AI Resurrecting the Dead Threatens Our Grasp on Reality
Using avatars to speak to the dead may comfort some, but it risks eroding our collective grasp on reality.
The temptation to talk with a loved one after they’ve ascended the stairway to heaven would be hard to resist.
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A cruel twist of fate led Jason Gowin to make a novel parenting decision.
Days after his wife gave birth to their twin boys in 2019, she had a stroke. The doctors gave her two or three years to live. Gowin and his oldest son were devastated, but worse was to come. Months later, Gowin found out he had stomach cancer. Facing the prospect of leaving three children without parents, he got an idea from watching the Superman movie Man Of Steel, where the caped hero walks into the Fortress of Solitude and talks to a simulation of his father. There was something comforting about that possibility, of he and his wife leaving behind talking replicas of themselves for their children.