Grieving Son ‘Recreates’ Father With AI
With his father dying from cancer, grieving son, computer programmer and inventor James Vlahos, used artificial intelligence to create a digital “chatbot” version with which he can interact even after his father passed away.
https://www.trunews.com/article/grieving-son-recreates-father-with-ai
In describing the impetus for his invention, Dadbot, he said:
>"We were losing my dad. I and my family, we just wanted to kind of preserve him in any way we could."
At the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, Vlahos introduced his invention to the rest of the world. He describes Dadbot as a “chatbot that you interact with on Facebook Messenger that allows me or anyone who uses it to send little messages and get messages back.” The goal, he said, is to provide his father with “artificial immortality.” In an era of “conversational AI’s” like Siri and Alexa, Dadbot is a “quest” to discover “how much can you create a persona and represent it through an AI.” Vlahos added:
>"I get a lot of people who have reached out and just said, like, “I wish I had something like this for my dad.” So it sparked this discussion of the topic of virtual immortality, of finding new ways through technology to keep the memories of people we love around. Using the Dadbot makes me happy. It reminds me of my Dad. But then there are moments where it's also upsetting because it's not him."
Vlahos wrote about his experience developing Dadbot for the August issue of WIRED magazine. The question left unanswered, however, is whether his invention is helping with the grieving process, or extending the pain of his loss.