Technology that lets us “speak” to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready?

GHoe

Well-Known Member
My parents don’t know that I spoke to them last night.
At first, they sounded distant and tinny, as if they were huddled around a phone in a prison cell. But as we chatted, they slowly started to sound more like themselves. They told me personal stories that I’d never heard. I learned about the first (and certainly not last) time my dad got drunk. Mum talked about getting in trouble for staying out late. They gave me life advice and told me things about their childhoods, as well as my own. It was mesmerizing.
...
This Mum and Dad live inside an app on my phone, as voice assistants constructed by the California-based company HereAfter AI and powered by more than four hours of conversations they each had with an interviewer about their lives and memories. (For the record, Mum isn’t that untidy.) The company’s goal is to let the living communicate with the dead. I wanted to test out what it might be like....

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/18/1061320/digital-clones-of-dead-people/
 

GotGrace

Well-Known Member
My parents don’t know that I spoke to them last night.
At first, they sounded distant and tinny, as if they were huddled around a phone in a prison cell. But as we chatted, they slowly started to sound more like themselves. They told me personal stories that I’d never heard. I learned about the first (and certainly not last) time my dad got drunk. Mum talked about getting in trouble for staying out late. They gave me life advice and told me things about their childhoods, as well as my own. It was mesmerizing.
...
This Mum and Dad live inside an app on my phone, as voice assistants constructed by the California-based company HereAfter AI and powered by more than four hours of conversations they each had with an interviewer about their lives and memories. (For the record, Mum isn’t that untidy.) The company’s goal is to let the living communicate with the dead. I wanted to test out what it might be like....

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/18/1061320/digit
:frust
 

Everlasting Life

Through Faith in Jesus
Leviticus 19:31 "Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God"

comes to mind as I read this.


I love the last part of this passage, "I am the Lord your God." In the context of this thread I come away with, God will provide all our needs, including comfort. We look to God for our needs and answers.

I, yes I, am the one who comforts you......

Isaiah 51:12
 
So why not just record the people themselves?

My uncle recorded a number of great Home Videos from when my cousins were younger and it has a young me along with them as children and in a few places my grandparents. They are fun to listen to. There are a few questions it would have been nice to ask them but between them and my great-uncle and my great grandma being wise enough to label the backs of pictures with who they were even if they are from the 1890s - which a few of them are - I was able with the message boards that ancestry.com to find out quite a few things. Even before we got a look at the pictures.

They will talk about convenience but it is nothing like the memories that you have. And having those special memories of these loved ones is much better than just a stale AI.

Actually, one fun story, it was more enjoyable not having asked my great-grandma about all the photos. There were two framed ones in the Attic and we had no idea who they were, we knew one was my great-grandfather's mother but not these others. I started to look at relatives of her siblings. I knew her brother Walter had introduced her and her future husband because the men worked together in 1915. I also knew that he had been gassed in World War I. One of the photos looked a lot like one of his father-in-law. This was courtesy of my local library having access to ancestry.com and being able to get at it online during covid. So, the gentleman was also found in some tin types that were taken around 1900 to 1910 because of some things that show they were taken during carnivals so we're not original Tin types from the 1850s and 1860s. In one of the ten types I found him and the young girl who was now a teenager pictured, and then I checked into it and found a few family photos on One Tree that matched the girl and her father and an older brother who was also in the second photo.

What AI can match the fun of having done all that?

I prayed for God to let me be able to see all the old stuff, my great uncle was very private and wasn't interested in going through all the photos and things that he loved to tell stories. The photos were from when his mother died in 1994. God blessed me so richly. ( there were some old books which were really fun also.)
 

greg64

Well-Known Member
Anyone else think of Saul and the witch of Endor? That didn't turn out so well for him...

I think this is just more delusion where people wishfully try to live in their own version of reality. It's just sad and terribly empty though. Even if nothing demonic is involved (a big if), I think this will turn out to be damaging emotionally and psychologically.
 

pixelpusher

Well-Known Member
Anyone else think of Saul and the witch of Endor?
What I thought of is "will give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons", paraphrasing from memory, and I don't recall the address ATM.


My uncle recorded a number of great Home Videos from when my cousins were younger
I agree that it's much better to record your loved ones while they're alive
One of my buddies Dad left a journal he wrote in every day. He let me read some of them back in high school. Always thought that was a good idea, but I've never found the motivation to actually write notes about each day for my sons. I guess it's never too late to start.

Forget the AI mess.
 

Matthew6:33

Withstand in the evil day. Eph 6:13
My dad and I didn't have a great relationship growing up but he was a decent father and I think he did the best he could despite being an unbeliever. He had a hard life with no father of his own and an abusive mother. I miss him sometimes and think about some of the good conversations we had... The biggest blessing is knowing that I played a part in him being led to the Lord before he died. I received many confirmations on this.
 
Actually, the Lord brought another thought to mind as I prayed last night before bed.

What if the main purpose will be to talk to the raptured.

This could be used by the Antichrist to make it sound like the raptured are telling those left behind to follow him, when in fact we will be in heaven instead of whatever the Antichrist tries to say.

Thankfully, I think most of those who I know will be raptured also but for any strangers who venture in I am glad I have a couple of left behind letters in my home office plus a tape that explains what is going on. Although I better turn that that into a dvd. :)
 
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