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> 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.



Yeah... this doesn't appeal to me at all (speaking as someone who lost one parent a few years ago, and sees the other growing frailer), but if he wants to use this form to capture and share memories, I guess that's fine.

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".)


> My main gripe is with the headline phrase "Artificial Immortality". It's so far removed from that as to be laughable.

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."


> There is nothing wrong with it

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.


>Actually there is.

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?




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