Currently, we are digging deep into the field of artificial intelligence. And this is a good thing. Because we are already using the relevant tools for ourselves and in projects with customers. We see the chances, but we are also becoming aware of the pitfalls. The following story shows some of them.
It’s about “Project December”. This makes it virtually possible to communicate with the deceased – but only virtually. For EUR 10, you can create an account on the projectdecember.net website and feed the artificial intelligence available there with information about a desired person, whether fictitious or privately known. After a little training, the AI imitates their personality and communicates accordingly.
Developer Jason Rohrer originally wanted to recreate the chatbot Samantha from the movie “Her” in 2020. The movie is about a love affair between a machine and a human. Rohrer made “Samantha” available online, and shortly afterwards users of the site began to recreate people themselves. One of them: Joshua Barbeau.
Barbeau fed the AI, which was still based on GPT-3 at the time, with chats between himself and his deceased fiancée. Shortly afterwards, he and the chatbot chatted in the same way as Barbeau had with his fiancée years before. And this is just one of many examples that have made “Project December” and similar projects possible.
Is this good grief management or ethically and substantively wrong? In any case, OpenAi has banned Bohrer from using GPT-3 because the project violates its guidelines. The project is now running via GPT-J-6B.
Concerns remain in many respects:
– Data protection (recreating a person without consent)?
– Psychological consequences (the possible prevention of grief work)?
– Ethics (the transformation of a human identity into a machine identity)?
How do you view this example? We look forward to your thoughts in the comments.
#KIunplugged is a project by Auctority GmbH together with Ralf Ressmann. We are taking a close look at where AI really stands right now and helping to classify the potential of generative AI
