I'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.
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.
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".)
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."
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.
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?
Over time, however, some Native Americans came to cherish photographs as links to ancestors and even integrated them into important ceremonies."