Thanks for the recommendation, Jessica! It does sound like an intriguing story.
Summary of the book: "Through AI and salvaged writing, Ray is building a chatbot that writes in Fred’s voice, and he enlists his daughter, cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, to help him ensure the immortality of their family’s fraught inheritance." Of course, skeptic and satirist that I am, I'm drawn to a particular word in that sentence: immortality. I've written once before on my reservations about Ray Kurzweil's project of transhuman immortality, which I believe is misguided. This project with the chatbot clearly isn't the same thing – I'm not sure what I think. It sounds like a touching remembrance, but I wonder how replicating a voice from the past might change a family's memory of the real person. I assume Amy takes up such a question in her book. I'll look for the chance to read it.
Interesting and heavy stuff. Love it. Have you checked out -Artificial: Love Story by Amy Kurzweil? It is pretty cool and involves Ray.
https://books.catapult.co/books/artificial/
Thanks for the recommendation, Jessica! It does sound like an intriguing story.
Summary of the book: "Through AI and salvaged writing, Ray is building a chatbot that writes in Fred’s voice, and he enlists his daughter, cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, to help him ensure the immortality of their family’s fraught inheritance." Of course, skeptic and satirist that I am, I'm drawn to a particular word in that sentence: immortality. I've written once before on my reservations about Ray Kurzweil's project of transhuman immortality, which I believe is misguided. This project with the chatbot clearly isn't the same thing – I'm not sure what I think. It sounds like a touching remembrance, but I wonder how replicating a voice from the past might change a family's memory of the real person. I assume Amy takes up such a question in her book. I'll look for the chance to read it.
If you're interested in what I wrote about transhumanism and immortality: https://singulardream.substack.com/p/immortality-and-its-malcontents