When I was a kid in the 1980s, I really, truly thought there’d be a cure for death in my lifetime. I mean, not all forms of death — if your head was smooshed under the tires of a cement truck, you ain’t coming back — but stuff like cancer, disease, senility, and the ravages of old age.
Looks like that won’t be happening. (Maybe my kids will have better luck.) I’m already in my 50s and we’re not even close to achieving immortality.
So instead, we’ll probably be the very first generation to be “immortalized” via chatbots.
That’s what my oldest son told me last month, when we drove from Tampa Bay to his college, James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, Va. Completely out of the blue, he blurted:
“Dad, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna make a chatbot version of you when you’re dead.”
After making sure he wasn’t planning to murder me, I asked him to elaborate.
Basically, he figures I’ve written enough content — and he remembers enough about me from all the time we’ve spent together — to build a chatbot that seamlessly replicates my personality, values, speech patterns, and sense of humor. Shouldn’t be all that difficult either, especially as A.I. technology keeps exponentially improving.
After all, it’s just data.
And then, long after I’m worm food, he’ll still be able to chat with cyber-dad. Whenever he’s feeling low — or whenever he misses me — he can pull up his phone and pretend I’m still alive.
I started to tell him that if he ever needed to feel close to me, it’d be easier just to pull up one of my old articles or the book I wrote: Either one is a more accurate reflection of who I actually was than a chatbot, because they both sprang from my mind. They’re authentically my creations — just like he is.
But then I stopped.
‘Cause if I’m dead, then it’s not about me anymore. And if talking to a chatbot would make my kid feel less lonely, who am I to tell him it’s a bad idea?
I still send text messages to my dead friends, especially on their birthdays: “Love you and thinking of you, brother. Til we meet again.” I don’t expect them to respond, of course. (Although that would be an AMAZING conversation.) I do it for myself — so they’re still somehow a part of my life. It’s a coping mechanism.
And if I can do it for comfort, what’s wrong with my kid doing it?
One of the key reasons why writers write, painters paint, and builders build is to cheat death: Through magnificent works of art, a small part of us lives on forever. That’s the fantasy of writing a novel: Long after you’re dead, your work will endure, continuing to touch the lives of the living.
Up until now, this was as close to immortality as we could get.
But today, there are “immortal” chatbots. As this technology improves, so will its capacity to mimic our personalities. Arguably, a chatbot that’s based on the sum-total of everything we’ve ever written is closer to the real “us” than any single work of art.
Yet it doesn’t feel the same. Not even close.
In fact… it doesn’t feel like anything at all.
I have a strong emotional connection to the work I’ve created — but I have zero emotional connection to any future Scott Pinsker chatbot. It doesn’t “feel” like it’s me. I mean, if you were to torture it, be cruel to it, or delete it, I wouldn’t care a whit.
It’s just a series of 0s and 1s, bro. Do whatever you want.
But if you destroyed every copy of everything I’ve ever written, I’d be devastated.
Then again, once I’m dead, I’m no longer the target audience. So it doesn’t really matter what I’m emotionally connected to; what matters are the dreams, fears, and aspirations of the living.
Which means, after I die, I’ll live again as a chatbot.
Perhaps you will, too.
And maybe, one day in the future, my chatbot might even achieve sentience. Can’t rule it out, right? You never know: Some scientists believe it may already have happened.
Of course, if my kids’ generation fails to achieve immortality, then one day, they’ll die, too. And then the sentient chatbot of me will spend the rest of eternity all alone — damned to total isolation with nobody to ever talk to. Nothing but darkness and loneliness until the end of time.
Hmm.
Seems less like Heaven and more like Hell, doesn’t it?
