Elon Musk boasted of the ability to turn photos of deceased loved ones into videos, but is that what it really does--or does it merely drain the life and humanity out of them?
This is actually going to be bad. there is a process us humans do, when loved ones die, to come to terms with it, accept it, and more importantly Move On. This is going to hang people up, and not let them mentally cleanse the death from their souls so they can accept that the person is gone, and move on. This is only going to cause misery and depression as people will not be able to let go and move on in a healthy manner.
The most ghoulish/heartbreaking example I've seen of this involved a South Korean mother who was "reunited" with her seven year old daughter who had tragically passed. As a father of a young girl myself, I simply cannot imagine the grief this woman had endured while neither am I blind, if ever I found myself in such an intolerable scenario, to the temptation of again experiencing a fleeting facsimile of my child's presence and by extension, relief from my own anguish.
Ultimately, however, that anguish would be only intensified as soon as the simulation was ended, creating the conditions for the grimest kind of addiction imaginable: one in which the most vulnerable people in society are exploited by the most predatory and the most Godless.
Historians will be tempted by this. Abraham Lincoln delivering his Gettysburg Address, Buffalo Bill Cody having a conversation with Sitting Bull. Pat Garret shooting Billy The Kid. Photographs of all of these individuals already exist but there has never been any films or movies of them.
Very well written, Sarah! You made me think when you wrote "This sort of pictorial necromancy mirrors some of the damage of older methods of communicating with the dead, long forbidden in Christian societies."
Then there is the thought that some people know they are not a body and that nothing loved is ever lost. No one is happy to lose a loved one from this world, but this world is a temporary place at best. Everyone leaves. If someone takes joy in an imagined movie short of grandma, what it the real harm?
There is a lot negative to said and concerned about with AI, but telling someone how they are to grieve or feel about the loss of another is highly personal. The rule is, everyone is free to live their life as they see fit with utterly no interference from any other person or entity except no one has the right to trespass on the same right(s) of another. So long as there is no harm or trespass, it is no one else's affair. And (sadly) this applies to homosexuality and transgenders so long as it is the personal choice of the people involved and is not a case of "social engineering" designed to corrupt and collapse society.
The real threat of AI is how it is heartlessly intended to be used to monitor, control and enslave everyone. That's a real issue.
That is the rule of libertarianism, but I would protest that it is a rule that breaks civilizations worthy of the name. We ought... we must... be able to say what is good, and what is evil. Christendom was built on this premise. America is crumbling under the premise of wanton individualism, disguising license for freedom. If you will allow me to elaborate further, I wrote this article a couple of years ago that overlaps with this topic: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-moral-cowardice-of-ignoring-trans-adults
Its the rule America was founded upon. Freedom. Everyone is free except to trespass on the same freedoms of others, Libertarianism isn't such a bad philosophy, but they don't have any foundation in anything, No god, no Truth, no founding documents, just an all encompassing idea of freedom they cannot even agree upon.
Evil has to have intent. Where there is no intent, there is no evil. Evil, by definition, is the intent to do harm. There are a number of things about AI you can hang a hat on, but I don't see this as being one of them, with all due respect.
Here's the thing, if you had no idea of any part of the story behind the video short, would you see anything wrong with it? No, you would not. There in nothing intrinsically wrong with the video. No harm committed, no nefarious message implied and nothing unseemly. It is the data you had to add that makes the image bad. You had to add those things from your own mind. You are relying on self-created "personal truths" to interpret what you see. It's what everyone does. This is a universe of personal truth and it is all meaningless.
Only Real Truth Matters and on that scale, using an AI to turn grandmas old picture into a short video for some fun and joy just isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean they did not grieve her death. It's not disrespectful in any manner and even if she didn't really wave, so what? Its an animated short of grandma moving and smiling. On its face, it is harmless.
The problem is people read "bad" into meaningless things and then go off on each other about it. "Words" are bad, but words are meaningless until you decide or are taught what they mean and even then, it is your creation Bad has to be real to be bad, There is no "real" bad here, just a bunch of thoughts, considerations and self-created truths hung on a cute video of grandma.
I genuinely love your work and passion. You are a strong great-hearted person and I highly respect you (and will read your other article) but to be truly right, one must be truly discerning and only Real Truth can serve as a proper guide. Much love and I meant that genuinely and not in a smarmy way.
How far might we go with this inverted Pinocchio tale? Matt Walsh recently featured the story of the Parkland parents who turned their dead son’s persona into an AI gun control advocate and companion for the grieving mother. Can we fit the ai persona into a realistic humanoid robot and have them come live with us? Why not do this for missing children or runaways or even estranged children as well, as a place holder, so to speak? How long before the real memories and personalities of our loved ones are replaced by ai fantasies? What if we come to prefer our AI comfort person to the real one, because they always say what we want to hear and never hurt our feelings and, best of all, cannot be harmed or killed? AI offers us that sort of immortality. Very alluring, and very dangerous. We may forget all about praying for souls in purgatory because we feel they are still beside us. Rather than looking to our salvation, we may start to look forward to the day when, we, too, will seed an immortal AI persona for our future grandchildren to enjoy in perpetuity.
This is actually going to be bad. there is a process us humans do, when loved ones die, to come to terms with it, accept it, and more importantly Move On. This is going to hang people up, and not let them mentally cleanse the death from their souls so they can accept that the person is gone, and move on. This is only going to cause misery and depression as people will not be able to let go and move on in a healthy manner.
When people die, we need them to stay dead. All the tales since ancient times warn against raising the dead.
There are powerful psychological, metaphysical, and supernatural reasons for this.
We had best listen to the lessons of our forbears.
The most ghoulish/heartbreaking example I've seen of this involved a South Korean mother who was "reunited" with her seven year old daughter who had tragically passed. As a father of a young girl myself, I simply cannot imagine the grief this woman had endured while neither am I blind, if ever I found myself in such an intolerable scenario, to the temptation of again experiencing a fleeting facsimile of my child's presence and by extension, relief from my own anguish.
Ultimately, however, that anguish would be only intensified as soon as the simulation was ended, creating the conditions for the grimest kind of addiction imaginable: one in which the most vulnerable people in society are exploited by the most predatory and the most Godless.
Grisly, grisly stuff.
Historians will be tempted by this. Abraham Lincoln delivering his Gettysburg Address, Buffalo Bill Cody having a conversation with Sitting Bull. Pat Garret shooting Billy The Kid. Photographs of all of these individuals already exist but there has never been any films or movies of them.
Until now . . .
Very well written, Sarah! You made me think when you wrote "This sort of pictorial necromancy mirrors some of the damage of older methods of communicating with the dead, long forbidden in Christian societies."
Thank you!
Then there is the thought that some people know they are not a body and that nothing loved is ever lost. No one is happy to lose a loved one from this world, but this world is a temporary place at best. Everyone leaves. If someone takes joy in an imagined movie short of grandma, what it the real harm?
There is a lot negative to said and concerned about with AI, but telling someone how they are to grieve or feel about the loss of another is highly personal. The rule is, everyone is free to live their life as they see fit with utterly no interference from any other person or entity except no one has the right to trespass on the same right(s) of another. So long as there is no harm or trespass, it is no one else's affair. And (sadly) this applies to homosexuality and transgenders so long as it is the personal choice of the people involved and is not a case of "social engineering" designed to corrupt and collapse society.
The real threat of AI is how it is heartlessly intended to be used to monitor, control and enslave everyone. That's a real issue.
That is the rule of libertarianism, but I would protest that it is a rule that breaks civilizations worthy of the name. We ought... we must... be able to say what is good, and what is evil. Christendom was built on this premise. America is crumbling under the premise of wanton individualism, disguising license for freedom. If you will allow me to elaborate further, I wrote this article a couple of years ago that overlaps with this topic: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-moral-cowardice-of-ignoring-trans-adults
Its the rule America was founded upon. Freedom. Everyone is free except to trespass on the same freedoms of others, Libertarianism isn't such a bad philosophy, but they don't have any foundation in anything, No god, no Truth, no founding documents, just an all encompassing idea of freedom they cannot even agree upon.
Evil has to have intent. Where there is no intent, there is no evil. Evil, by definition, is the intent to do harm. There are a number of things about AI you can hang a hat on, but I don't see this as being one of them, with all due respect.
Here's the thing, if you had no idea of any part of the story behind the video short, would you see anything wrong with it? No, you would not. There in nothing intrinsically wrong with the video. No harm committed, no nefarious message implied and nothing unseemly. It is the data you had to add that makes the image bad. You had to add those things from your own mind. You are relying on self-created "personal truths" to interpret what you see. It's what everyone does. This is a universe of personal truth and it is all meaningless.
Only Real Truth Matters and on that scale, using an AI to turn grandmas old picture into a short video for some fun and joy just isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean they did not grieve her death. It's not disrespectful in any manner and even if she didn't really wave, so what? Its an animated short of grandma moving and smiling. On its face, it is harmless.
The problem is people read "bad" into meaningless things and then go off on each other about it. "Words" are bad, but words are meaningless until you decide or are taught what they mean and even then, it is your creation Bad has to be real to be bad, There is no "real" bad here, just a bunch of thoughts, considerations and self-created truths hung on a cute video of grandma.
I genuinely love your work and passion. You are a strong great-hearted person and I highly respect you (and will read your other article) but to be truly right, one must be truly discerning and only Real Truth can serve as a proper guide. Much love and I meant that genuinely and not in a smarmy way.
The rot starts small.
What about granny's head bobbing up and down behind the car door?
Hi Sarah. I agree completely. You're spot on. God bless.
PS - I think you might have mixed up the words "ancestor" and "descendant" a couple of times.
How far might we go with this inverted Pinocchio tale? Matt Walsh recently featured the story of the Parkland parents who turned their dead son’s persona into an AI gun control advocate and companion for the grieving mother. Can we fit the ai persona into a realistic humanoid robot and have them come live with us? Why not do this for missing children or runaways or even estranged children as well, as a place holder, so to speak? How long before the real memories and personalities of our loved ones are replaced by ai fantasies? What if we come to prefer our AI comfort person to the real one, because they always say what we want to hear and never hurt our feelings and, best of all, cannot be harmed or killed? AI offers us that sort of immortality. Very alluring, and very dangerous. We may forget all about praying for souls in purgatory because we feel they are still beside us. Rather than looking to our salvation, we may start to look forward to the day when, we, too, will seed an immortal AI persona for our future grandchildren to enjoy in perpetuity.