Using A.I. to Talk to the Dead

Three weeks ago, I lost my father. He was 92, a retired pediatrician revered and loved by many generations of patients, and I was his caregiver in the last years, a unique chance to reconnect with him after having a long and stupid battle of wills and pride. My old man wanted for me the same prosperous career that he had as a doctor, instead of the risky and ambitious adventure of being a fiction writer. I was only 13 and solemnly declared to him that my goal in life was not healing the bodies of patients, but the souls of unknown readers. If we had not been so alike he would have liked me a whole lot more, that’s a given. So, I treasured any stolen kiss, any furtive smile, and any complicity of his penetrating gaze I could get.Dear subscribers, imagine how irate I became yesterday when this grieving son read about the latest trick of the AI, which is having the voice of the deceased, talking via those stupid chatbots with a lookalike avatar, in a piece of The New York Times titled “Using AI to Talk to the Dead” by Rebecca Carballo. Have they no sense of decency? What’s wrong with these greedy b******s? Why they are treating us like idiots?The European Union last week passed a bill to begin to stop the abuse of trust by AI tech companies, while the US Congress still has to deal with a powerful system of lobbyists that paralyzed any initiative to put the genie into the bottle before it is too late.And please, don’t call me Boomer. I do love tech when is a helpful tool in the same way that I hate tech when it is a loaded gun inside my mouth. Let me elaborate on this.When the Digital Revolution began 25 years ago substituting paper for screens, I thought how convenient it was for a nomad to have an entire library inside a laptop. And now, you can have that library stored within a secured cloud if you lose the laptop, or even better, the ubiquitous tablet. I have sailed a lot, and sometimes I had seawater-related incidents. So, I say this from experience. However, when social networks began to lie about security and privacy, you could find yourself in a pickle, because of a Facebook tag or a tweet written after two drinks or texting to a dubious friend, a loaded weapon that ruined artistic careers in a flip.And yes, fearing the worst, I closed all my social media accounts, and tried to convince myself that a writer must remember always Homer, a blind man who told stories despite being illiterate. So, if we are facing the collapse of sustained reading thanks to the so-called smartphones, I still have my own voice to strike with.But now, with the latest advances in talking AI, we have to react. The answer is not slapping fines that tech moguls can afford. Instead, it’s time to confiscate fortunes and send people to jail. I mean it. How is it possible that we can now listen to bedtime stories told with James Stewart’s voice and drawl? Did he consent to that? That recent 5-month-long strike of writers and actors in Hollywood struck at the heart of the issue. This challenging future demands decisive actions and laws from every government, including China, where teen girls have virtual romances with avatars and walk the streets like real zombies. As Tristan Harris recently said: “A few cats are out of the bag. But we haven’t released the lions and superlions.”   Get full access to Don't You Dare To Think Out Loud! at javiertruben.substack.com/subscribe