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A Son’s Race to Give His Dying Father Artificial Immortality (2017)
- Etheryte 7y agoI'm really, really torn on this. On one hand, this is an amazing way to immortalize memories, experience, whole lifetimes of accumulated knowledge and wisdom. On the other, it feels like a severe form of escapism and refusal to move on.
- salex89 7y agoTry watching the movie About Time, from 2013. In short the main character can travel through time to visit his passing father... Until a point. Sound creepy, but actually isn't. A very wholesome movie.
- MrGilbert 7y ago> On the other, it feels like a severe form of escapism and refusal to move on. There is nothing wrong with it. People deal differently, I guess. I, for myself, would have loved to have something similiar from my parents. Not a whole chatbot, but... Written down and audible memories. The tech is there, just the opportunity wasn't.
- jfk13 7y agoYeah... this doesn't appeal to me at all (speaking as someone who lost one parent a few years ago, and sees the other growing frailer), but if he wants to use this form to capture and share memories, I guess that's fine. My main gripe is with the headline phrase "Artificial Immortality". It's so far removed from that as to be laughable. (The subtitle about "re-create his dad as an AI" seems severely over-hyped, too, although I suppose that's true of most uses of the term "AI".)
- pdonis 7y ago> My main gripe is with the headline phrase "Artificial Immortality". It's so far removed from that as to be laughable. Yes, it reminds me of Woody Allen's remark: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying."
- walterstucco 7y ago> There is nothing wrong with it Actually there is. People deal differently with the loss, but eventually they all get over it, because it is a natural process. A severe refusal to move on is not what one can call a good thing. Think about the people around you and the consequences it could have.
- serf 7y ago>Actually there is. statements of fact like that with regards to a fairly unexplored territory are worse than useless, they're damaging. By what criteria do we know that this is a 'severe refusal to move on'? Should we accuse people who peruse old photographs from their history of the same 'severe refusal'? Why can't this AI idea be just yet another tool at our disposal for memory recall and recollection? Why paint this as some mental ineptitude, rather than just an archival opportunity? Most stores of data have possible consequence by their mere existence. What's different here exactly? Would the idea be more palatable if, rather than the clickbait ideas of immortality, it was framed as a trained chatbot?
- walterstucco 7y ago> statements of fact like that with regards to a fairly unexplored territory are worse than useless, they're damaging. They are not. > Should we accuse people who peruse old photographs from their history of the same 'severe refusal'? Who said accuse? Remembering is one thing, trying to make them live after death is another entirely. "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" has a thing or two to say about it. "Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition" > Why can't this AI idea be just yet another tool at our disposal for memory recall and recollection? Because death is inevitable, not accepting it is detrimental for one's health and future relationships. > Why paint this as some mental ineptitude, rather than just an archival opportunity? Who said mental ineptitude? > Most stores of data have possible consequence by their mere existence. What's different here exactly? That, just like Frankenstein, this is "a deliberate decision" to obtain exactly that goal. It's not a side effect. But I agree, I would say the same thing for any other other project having similar objectives. > Would the idea be more palatable if, rather than the clickbait ideas of immortality, it was framed as a trained chatbot? Psychologists are mostly that, but they can actually help.
- im3w1l 7y ago"At first, many Native Americans were wary of having their photographs taken and often refused. They believed that the process could steal a person's soul and disrespected the spiritual world. Over time, however, some Native Americans came to cherish photographs as links to ancestors and even integrated them into important ceremonies."
- cryptofits 7y agoSomehow, this title gave me goosebump in a way the end of Inception gave me Great idea for a movie
- yulaow 7y agoA similar idea moved a bit further is the theme of the film Transcendence
- davedx 7y agoYou should totally watch Source Code, it's a much deeper dive on this subject. Great movie.
- cryptofits 7y agoWill do ;)
- ginko 7y agoThere's a black mirror episode based on this.
- pteraspidomorph 7y agoHere it is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back
- siberianbear 7y agoThis is also a sub-plot of the television series Caprica, where a researcher uses her daughter as the model for the first true AI in a robot cylon.
- kebman 7y agoCaprica is actually a very good series, often forgotten in the shadow of Battlestar Galactica. But then it doesn't really feature cool spaceships. ;)
- 7y ago
- gt2 7y agoMight be interesting to combine with the latest advancements in voice synthesis[0,1,2]. Actually, surprised they didn't delve into those possibilities. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14182262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14182262 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819672 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17858246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17858246
- keiferski 7y agoThis topic reminds me of an Ebert review of Solaris (2002): The genius of Lem's underlying idea is that the duplicates, or replicants, or whatever we choose to call them, are self-conscious and seem to carry on with free will from the moment they are evoked by the planet. Rheya, for example, says, "I'm not the person I remember. I don't remember experiencing these things." And later, "I'm suicidal because that's how you remember me." In other words, Kelvin gets back not his dead wife, but a being who incorporates all he knows about his dead wife, and nothing else, and starts over from there. She has no secrets because he did not know her secrets. If she is suicidal, it is because he thought she was. The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel, but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002 https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002 I think it is a deep mistake to correlate one's exterior appearance and behavior with a sense of selfhood. At best, it's a shallow surface imitation of the actual person. At worst, it creates a nightmarish, Uncanny Valley-esque simulacrum, not unlike Harlow's wire monkey mother surrogates. It would be better to learn how to accept and deal with loss - a reality that everyone inevitably faces.
- duxup 7y agoIn the end of Solaris (at least the American version) it seems the protagonist chooses the illusion. Right or wrong perhaps the illusion is enough / or all we really know.
- walterstucco 7y agoThe movie's finale (both) is not what happen in the book. In the book Kelvin accepts that he's standing in front of a godlike creature that the human mind will never understand, he surrender, lands on the planet's surface hoping that "time of cruel miracles was not past". The acceptance is not of the illusion itself, but of the fact that we would never understand the whys, the rational thinking and scientific positivism have become the real illusion, all is lost, Solaris won, there is only the hope that Solaris will keep making "cruel miracles".
- amelius 7y agoIf this catches on then at a certain moment there will be more bots than real people.
- antisthenes 7y agoHosted in a data center, living lives in San Junipero no less.
- peteradio 7y agoSolving captchas to keep their rankly old bits flipping..
- Kaibeezy 7y agoI zinged straight to (what is for me) the ultimate question in these matters: When will I be able to upload my mind and have it function fully in machina? Alas, still (for practical purposes) never. Why you’ll never be able to upload your brain to the cloud - https://theconversation.com/why-youll-never-be-able-to-upload-your-brain-to-the-cloud-52408 https://theconversation.com/why-youll-never-be-able-to-uploa...
- tim333 7y agoThe article seems a bit pessimistic to me. Ok we neither know how the brain stores information, nor are able to make a human level AI currently, both of which would have to happen before uploading was feasible but research is progressing rapidly on both fronts. Personally I'd expect it to be possible before the century is out. There's already a YC startup working on the stuff https://nectome.com/ https://nectome.com/ who seem to have had some ups and downs but it's early days. Here's the Daily Mail on Sam Altman signing up https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5503045/Tech-billionaire-pays-10K-die-brain-uploaded-online.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5503045/Tech-billio...
- kebman 7y agoWhat will it matter? You'll still be dead. Will your machine likeness be anything like you, except in simulation? Or will it simply be an empty Chinese room, giving your loved ones a doll-shell to hold onto, like in a cruel Harry Harlow experiment?
- jvagner 7y agoI think if you could upload your mind and interact, a la Speaker for the Dead, it would be more than just your doll she’ll getting interacted with. I’m Buddhist, I work on my acceptance of death. Sometimes it feels deceptively easy, and sometimes I look at my son and pre ache for what won’t be. Uploading my thoughts for him to review isn’t tempting to me, just like cloning my dog won’t give me my dog. But I get the temptation to wish we were close to a time where it felt plausible. But I don’t expect it to be.
- meowface 7y ago
- sysbin 7y agoI think death isn't bad when you think about infinity. The universe can repeat the same occurrences needed for what made our life and where the exact same conditions happen again for having the actions & thoughts we already lived. Eternal reoccurrence is the name. Theoretical physics even has it make more sense if the universe continuously expands & retracts repetitively. Thus I would rather just die while in tremendous pain from an illness and where it would appear instant for my conscious to appear again once the forces of the universe repeat the needed conditions.
- ozzmotik 7y agoah yes. assuming the universe does operate in a cyclical manner and that consciousness itself is an actual fundamental feature of the universe (and not just emergent) , it certainly does make sense from a logical perspective that eventually there will be a beginning that matches the configuration of our current universe and evolves over time such that an Earth will exist again and the consciousness we inhabit will be reborn in the same manner it was leading to our ability to experience it this go round :)
- tyingq 7y agoDoes Pullstring save (or export) all of this metadata into something that can work on a different platform? I wonder about the chances of all this work being lost. Edit: Story was from 2017, Apple acquired them in Feb 2019, and Pullstring's site is now gone, though a few pages remain in the Google cache. Sounds like there is some risk.
- qrybam 7y agoBlack Mirror covered something a few steps beyond this in the episode called “San Junipero” [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero
- malydok 7y agoI find the "Be Right Back" episode to be more directly fitting here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back
- ticklemyelmo 7y agoIt's definitely more applicable. The simulacrum literally starts off as a chat bot.
- dwighttk 7y agoThe difference between his recordings of 91,970 words, the books of those words bound, and the Dadbot are merely format differences. Sure he added (and subtracted) some stuff programming the bot, but there is no AI here.
- markus_zhang 7y agoShould I pass my mind/memory by value, or by reference? Which one is more expensive?
- sooheon 7y agoBy value, and definitely onto better storage.
- MauranKilom 7y agoProbably by value, unless you want to risk that it ends up dangling...
- markus_zhang 7y agoMight want to run advanced algorithms in my brain maybe...
- _iyig 7y agoRay Kurzweil of “A.I. Singularity” fame has collected his deceased father’s writings and possessions for a similar attempt at mechanical reanimation: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/futurist-ray-kurzweil-bring-dead-father-back-life/story?id=14267712 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/futurist-ray-kurzweil-brin...
- failrate 7y agoRudy Rucker discusses a project like this in the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul. Remarkable that someone has actually tried to do it.
- sabujp 7y agoOne could take lots of videos of a person, get a large corpus of their phrases, sentences, behaviors, use deepfakes to generate videos, profit
- lavezzi 7y agoI think that's the plot of that Black Mirror episode, Be Right Back.
- AllegedAlec 7y agoFor those interested in stories about stuff like this: Malagash by Joey Comeau. Sunday’s father is dying of cancer. They’ve come home to Malagash, on the north shore of Nova Scotia, so he can die where he grew up. Her mother and her brother are both devastated. But devastated isn’t good enough. Devastated doesn’t fix anything. Sunday has a plan. She’s started recording everything her father says. His boring stories. His stupid jokes. Everything. She’s recording every single “I love you” right alongside every “Could we turn the heat up in here?” It’s all important. Because Sunday is writing a computer virus. A computer virus that will live secretly on the hard drives of millions of people all over the world. A computer virus that will think her father’s thoughts and say her father’s words. She has thousands of lines of code to write. Cryptography to understand. Exploits to test. She doesn’t have time to be sad. Her father is going to live forever.
- 50656E6973 7y agoI wonder if it occurred to the son how much more of his father's consciousness lives on in himself?
- throw56345 7y agoOne of the big advantages of climate change is that no one has to be jealous of the future people that will be immortal. They'll have it worse than us or maybe they won't exist at all.
- aaron695 7y agoI've yet to see a working chatbot in the world. OK, one, there's the cliché parking ticket chatbot that got the huddled masses thinking chatbots exist but it's a barely pass mark and only exists because it's the only one. Otherwise this science fiction is dealt with in the genera extensively, from Orville to William Gibson's X-files episode to the multitude of sci-fi books, like the Expanse. I get the art project here, don't get people talking like it'd work.