Imagine: you wake up to work, have breakfast with your spouse, then say goodbye. This is your normal working day. There is, however, something unusual about him: your beloved has been dead for many years. You didn't have breakfast with your spouse, but rather with her simulation. So what? This simulation lives in a virtual environment that can be accessed using a device like the Oculus Rift. A digital funeral agency has captured and analyzed tons of data about your wife or husband to create a digital likeness. His (or her) voice, gait, features and manners, play of laughter - everything exactly, almost perfectly, corresponds to the original. Spending time with your digital reincarnated spouse has become part of your daily routine.
Death is often viewed as the end of all meanings, the end of life experience. This may not always be the case. Even if the dead can no longer interact with us, we could interact with their imitation. It is death that prompts scientists to work on such projects.
Two hundred years ago, people did not even have the opportunity to look at the photograph of their dear departed friend, and several decades ago the same could be said about the video recordings. However, very soon, modeling will allow us to create exact copies of those who have died so that we can continue to interact with them as if they were still living. As new technologies come together to make simulating the dead a part of our lives, this opportunity is no longer a matter of strict science fiction.
With smartphones, advances in computing and massive collections of online data, a reasonably accurate picture of human behavior can be obtained. This kind of dataset will be the basis for creating simulations of the deceased. People have a natural tendency to attribute human traits to an object - and especially a person - so convincing a person that the model is animate will be easy. Think of Eliza, a multi-line computer program created in the 1960s that could convince people that they were talking to a therapist. Since then, bots have become much more dodgy and sophisticated.
Immediately it is worth stipulating that the simulation will never be as rich in emotion as the real one. But the chess program will not play in the style of a world champion either. Initially, IBM's Deep Blue was not tasked with playing an elegant game to defeat the greatest chess grandmaster - complex and straightforward algorithms were used.
If our hypothetical simulation can pass the Turing test, we can "recreate" a dead person. Don't think about attributing intelligence or consciousness to software. If its sole purpose is to communicate with a living person, the metaphysics of personal identity will not matter. Will this system have a soul? Consciousness? This is unimportant and distracts us from trying to create a model. It is not necessary to force the deceased to experience life - it is enough to do so that you can share your experiences with him.
Modeling can be seen as the next step in the evolution of bereavement. People write words of praise, build memorials, tombs, or simply put a photograph on the nightstand - in different cultures there are different types of mourning and mourning, which will always be mourning and mourning. In the case of simulation, the living will not be permanently cut off from the dead.
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Also, such modeling will change our attitude towards life. Imagine that you did not have time to say goodbye to everyone forever (that is, you died). The death of a friend will be greeted with deep grief and deep sadness, but simulation will keep a piece of him close - or even more. You can laugh with her at any time, remember funny moments from life, or tell something that you never dared to say.
At the same time, a world in which you freely interact with idealized models of other people can be detrimental to relationships in the real world. Why interact with your grumpy uncle in real life when you can interact with an idealized and much funnier version of him in the digital world? In the end, bots can be turned off and annoying features removed. Why bother about the living when the dead provide comfort and personality tailored to our whims?
New and unexpected patterns of behavior may emerge. Perhaps simulations will allow people to hold grudges even after the death of a person, to continue to insult and accuse a bot that is at arm's length. Alternatively, one could hasten the death of the other person in order to create a more pleasing version for himself after his death. True, in this case it will no longer be a man, but a simulacrum.
If we don't start discussing the possibility of creating a simulation now, they will be imposed on us when we are not yet ready for them. The road will be teeming with moral dilemmas and questions about the human condition. And soon the line that separates the living and the dead will become blurry.
Ilya Khel