It is no longer only in fiction where you can see technology bring back the dead. A tech firm called Eternime is testing an app where users can create a digital ‘avatar’ of themselves after they die.
The platform collects data about the user through smartphone data as well as questions from a chatbot. When the technology is ready, it would create a chatbot ‘avatar’ of them which loved ones can interact with. So far, the app is still in beta stage, amassing data from trial users and the afterlife function is not ready yet.
Read the full article on Business Insider: These 2 tech founders lost their friends in tragic accidents. Now they’ve built AI chatbots to give people life after death
Analysis:
Yet again, AI technology throws up interesting questions on ethics and the technicalities of using it.
On one hand, it has the potential to help people cope with the deaths of loved ones by retaining a digital form of their personality. On the other hand, this technology could possibly bring more harm to the living than the imagined benefits. Much consideration needs to be given to the psychological effects of the death technology on grief. Will it prevent the living from obtaining closure and acceptance that their loved ones have passed on and are no longer present?
There are several emerging ideas on death technology and its unforeseen consequences. The Netflix drama series Black Mirror explores some of these issues, especially in the episode Be Right Back, where a woman resurrected her dead husband via a robot which can mimic a real person.
Questions for further personal evaluation:
- Should there be regulations and ethical guidelines to govern death technologies?
- What constitutes life? Why are people keen to preserve the digital form of the dead?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘amass’: gather together or accumulate a large amount over a long period of time
- ‘divulge’: make known (private or sensitive information)
- ‘quandaries’: state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in a difficult situation
Picture credits: Photo by Connor Botts on Unsplash