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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

I've had a somewhat similar idea related to storing memories and I suspect that it's a fairly common idea that's occurred to lots of us.

However, this sounds ridiculous. The worst and most tone deaf example of how ridiculous this sounds is the part that shows an image of the deceased person with, "Hello Mike! Remember that time we went fishing?" with a spot for a reply.

I mean this literally, not rhetorically: who would honestly engage in that type of "conversation"? If you were someone who truly loved the deceased person and mourns their loss, I simply can't imagine this "conversation" taking place, unless you are in a spot of such grief and emotional pain that you're no longer able to cope and will grasp any straw that is offered. If you didn't truly love the deceased person, perhaps you would engage this way just for kicks? But it's still weird.

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"Mike, I miss you so much and wish you were still alive."

"Would you like to talk more about Mike I miss you so much and wish you were still alive?"

Sadly their marketing pitch does not convey an understanding of human interactions. The example you pointed out is reminiscent of a bad Turing test chat bot with a lexicon of topics to crawl through.

Still, the ability to dynamically generate a topical chat bot from a corpus of digital artifacts is interesting. I'm currently envisioning their work as a natural language parser front end with subject specific response decoration and a machine learning algorithm to trigger "self-initiated" conversation and topic selection.

I think their marketing pitch may be reflective of a lack of understanding of human interaction on the part of the founding team. 5 engineers, a business exec, and two HR people - but no psychologists or social scientists.

Too much what, not enough why IMO.

Let's grant that while technology today has a long ways to go, we will eventually be able to record enough memories and provide enough computational power to simulate human behavior.

When we reach that phase, would a simulation of your deceased loved one be a comfort?

I think we're getting into philosophy of mind, here.

I'm not certain that even at that phase it would be a simulation of the deceased. What makes us, us, and makes us want to interact with other humans on a regular basis, is that everyone changes. A static person doesn't exist.

Essentially, all this would be is a weirdly accurate and strangely formatted series of snapshots. Not a simulation really at all, but an electronic scrapbook.

Good point, so let's make sure the simulation engine also demonstrates curiosity, independence, autonomy and the ability to learn and assimilate new experiences. In short, a true virtual human brain starting a new life with the memories and personality modules of a deceased brain. Would that be a comfort to their loved ones?

We just stepped into the realm of sci-fi, so why not?

I believe it would be. It would give a grieving widow someone to grow old with. It would give adult children someone to brag to. It would give abused family members someone to finally confront without fear of physical retribution. It would open up that person's personality to experience the combined knowledge of all humanity on-line. I want that. I think others do, too.

Anyway. What I really meant is that this is marketed as you 2.0 essentially, and it's just not. For all intents and purposes, it's an electronic scrapbook.

> For all intents and purposes, it's an electronic scrapbook.

For at least the next 3 decades. But maybe after that...

Is the same distinction Gibson draws with the Dixie Flatline construct in Neuromancer. Constructs aren't AI and they aren't the person neither.

There would be no extra information coming in, so the conversations would quickly become repetitive.

The conversation itself is new information.

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