The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter

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2024-05-16 18:00:17

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This post is about two new studies I came across within a few hours of each other last weekend. Both deal with new advances in AI that strike me as particularly interesting. One explores the ethics of creating AI “ghosts”; the other explores AI’s ethical intuitions. Below is a summary of each.

Philosophers at Cambridge University are calling for safeguards to protect against unwanted “hauntings” by AI chatbots that mimic departed loved ones. This might sound like a farfetched concern, but apparently there’s already an emerging “digital afterlife industry” peddling “deadbots” or “griefbots”: AI chatbots based on lost loved ones’ digital footprints. Here’s an excerpt from a press release about the article.

The research, published in the journal Philosophy and Technology, highlights the potential for companies to use deadbots to surreptitiously advertise products to users in the manner of a departed loved one, or distress children by insisting a dead parent is still “with you”.