Member-only story
AI Avatars of Dead Loved Ones: Dystopian Dream or the Next IVF?
How “playing God” can become normal
When new technology radically expands human capabilities, the public reacts with fear and revulsion. Then most people fall in love with what the technology enables them to do. Years pass, and we can’t imagine not having access to the technology.
The fear and revulsion strikes especially hard when the technology affects the fundamentals of human life — birth, death, and meaning.
How should we make sense of new AI technology that enables people to create avatars of their dead loved ones? Is this dystopian or utopian?
For those who believe in some kind of afterlife, the ability to create AI avatars of the dead raises profound spiritual and metaphysical questions. To believe in an afterlife, you must believe that our physical bodies contain some kind of non-physical component that persists when our bodies die.
Some call it a “soul,” others call it “subjctive conscious experience.” Everyone assumes that it includes our personalities and characters. “Cloning” or “resurrecting” that non-physical personality as an AI avatar seems to undermine both its uniqueness and its unique value.
