Keeping Dead Loved Ones Alive: The Challenges of Digital Immortality
The Illusion of Immortality
The human desire to preserve the memory and presence of deceased loved ones has led to the development of technologies like ChatGPT, which aim to create more convincing dead person chatbots. However, the reality behind maintaining digital relics and replicas of the dead is often overlooked. In this article, we delve into the challenges and limitations of achieving digital immortality, exploring the immense work and resources required to keep the dead online alive.
The Maintenance Burden: An Overlooked Reality
Behind the scenes of automated systems and generative AI lies a workforce responsible for their maintenance. Annotators, content moderators, caretakers, and a network of human and non-human entities work tirelessly to ensure the longevity of digital relics. Managing a digital estate, securing passwords and account information, and navigating the decay of legacy smart homes are just a few of the challenges faced in digital death care practices. Maintaining electronic records requires continuous updates to formats, ensuring their searchability, usability, and accessibility over time.
However, the mortality of technology and the eventual decline of devices, formats, and websites cannot be ignored. Despite the fantasy of perpetually running automated homes or websites that last for centuries, planned obsolescence ensures their demise. The reality of preserving technologies over time differs greatly from what people envision. Archivists, institutions, and individuals preserving digital belongings of deceased relatives are confronted with the inevitable stoppage of these systems.
Learning from Past Attempts
Attempts to create AI-backed replicas of deceased humans have shown the limitations and challenges of digital immortality. Intellitar’s Virtual Eternity, which aimed to simulate the personality of a human being, faced criticism and eventually met bankruptcy. Similarly, lifenaut, a project backed by Terasem, struggled to fulfill its promises and still relies on outdated Flash software. These failed attempts highlight the long road ahead before achieving true digital immortality.
The Power and Paradox of Generative AI
Generative AI opens up possibilities for creating more convincing facsimiles of humans, including the dead. However, realizing this potential would require vast resources such as raw materials, water, and energy. The environmental impact of such endeavors raises questions about the sustainability of keeping chatbots from the dead amidst climate change. Moreover, the financial costs of maintaining advanced language models, like ChatGPT, prove to be astronomical and potentially unsustainable in the long run.
The Ethical Dilemma of Replicas and Authority
Another crucial aspect to consider is the question of who should have the authority to create these replicas. Should it be a close family member, an employer, or a company? The desire to resurrect the dead as chatbots is not universal, and not everyone would want to be reincarnated in this manner. The story of Joshua Barbeau, who created a chatbot version of his deceased fiancée Jessica, exemplifies the complex emotional dynamics involved. While it provided a coping mechanism for him, it did not align with how other loved ones wanted to remember Jessica.
Conclusion
The notion of achieving digital immortality and keeping dead loved ones alive through technology is both alluring and fraught with challenges. The maintenance burden, the mortality of technology, the financial and environmental costs, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding the creation of replicas raise important questions about the feasibility and desirability of such endeavors. While technology continues to advance, it is crucial not to lose sight of the human element and the complexities associated with preserving the memory of those who have passed away.
Summary
Given the immense work and resources required to maintain digital relics and replicas of deceased loved ones, achieving digital immortality remains challenging. Behind the scenes, a dedicated workforce ensures the longevity of automated systems and generative AI. However, the mortality of technology and the eventual decline of devices, formats, and websites pose significant obstacles. Failures in past attempts, like Intellitar’s Virtual Eternity and lifenaut, highlight the difficulties in achieving true digital immortality. The power and paradox of generative AI also come into play, with the need for vast resources and the financial costs associated with maintaining advanced language models raising sustainability concerns. The ethical dilemma of who should have the authority to create replicas further complicates the pursuit of digital immortality. Despite these challenges, the allure of preserving the memory and presence of deceased loved ones through technology continues. It is crucial, however, to recognize the complexities and potential limitations involved in these endeavors.
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Given enough data, one may feel that it is possible to keep dead loved ones alive. With ChatGPT and other powerful large language models, it is possible to create a more convincing dead person chatbot. But doing so, especially in the face of scarce resources and inevitable decay, ignores the massive amounts of work that goes into keeping the dead online alive.
Someone always has to do the hard work of maintaining automated systems, as evidenced by the overworked and underpaid annotators and content moderators behind the generative AI, and this is also true when it comes to replicas of the dead. From managing a digital estate after collecting passwords and account information, to navigating a legacy smart home slowly deteriorating, digital death care practices require significant maintenance. Content creators rely on the backend work of caretakers and a network of human and non-human entities, from specific operating systems and devices to server farms, to keep digital relics alive across generations. Updating formats and keeping those electronic records searchable, usable, and accessible requires work, energy, and time. This is a problem for archivists and institutions, but also for people who want to preserve the digital belongings of deceased relatives.
And even with all this effort, devices, formats, and websites die too, just as we fragile humans do. Despite the fantasy of an automated home that can run on its own in perpetuity or a website that can survive for centuries, planned obsolescence means these systems are bound to decline. As the people tasked with maintaining the digital belongings of their deceased loved ones can attest, there is a stark difference between what people think they want, or what they expect others to do, and the reality of what it means to help technologies persist over time. The mortality of both people and technology means that these systems will eventually stop working.
Early attempts to create AI-backed replicas of dead humans certainly bear this out. Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Intellitar’s Virtual Eternity launched in 2008 and used images and speech patterns to simulate the personality of a human being, perhaps filling in for someone at a business meeting or chatting with bereaved loved ones afterward. of the death of a person. Writing for CNET, one reviewer called Intellitar the product “most likely to make kids cry.” But shortly after the company went bankrupt in 2012, its website disappeared. lifenauta project backed by the transhumanist organization Terasem, which is also known for creating BINA48, a robotic version of Bina Aspen, the wife of Terasem’s founder, will reportedly combine genetic and biometric information with streams of personal data to simulate a full-fledged human being once technology allows. But the project site is built on outdated Flash software, indicating that the true promise of digital immortality is likely a long way off and will require updates along the way.
With generative AI, there is speculation that we could create even more convincing facsimiles of humans. including the dead. But this requires vast resources, including raw materials, water and energy, pointing to the folly of keeping chatbots from the dead in the face of catastrophic climate change. It also has astronomical financial costs: ChatGPT supposedly costs $700,000 a day to maintain and will bankrupt OpenAI by 2024. This is not a sustainable blueprint for immortality.
There is also the question of who should have the authority to create these replicas in the first place: a close family member, an employer, a company? Not everyone would want to be reincarnated as a chatbot. In a 2021 piece for the San Francisco Chronicle, Journalist Jason Fagone tells the story of a man named Joshua Barbeau who produced a chatbot version of his long-dead fiancee Jessica using OpenAI’s GPT-3. It was a way for him to cope with death and pain, but it also kept him involved in a close romantic relationship with a person who was no longer alive. This wasn’t the way Jessica’s other loved ones wanted to remember her either; Family members chose not to interact with the chatbot.
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