When a journalist uses AI to interview dead children, it is time to ask what the boundaries should be? | Gaby Hinsliff

jOaquin Oliver was only 17 when he was shot in the corridor of high school. An elderly teenager fired with a high-powered rifle on Valentine’s Day America’s deadliest high school shooting. Joaquin said for seven years he thought it was important to talk about what happened in Parkland, Florida that day, “so we can create a safer future for everyone.”

But sadly, what happened to Joaquin that day was that he died. Strange Metal Voices Talk to Former CNN Reporter Jim Acosta During the interview This week is actually digital ghostly on the alternative: A person’s AI, trained in teenagers’ old social media posts at the request of his parents, and they are using it Strengthen their campaigns For stricter gun control. Like many families who have lost their loved ones, they tell their children’s stories over and over again, with few heartbreaking situations. No wonder they are now desperately pulling every possible lever, wondering what the dead kids hear in Washington.

But they also want his father, Manuel, to admit, to just hear his son’s voice again. His wife, Patricia, Spend a few hours Ask AI questions and listen to him, “I love you, mom.”

No parent in their right brain would judge a bereavement person. If it is a comfort to use the lost child’s bedroom as a temple, talk to their tombstones, sleep in a T-shirt, and still smell lightly like them, it’s not someone else’s business. People stick to their abilities. After 9/11, the family listened until the tape actually ran into the answer left by the loved ones, calling home, saying goodbye, burning towers and hijacked planes. I have a friend who still rereads the old Whatsapp to communicate with her late sister, and another occasionally texts her dad’s summary of the phone: She knows he is certainly not here, but is not ready to end the conversation. Some even give their minds, with suspicious cliches and the cliches of the dead. But this is precisely because it is difficult to let go, and sadness is easily exploited. And soon there may be big business bringing back the dead on the numbers.

And furry AI-generated videos Rod Stewart Played on stage this week, which includes the late Ozzy Osbourne greetings to all kinds of dead music legends, which may just be the meme of glory. Otherwise it may be for temporary purposes, such as AI Avatar Recently created In the family of a shooting victim in Arizona, spoke to the judge during the sentencing of the gunman. However, over time, this can be a more challenging challenge to self and the notion of death. What if it was possible to create a permanent AI copy of the dead, perhaps in the form of a robot, and talk to them forever?

Resurrection is a power of the gods, not because of gently surrendering to some technical brothers with the Messianic complex. However, although the legal right to live does not allow your identity to be stolen for artificial intelligence, Become more maturethe rights of the deceased were confused.

Reputation is with us – the dead cannot be forgotten – DNA is Protection after death. (1996 The Birth of Dolly Sheepgenetic clones replicated from single cells trigger global Ban human cloning. When my father passed away, I personally never felt like he was really in the coffin. He clearly found his old letters box, his garden, sound recordings. But everyone’s sadness is different. What if half of a family wants to resurrection with digitalization, and the other half doesn’t want to live with ghosts?

Joaquin Oliver Ai will never grow up – he will always be at the age of 17, trapped in the amber of his teenage social media character – and it is ultimately his killer’s fault, not his family. Manuel Oliver said he knew Avatar was not his son and did not want to bring him back. For him, it seemed more natural to expand the way the family campaign has evoked Joaquin’s life story. However, the plan has made his AI a little uneasy about accessing social media accounts, uploading videos and attracting followers. What if it starts to hallucinate or turns to a subject that doesn’t know what real Joaquin will think of?

While there is currently a noticeable glitch about AI avatars, it may become increasingly difficult to distinguish them from online humans from real humans as technology improves. Perhaps soon after, even government agencies that have used chatbots to handle customer inquiries have begun to wonder if they can deploy PR avatars to answer journalists’ questions. Acosta, a Former White House correspondentit can be said that it should be better known about the already dirty waters than agreeing to interview people who do not exist technically than in the post-truth world. But for now, perhaps the most obvious risk is that conspiracy theorists use this interview as “provement” to show that any story of their beliefs can be a scam, and so does the same with lies Famous peddling Infowars host Alex Jones follows the shooting of Sandy Hook School.

However, the professional challenges involved here are not only for journalists. As artificial intelligence develops, we will increasingly live in our own synthetic versions. It’s not only a relatively original Alexa in your kitchen or a chatbot in your laptop – although there’s already someone’s story Anthropomorphism AI or even Fall in love Together with Chatgpt – but the adjustment to human emotions is more delicate. When one in 10 British adults tell researchers No close friendsOf course, AI companions will have a market, just like today with a cat or a stranger’s life scrolling on Tiktok.

Perhaps, as a society, we will eventually decide that when other humans are unfortunately not available, we are satisfied with meeting people’s needs. But there is a big difference between loneliness for loneliness and the existence of universal comfort that awakens the dead and a command to lose a loved one. According to the scriptures that are often read at funerals, there is one time to be born and one time to die. When we are no longer sure which one is which one?