When Her Best Friend Died, She Rebuilt Him Using Artificial Intelligence (theverge.com)

When Roman Mazurenko died, his friend Eugenia Kuyda created a digital monument to him: an artificial intelligent bot that could "speak" as Roman using thousands of lines of texts sent to friends and family. From the report: "It's pretty weird when you open the messenger and there's a bot of your deceased friend, who actually talks to you," Fayfer said. "What really struck me is that the phrases he speaks are really his. You can tell that's the way he would say it -- even short answers to 'Hey what's up.' It has been less than a year since Mazurenko died, and he continues to loom large in the lives of the people who knew him. When they miss him, they send messages to his avatar, and they feel closer to him when they do. "There was a lot I didn't know about my child," Roman's mother told me. "But now that I can read about what he thought about different subjects, I'm getting to know him more. This gives the illusion that he's here now."

Comments

Bullshit

[campuscodi]

You can't call something AI if it pulls random text lines from a config file. Talk about an overhyped term. I presume the WordPress Hello Dolly plugin is AI too, right?

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is someone dealing with grief, you autistic shitlord.

(Is there a word like "autistic" for people who are socially clueless and insensitive but which doesn't insult genuinely autistic people? I need to improve my insult vocab.)

Re:Bullshit

[drinkypoo]

This is someone dealing with grief, you autistic shitlord.

That has zero bearing on whether it is AI.

(Is there a word like "autistic" for people who are socially clueless and insensitive but which doesn't insult genuinely autistic people? I need to improve my insult vocab.)

"Anonymous Coward"

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is someone dealing with grief, you autistic shitlord.

I wouldn't call it "dealing" with.
Trying to bring back the dead isn't exactly a healthy way to do it.
Sounds very close to the dude who kept his mothers cellphone so that he could send himself messages from it every now and then.

I'm not sure about this....

[bernywork]

Like everything else, it's got it's good points and it's bad...

The whole point of (Or maybe this is just me) of dealing with someone's death, is the actual letting go part, recognising that they're gone and moving on.

Sure there are times when I miss my friends, and I think of them fondly, whether it's the way that they laughed, smiled, pulled pranks or whatever else, but I also recognise that they're gone. Having them there as a chat bot to talk to, for me, would just, I dunno, make me keep holding onto them... and I don't know if that's healthy...