Microsoft was just granted a patent on creating a conversational chat bot of a specific person. The chat bot’s personality would apparently be based on images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages and more personal information.
The Independent claims Microsoft Patent Shows Plans to Revive Dead Loved Ones as Chat bots. Seances would take on new life, but it could also prevent someone from moving on. I leave it to the psychologists as to whether this would be a good thing or bad thing. There have actually been stories about people trying to accomplish this. Verge and Qz, the science fiction book Neuromancer from 1984 and an episode of Black Mirror (“Be Right Back” - S2E1) among others. As one of the articles quiped: “‘Here is a chatbot of your dead friend, unfortunately he didn’t authorize a paid account, so we have to fund his digital after-life with advertising. This means he will occasionally try to sell goodyear tires to you. Please press accept.”
There is also the actual experience of a college lecturer who died, but the university continues to run his lectures and students don’t necessarily know that he is actually dead. Presumably any in person contact is with a teaching assistant. Not sure how you get a recommendation from the deceased.
While that might be interesting - or not depending on the person, what happens when someone creates a chat bot based on you? Who is liable if someone believes the chat bot is you and takes some action based on a conversation? For all the people who immediately start talking about the Turing test and that people would know it was a chat bot, think first about how many people have totally believed QAnon conspiracy theories. I’d also be concerned about stalkers that could more and more fixated by interactingg with a chat bot simulacrum that you can’t block.
On the positive side, you could, in theory, duplicate yourself a la this Silicon Valley episode, but how would you manage to integrate all the information from conversations you yourself did not actually have?
As usual, feel free to disagree using this contact link. My world view is a hypothesis, not a belief.
