I have a friend who wrote and artificial intelligence web interface a few years back which I chatted to for a while before it became annoying. What fascinated me most about it was it learned things as it went along.
I flirted with the idea of forming an Internet based company and employing a programmer to provide people with an interactive communication portal they could use to talk to their friends after they had died.
A bit like visiting a virtual clairvoyant, except without the parlour games and with direct access to the thoughts of your dearly departed.
The ideal would be for the nearly departed to upload their consciousness to the web interface before they died, except we don’t have the technology to do this (yet).
The next best scenario would be for the AI system to learn the nearly departed’s character and to mimic their responses, after all we are creatures of habit.
A well trained system should be able to mimic most responses to questions fairly accurately with a little knowledge about the nearly departed.
Only what happens if someone were to die suddenly without training the system?
And would it not seem a little weird joining a new website to talk to someone dead?
The experience needs to be more seamless.
What if…
I employed a programmer to write a plug-in for Facebook!
It could learn the nearly departed’s online habits while they were using the Facebook system.
Facebook could boast ninety million active live users, and several million active dead ones!
In fact they could offer a life and death time subscription, you could still be receiving this blog in 2567…
And nearly departed or not, I could install the application today as an insurance policy against sudden death so that my friends and family could ask me what I wanted to do with my millions.
Wonder if that would hold up in a Court of law.
See you on the other side of the looking glass,
January 19th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Interesting idea. The idea a person could back up their consciousness onto a server is something I always wondered about. Its something that will not happen in my life time unless their was a major technological breakthrough in the next 20 years.
I always thought about the idea of being able to feed video out from our imagination onto television could possibly destroy the entertainment industry if that technology ever came to fruition. It would certainly be a neat concept to be able to distribute epic human thoughts that could rival inflated Hollywood budgets. Talk about cutting out the middle man and the employment that the industry gives. I am sure it depends on how clear the thought is, cause I know my imagination is vivid, but still a tad over saturated in fog. But, if they can restore film prints from seventy years ago, I am sure they can restore the loss of quality that imagination transfer would probably have.
From a business perspective, your idea would be quite prosperous financially. It could end up being a proper way for people to cope with the loss of a loved one. But, there is always a dark side when dealing with people who have that unstable time in their lives when they lose someone. I suppose it all depends on which side of the coin your looking at it. Either way, there is money to be made.
As for the friends and family asking the application on where your millions should go?
Wow. . . Thats all I can say.
Nice post. It gave me something to think about.
Take Care
Kyle Johnsrud
Take Care
January 19th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Thanks for your comments – seems the US Government is interested in this idea too!
http://www.dodtechmatch.com/DOD/Opportunities/SBIRView.aspx?id=OSD09-H03