a night out.
But it was a bit of a mind-bender. He's not there -- only his digital traces, compiled into a powerful chatbot that appears almost like a ghost. Anyone could look at old texts from a friend who has passed away, but it's the interaction that's unsettling -- it feels like there's someone on the other end of the line.
The digital copy of Roman invoked a powerful response from the people closest to him.
The first time Kuyda texted Roman's bot, it responded, "You have one of the greatest puzzles on your hand. Solve it." It was weeks later that she was at a party and realized she'd been texting with her dead friend's bot for 30 minutes.
Many friends found Roman's bot comforting. They texted him when they thought of him.
"They would thank him; and say how much they miss him. I guess a lot of people needed this closure," Kuyda said.
Technology's impact on how we grieve is something James Norris has thought a lot about. He's the founder of Dead Social, a startup based on the idea that death doesn't have to be final.
His method is less sophisticated than Kuyda's. Dead Social lets people videotape a Facebook message to post once they're gone. The service instructs users on how to execute a digital will, pick music to be played at their funeral, and pre-program tweets to be sent after their deaths.
That means that five years after you die, you could send a tweet to wish your loved one happy birthday.
But would you want to? Are tweets from the grave a modern tool for grieving or simply digital ghosts that haunt your loved ones?
