Calling the dead with A.I. and how it will end with nostalgia

Thomas Edison invented many things. He improved the telegraph. He created the phonograph that recorded sound and earned him a "wizard" nickname. He devised a better microphone for the telephone. A better light bulb that scaled electricity to buildings across the world. He had over 1,000 patents, a wheelhouse of creations embodied; he created a Silicon Valley-sized myth out of his laboratories in New Jersey that laid the bedrock for focused science and teamwork. A group of people tinkering, tossing fireball ideas, creating a better future with wire, metal, and electricity.

But how about a machine that could talk to the dead? A "spirit phone"? There is evidence Edison thought about such an apparatus, and that he maybe even believed it was possible. But there is no evidence he built such a machine. The rumor is there, though. One magazine in  1933 even went on to create a whole scene, a conjecture that Edison sneaked out with other scientist to test such a machine. They never did reach the dead in recorded history or fantasy.

Of course, many have wanted such a machine to exist. Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University wanted, I imagine, such a device.

Soon after her 15-year-old son Leland Jr. died of typhoid in 1884, Jane, and her husband, Leland Sr. tried to contact their son through spiritualism. Spiritualism wasn't so much a religion as it was an amplifier — a movement that used experiments and mediums to try and contact the dead. Many who came to practice it held on to their faith, but hoped spiritualism might serve as a doorway to the departed.

Leland Jr. died while Jane and Leland Sr. were away on trip across Turkey, Greece, and Italy. It was a heavy blow to Jane. The loss of Leland Jr. was devastating. It was the Stanford's only child. Jane had him at 39, after 18 years of marriage. He was the golden child, a woven part of their lives — such promise existed within him.

It's a loss that ejects your heart, plunges anyone into gruesome turmoil. The loss of a child, parent, a significant other is an obliteration — you feel like your own spirit is pulverized into a bunch of atoms. Answers, remedy, and relief are a constant wish. I imagine for Jane spiritualism provided a possible relief.

As it was for millions of Americans in the late 19th and early 20th century, who gave themselves over to spiritualism trying to call the far gone and dead. Jane and Leland Sr. brought over mediums and priests to their home on Nob Hill. There would be singing, silence, long written messages on a planchette that allowed “automatic writing” — writing without consciously thinking about it.  Ouija boards were also present. Jane once claimed a plant grew nearly a foot during a session, and in another a tortoise appeared, living out its days in Jane’s garden. However, the séances never seemed to directly receive a spiritual telegraph from their son.

In 1893, more tragedy reached Jane, as he her husband died in 1893. Jane dug her heals in and tried to convince Stanford's president at the time to construct a center for the scientific exploration of spiritualism. She unfortunately died soon after in 1905. She’d be buried on campus alongside her husband and son.1 Their bodies forever enshrined.

As absurd as it sounds, it's easy to imagine how Jane believed she could reach the dead. That science could open a portal of communication. As one writer in Stanford's Alumni magazine put it, spiritualism fit right in with the era:

In an era when new technologies such as telegraphy and photography emerged—and when sudden, early death remained a constant threat—spiritualism billed itself as a "scientific" religion offering proof of afterlife and the solace of a lasting connection with the dead. Followers weren't asked to take anything on faith.2

In today's era, the grieving and loss-stricken may turn even further from faith and towards science and tech. Technology, particularly the rise of Artificial Intelligence, provide possible routes for communicating with the those who are gone.

Founded in 2020, the startup You, Only Virtual (YOV), wishes to "advanced digital communications so that we Never Have to Say Goodbye to those we love." HourOne wants to replace the camera with a code — digital clones of yourself (or the departed, or anyone else) can be created into a video. HearAfter wants to "Preserve memories with an app that interviews you about your life. Then, let loved ones hear meaningful stories by chatting with the virtual you."

Each of these, and likely more, want their customers to upload data and train chatbots, video, pictures that will reconfigure responses from loved ones. You will be able to chat with your passed away grand mother. You will be able to have “new” pictures or video coded onto a screen, where they can chat with you like it’s a Zoom session. You in your office, the departed in some digital afterlife. Do we want this? I wonder too how these companies will profit off the memory given to them.

It's not just loved ones we can interact with after death. In theory, with any generative AI interface, you can illicit advice from a famous, or accomplished person who has likely been fed into the training of the AI company. Professor Ethan Mollick of Wharton recently said on a podcast he uses AI in the classroom to teach business classes where he asks students to tap the voices of famous entrepreneurs.3

For an "impossible" assignment Mollick asks his students to use AI to help do something they aren't capable of doing. If you can't code, you build software. If you can't design, you build a full graphic design project.

"Every assignment has to be critiqued by at least three famous entrepreneurs through history. And that might sound like fun because it teaches them how the AI works. But it also is important because one of the defining characteristics of entrepreneurship is hubris…But it also is important because one of the defining characteristics of entrepreneurship is hubris. And it is actually one of the number one predictors of entrepreneurial entry.

And so things that break your hubris are actually quite useful. And the easiest way to do that is to have strong perspectives that do that.

The reporter on the podcast asked for calcification: "And we should say, that when you say that you’re having your students talk with great entrepreneurs through history, they are not actually speaking with the dead. They are going to the chat bot and say, sort of critique this in the voice of Steve Jobs or something like that, right?"

Mollick agreed. This isn’t communication with the dead. It’s talking to synthetic voice, represented on what the dead person has said, and presumably what has been been fed to the AI database. But what does it mean to have a strong perspective? Is it possible to have a strong perspective if it’s an AI version of the person?

I can imagine future AI tutors of  entrepreneurial classes being fully trained on Steve Jobs rhetoric and thought process — after being fed everything that has been written, recored of Steve Jobs's life. But, do the world’s future entrepreneurs all want to be like Steve Jobs, and only his ideas and tutelage — wouldn’t that make the inventions of the future kind of full of homogeneity?  And I don’t know if I should trust the advice coming from an AI Steve Jobs — it still isn’t his mind in action, but rather a photo copy of his recorded thoughts.

On face value, this all might not be inherently a bad thing. Using a device that will help you learn from a perspective you wouldn’t normally ever have access to getting is not the worst thing in the world.  It solves network gaps (how many of us can call up pristine venture capitalists leaders to get their advice?)

Or getting in touch with the loved ones that are impossible to reach. It balms that scraped out feeling that you can’t actually call the person who died, no matter how much your body craves sending them a message.

But, it's not the same as talking to the real thing. And that’s where I have a quibble. The mirage that it it’s the same thing, or supposed to replace the real thing. For that’s how I imagine people will interact with “voices” of the dead.

And furthermore, there's this dance with immortality — a long desire and subject of sci-fi and fantasy. Nectome, a Y:combinator alum, wants to understand and preserve biological memory. Via their website the founder sums up this goal: "the idea that glutaraldehyde fixation may be able to preserve in a comprehensive way the information that encodes an organism’s long-term memories." Dunk your the brain into the compound glutaraldheyde and preserve it — along with the memories — in hopes of uploading it to software down the line.

Not yet in action, still in the research phase, Nectome wants memories to be recycled and used after the body dies. Your spirit will be humming within human-made tech. That’s the hope at least. Memory will use an artificial conduit, somehow. Edisonian invention meets spiritualism.

In addition to this being strange, it could be dangerous. To preserve old political views say. Or perserving just the privileged — those who can afford to have their brain pulled out of their skulls and kept in a lab, to keep old ideas on ice. Many dictator leaders have pushed for prolonging life from Stalin to Kim Jong Un. What if nefarious future leaders could upload their memories to be used to further rule? I can imagine a leader's dangerous and narrow ideals being locked in, preserved. It would be harder to initiate a change (or let one die out).

This of course is all fantasy at this point. There's no evidence these preserved memories will be linked up with some kind of consciousness with power — let alone a cloud or a new, synthetic body.

It's also a bit clingy to the past, yeah? Like digitizing Carrie Fisher for a Star Wars prequel or making Harrison Ford younger for an Indiana Jones flashback. What if we keep watching the same characters, the same narratives? What if we don't open the door to the new, the wild, unknown future? We have to learn to let go, even our heroes. We have to be willing to stumble into the dark, leap into something new.

In the case of YOV, the company that wants to make it impossible to "say goodbye," they want change our ability to move on, but in my view, this software, and its iterations, will block our ability to move on. Justin Harrison, the founder and CEO successfully created a Versona (a virtual persona) of his mother who was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer, which was part of his motivation to start the company. In an interview, Harrison says YOV's goals are to offer the "usual chit chat that you might have with somebody you love," and able to talk about the most frequent topics before the loved one passed away. To create a Versona of someone you love will offer:

“...at minimum, you’ll have this piece of technology that you can get some interfacing with and have some sense of normalcy with the person you care about as you’re healing from the trauma of losing them.”

I am not so sure if interacting, chatting with somebody who is dead will create a sense of normalcy. Because normally, when someone dies, we have to learn to live without them there.  We have to learn to say goodbye. Harrison declares on his Linkedin page he is "pursuing disruptive tech solutions to address grief and loss."

I am all for tools and tricks that help relieve pain. In my view, this tool, a Vernosa won’t fix grief and loss. You won’t even disrupt it. It’s not an economy (or is it?). Theses feelings are a part of the fabric of life, and are rooms many of us, among the living, will have to visit every now and then. This tech, to me, feels like a way to block entry to that room. No matter how confounding it may be, it’s still necessary, and in to some degree good. Good to find a way to move on, continuing with a life, even without the departed.

I can imagine Versona's (or something like it) being uploaded into humanoids, human-like robots, one day. But rather than embracing that thought, why not do what detective Deckard does in the sci-fi film Blade Runner 2049.

To use an another Harrison Ford example, in the sequel, Deckard is sitting across from the villain, corporate-tycoon Wallace played by Jared Leto. Wallace wants to know where Deckerd's child is located so Wallace can study her. Wallace's corporation creates replicants, a humanoid that's nearly human in every form only they can't reproduce.

Until Wallace gets wind that Deckard procreated with a replicant. Deckard’s partner, a replicant named Rachael, died in child birth while the child survived. It’s supposed to be impossible. Deckard helped hide the child in fear she’d be studied. Decades later, Wallace is after this child-that-shouldn’t be possible.

To give up the child, Wallace offers Deckard his beloved — reborn Rachael just as she was in physical form, reloaded with the memories they had on file.

Deckard sits in the chair and sees Rachel, reformed. She is exactly as she was before. You can see him watch a fantasy become real. Deckard watches her come out of his memory, into the real room — a fantasy anyone who has lost somone knows. But Deckard gets up, walks away. He refuses the offer.

Why? Why turn down such a sweet offer to live the life you once had? To be able to talk, touch, and be around the one person you loved so much in this world? Because it wouldn't be the same. Rachael hadn't been with Deckard for decades — they hadn't grown together.  It wasn’t the same Rachael that Deckard built a life with. People die, even humanoids in the future, die. To take that offer, to give into the copy of the dead would be giving into nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a comfortable. It's an escape, a chamber against the present, sticky with the past. Saying goodbye to the dead is painfully hard, but it might also be necessary to be among the living.

As Stephen Colbert tells Anderson Cooper on Cooper’s podcast about loss and grief, "It's a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that. But if you are grateful for your life. Then you have to be grateful for all of it.”

Colbert goes on to say living life is about connecting with other people — and sometimes that means connecting through suffering. It means letting go, living with the loss, letting it be a memory — not a chatting interface locked in a company trying to drill new interactions from the recorded memory — building an artificial interaction.

No matter how much we wish we could invite a medium into our home, or dial the dead, it isn’t going to change death’s swipe. No matter how much we want to send a text to an artificial manifestation, it won’t shake the fact out of your life: people, even the ones you love most, die. It takes a form of faith to accept that death can be good, can act as a gift, and is a part of life. It can be an inspiration, a form of connection, a gift for how to live your life here on earth.

It’s the hardest thing to work out of obliteration, but that’s often what the dead would’ve wanted: for you to keep on living to new experiences. Not dwell on the old.

We have bodies only for a little while, so enjoy them, in all their wildness and flavor and ability. Enjoy these real relationships, record them, remember them, and embrace what they give us — a vehicle to experience other people.