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

[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

[thinkwaitfast]

You missed it. Everything involving a computer is called AI now. Especially if it involves a first or second order feedback system. The computer 'knows' where it is and 'knows' where it wants to be so uses the difference using the application of algorithms, typically a subtraction and multiplication.

See, computers are smart. Smarter than most of us. How else could they do 60 multiplications a second and never make a mistake? Can you do that? I didn't think so. Computers are smarter than you, and by you, I mean all of humanity.

The end is nigh.

Re:Bullshit

[bluegutang]

It's not pulling "random" text lines. It's pulling the text lines that best fit the context, giving (I assume) a somewhat convincing illusion that there is a person on the other end.

This program is clearly not conscious or intelligent in the sense that human beings are. But the current usage of the term "AI" does not require that.

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.

Re:Bullshit

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Is there a word like "autistic" for people who are socially clueless and insensitive but which doesn't insult genuinely autistic people?

Anonymous Coward?

Re:Bullshit

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Depending on which of the two major definitions of AI you prefer, AI is either trying to teach computers to do things that humans currently do better, or it is making computers have behaviors that we'd deem as a mark of intelligence if they were exhibited by humans.

Re:Bullshit

[thinkwaitfast]

I used to be with you, but decided it's hopeless and now tag everything with it. Better with a fast collapse.

Automatic lights on your new car when the sun goes down - artificial intelligence. A noise when your smoke detector smells smoke - artificial intelligence. Sprinklers automatically going on at 5am every morning - artificial intelligence. Hot water from the tank, but not too hot - artificial intelligence. The gas pump telling you to have a nice day - artificial intelligence (wasn't that polite of it?). Even better if it suggests adding tekrameme to your gas to extend the life of your car and eliminate emissions...how thoughtful. There you go, a computer thinking about your best interests and not only of itself. Not only artificial intelligence, but artificial empathy.

Re:Bullshit

[hairyfeet]

Sigh. We old greybeards know that one of the great truths is "everything old is new again" and all we have here is the millennials discovering their own versions of ELIZA and the stuff we were doing way back in the 70s. We had movies of machines becoming intelligent, we had people looking at what was in reality very simplistic programs and proclaiming them AI, its just the kids aren't old enough to have experienced any of this so they think they have found something profound...everything old is new again.

Re:Bullshit

[KingBenny]

although i like the way you react to people you don't like :D i kinda disagree,im not sure wether this is healthy or not since the guy is actually dead .. im not much for humans, i keep a picture of my deceased cat, which is to me a deceased kid and i find myself sometimes talking to it like i would, im quite aware she's dead however and the grave outside reminds me the other one will be too someday. This is more like holding on than letting go, HOWEVER, if it helps peope in getting through their day its 100% debatable, oh shit i almost posted as anonymous coward O M G z , the agonies
i totally agree that its very basic as A.I. might go but its still a decision tree (i suppose) so it counts :D ... it might be more versatile in conversation than some meatsacks i met i have been planning to build a personal assistant to help me remind when to put out the trash and speak based on motion detection for quite some time but money dictates otherwise. Wether that's A.I. or not ... i think its more like a speaking database with a decision tree on it ... if ... then ... else ... quite linear BUT so is most humans, if you look around, and you're a bit of a weirdow, or a halfbreed betazoid theres at least 3/4th of people of which you can predict with certain accuracy what they will say in any given moment so are they A.I. or simply A. ?
debatable. As to the guy below, yea ,it's dealing with grief, but its also avoiding, like the will to deny in a way
so
omg i talk an awful lot for somene who woke up ten minutes ago and hasnt had more than half a cup of coffee
stop doing that cat
yes precious

lost people

[zephvark]

I wanted to rebuild a friend a long time ago. It really wasn't going to happen on a 386, but I figured I'd anyway get to know him better. He was not exactly excited at the prospect. Well, privacy issues, plus the fact that the whole project was not remotely plausible.

It still isn't . The AI isn't anywhere near close to being able to mimic a real person, yet. But I understand why you would try that, and... go for it.

We may not be able to live forever. It's possible that some semblance of who we were can. Call them poems of humanity.

Re:20 Minutes Into The Future

[clickety6]

More like Black Mirror's "Be Right Back" episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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...

Re: I'm not sure about this....

[telchine]

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.

My thoughts exactly. Something disturbs me greatly about this story. It reminds me of those that live with the dead body of a loved one because they don't want to believe they're dead.

At some point they're going to have to turn the AI off, or come to the realisation that this person wasn't just the sum of their IM output before they can move on, and the grief will hit them then.

Yes... it's wonderful, isn't it!

[denzacar]

Yes... it's wonderful, isn't it!

http://www.maxheadroom.com/ind...

Black Mirror S02E01

[Selur]

reminds me of Black Mirror Season Episode 1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back_(Black_Mirror))

Obligatory XKCD

[BlackPignouf]

https://xkcd.com/686/

Re:Y Combinator may already be involved

[CustomSolvers2]

From a technical (programming, data analysis, mathematical, etc.) perspective, this article is plainly useless. It seems a very simple implementation working under highly restricted conditions; something neither complex nor innovative. There is a tremendous difference between calling something AI (really easy, mainly lately and for some people) and having a good-enough AI algorithm (really difficult or plainly impossible, depending upon your exact expectations).

This is a non-technical article/development from and for non-technical people. A marketing-based development?

Prior Art, 1984

[Orgasmatron]

`How you doing, Dixie?'
    `I'm dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to figure that one.'
    `How's it feel?'
    `It doesn't.'
    `Bother you?'
    `What bothers me is, nothin' does.'
    `How's that?'
    `Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb
was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later
he's tossin' all night. Elroy, I said, what's eatin' you? Goddam thumb's
itchin', he says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it's the _other_
  goddam thumb.' When the construct laughed, it came through as something else,
not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case's spine. `Do me a favor, boy.'
    `What's that, Dix?'
    `This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this goddam thing.'

He jacked in.
    `Dixie?'
    `Yeah.'
    `You ever try to crack an AI?'
    `Sure. I flatlined. First time. I was larkin', jacked up real high,
out by Rio heavy commerce sector. Big biz, multina-
tionals, Government of Brazil lit up like a Christmas tree. Just
larkin' around, you know? And then I started picking up on
this one cube, maybe three levels higher up. Jacked up there
and made a pass.'
    `What did it look like, the visual?'
    `White cube.'
    `How'd you know it was an AI?'
    `How'd I know? Jesus. It was the densest ice I'd ever seen.
So what else was it? The military down there don't have any-
thing like that. Anyway, I jacked out and told my computer to
look it up.'
    `Yeah?'
    `It was on the Turing Registry. AI. Frog company owned
its Rio mainframe.'
    Case chewed his lower lip and gazed out across the plateaus
of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority, into the infinite
neuroelectronic void of the matrix. `Tessier-Ashpool, Dixie?'
    `Tessier, yeah.'
    `And you went back?'
    `Sure. I was crazy. Figured I'd try to cut it. Hit the first
strata and that's all she wrote. My joeboy smelled the skin
frying and pulled the trodes off me. Mean shit, that ice.'
    `And your EEG was flat.'
    `Well, that's the stuff of legend, ain't it?'
    Case jacked out. `Shit,' he said, `how do you think Dixie
got himself flatlined, huh? Trying to buzz an AI. Great...'
    `Go on,' she said, `the two of you are supposed to be
dynamite, right?'

    `Dix,' Case said, `I wanna have a look at an AI in Berne.
Can you think of any reason not to?'
    `Not unless you got a morbid fear of death, no.'

Re:How is this different from brain uploading?

[SuricouRaven]

It's a crude mimic. Give it a couple more decades.

Re:No he didn't

[mark-t]

I''d argue that the only reason we won't ever have AI is because the all-important part of it, "intelligence", is ill defined in the first place. Although we seem to presume to have intelligence ourselves (rather baselessly, I might add), lacking a rigid definition, how could we ascertain if any other apparently living creature is genuinely intelligent, or if they were actually just issuing programmed responses to stimulation, not unlike computers?

If we can come up with a solid definition of what intelligence actually is, we may very well be able to create AI. But probably not before.

Re:Y Combinator may already be involved

[CustomSolvers2]

Unfortunately, you are right. But there are still levels in the tech/marketing distribution and this one seems to consist almost exclusively in marketing.

A simplistic chatbot from old emails = rebuilt him using artificial intelligence?! And the linked page is even worse! There isn't a single word about the algorithm or how it is supposed to work, just pictures and text about this guy, about why she decided to build it and similar abstract ideas completely unrelated to programming or data analysis!

Re:20 Minutes Into The Future

[93 Escort Wagon]

Wasn't this the plot of a Max Headroom episode?

Yes, it was.

I feel for these people... but they really need to figure out how to move on.

Re:No he didn't

[0100010001010011]

Stop with this "Mechanization" bull shit. We don't have Mechanization and probably never will with the way technology is going. And no, a little cogged gear or cotton gin isn't Mechanization even though the hypesters and people wishing for Development dollars try to fool the ignorant into thinking it is.