I dated someone weeks after their mother had fallen off a cliff. She tackled her sibling out of fear they would leap after and had to wait hours to hear the news that what they'd feared had...
I dated someone weeks after their mother had fallen off a cliff. She tackled her sibling out of fear they would leap after and had to wait hours to hear the news that what they'd feared had happened. I remember her haunted voice when she confessed she was afraid she was starting to forget the sound of her mom's voice, or the details of her face.
I've also spent a good amount of time in a nursing homes and got to see people with impaired memories come alive at things like hearing music from their youth.
There's definitely potential to exploit grief or insecurity (e.g., mediums / séances), but that potential exists because of an overwhelming pain people aren't able to move past.
There are things that seem offputting, sick, or useless that have a place as a tool in therapy. ELIZA was an early ('60s) example of a bare-bones chatbot that, iirc, had some therapeutic benefit. We've figured out just the right amount and schedule of spiderclowns to expose someone to in order to create or extinguish a phobia.
It can be abused, and it can be used wrong, but I think this sort of technology has potential for a similar controlled processing of grief.
In videos like this no one is being tricked into thinking a chatbot or a photo-turned-video is real. A photo or grainy home video isn't real, either. The memories are real, and the rich media is what was able to pull those memories up.
Pardon if it sounds too insensitive, but isn't this supposed to happen? We evolved this way so we can move on from the past. The good and the bad both end and we don't to choose one over another.
I remember her haunted voice when she confessed she was afraid she was starting to forget the sound of her mom's voice, or the details of her face.
Pardon if it sounds too insensitive, but isn't this supposed to happen? We evolved this way so we can move on from the past. The good and the bad both end and we don't to choose one over another.
I'm personally a fan of the Torment Nexus books, and can't wait to see how it's fully realized now that the tech companies have started throwing money that way.
I'm personally a fan of the Torment Nexus books, and can't wait to see how it's fully realized now that the tech companies have started throwing money that way.
The podcast Endless Thread is working on a miniseries about bots, and coincidentally this is what their latest episode is about. In it they interview the CEO of HereAfter, one of their users, and...
The podcast Endless Thread is working on a miniseries about bots, and coincidentally this is what their latest episode is about. In it they interview the CEO of HereAfter, one of their users, and a psychologist that has an skeptic POV. Check it out if you have some time.
The first episode in the series also has some interesting bits about ELIZA.
I have 12 years of an electronic journal in case my grandchildren want to know the kind of human their Pop was. I doubt there will be any takers. My own grandfather left my mom some recorded...
I have 12 years of an electronic journal in case my grandchildren want to know the kind of human their Pop was. I doubt there will be any takers. My own grandfather left my mom some recorded cassette tapes of his musings and over the years they were misplaced/set aside/lost/destroyed. Children are something else again.
There's a little known movie with Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson, Reminiscence, if anyone is interested. It's more mystery-suspense and like Inception plays with the idea of people getting so involved in their memories being electronically relived that they can't build new futures. But I can see how for some, finding closure would be a welcome benefit.
I've made some simple VRChat worlds and I like brainstorming ideas for things to put in them. I've seen a few VRChat worlds where the creator put their own VRChat avatar into the world as an NPC,...
I've made some simple VRChat worlds and I like brainstorming ideas for things to put in them. I've seen a few VRChat worlds where the creator put their own VRChat avatar into the world as an NPC, often frozen in an attentive or sleeping pose at a reception desk. I remember thinking it would be interesting to create an NPC of myself that was more animated (using recorded motion data and voice clips from myself) and maybe even reactive with some AI. (In a regular VRChat world it would have to be something simple, but it is also very fun to imagine what could be done with a GPT-tier AI system controlling the NPC.) It would be a unique neat thing to find in a VRChat world, my friends would find it familiar, and it would serve as an interesting introduction for the people who find my world and then later meet me directly in VRChat.
A little while after thinking of this, I realized if I did this, it could outlive me. I could imagine a friend visiting the world after I'm gone. I don't think I'd decide to do the project specifically for this use (seems a little narcissistic to intentionally make something as your own memorial, though then again is this not one of the functions of most art made by people?) but I can see this consideration affecting some details. Though honestly I'm probably not going to end up doing anything more than the low-effort version of this idea (static unmoving model of my avatar in-game).
That's a Black Mirror episode.
I dated someone weeks after their mother had fallen off a cliff. She tackled her sibling out of fear they would leap after and had to wait hours to hear the news that what they'd feared had happened. I remember her haunted voice when she confessed she was afraid she was starting to forget the sound of her mom's voice, or the details of her face.
I've also spent a good amount of time in a nursing homes and got to see people with impaired memories come alive at things like hearing music from their youth.
There's definitely potential to exploit grief or insecurity (e.g., mediums / séances), but that potential exists because of an overwhelming pain people aren't able to move past.
There are things that seem offputting, sick, or useless that have a place as a tool in therapy. ELIZA was an early ('60s) example of a bare-bones chatbot that, iirc, had some therapeutic benefit. We've figured out just the right amount and schedule of spiderclowns to expose someone to in order to create or extinguish a phobia.
It can be abused, and it can be used wrong, but I think this sort of technology has potential for a similar controlled processing of grief.
In videos like this no one is being tricked into thinking a chatbot or a photo-turned-video is real. A photo or grainy home video isn't real, either. The memories are real, and the rich media is what was able to pull those memories up.
Pardon if it sounds too insensitive, but isn't this supposed to happen? We evolved this way so we can move on from the past. The good and the bad both end and we don't to choose one over another.
It's also the core plot of the Battlestar Galactica spin off series Caprica.
Love that show!
Everyone, dystopian fiction is not intended to be a suggestion box for society, please and thank you.
I'm personally a fan of the Torment Nexus books, and can't wait to see how it's fully realized now that the tech companies have started throwing money that way.
The podcast Endless Thread is working on a miniseries about bots, and coincidentally this is what their latest episode is about. In it they interview the CEO of HereAfter, one of their users, and a psychologist that has an skeptic POV. Check it out if you have some time.
The first episode in the series also has some interesting bits about ELIZA.
I have 12 years of an electronic journal in case my grandchildren want to know the kind of human their Pop was. I doubt there will be any takers. My own grandfather left my mom some recorded cassette tapes of his musings and over the years they were misplaced/set aside/lost/destroyed. Children are something else again.
There's a little known movie with Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson, Reminiscence, if anyone is interested. It's more mystery-suspense and like Inception plays with the idea of people getting so involved in their memories being electronically relived that they can't build new futures. But I can see how for some, finding closure would be a welcome benefit.
I've made some simple VRChat worlds and I like brainstorming ideas for things to put in them. I've seen a few VRChat worlds where the creator put their own VRChat avatar into the world as an NPC, often frozen in an attentive or sleeping pose at a reception desk. I remember thinking it would be interesting to create an NPC of myself that was more animated (using recorded motion data and voice clips from myself) and maybe even reactive with some AI. (In a regular VRChat world it would have to be something simple, but it is also very fun to imagine what could be done with a GPT-tier AI system controlling the NPC.) It would be a unique neat thing to find in a VRChat world, my friends would find it familiar, and it would serve as an interesting introduction for the people who find my world and then later meet me directly in VRChat.
A little while after thinking of this, I realized if I did this, it could outlive me. I could imagine a friend visiting the world after I'm gone. I don't think I'd decide to do the project specifically for this use (seems a little narcissistic to intentionally make something as your own memorial, though then again is this not one of the functions of most art made by people?) but I can see this consideration affecting some details. Though honestly I'm probably not going to end up doing anything more than the low-effort version of this idea (static unmoving model of my avatar in-game).
Woah, neat. 21st century spiritualism.
That is sick.