Twenty-eight books into the year, and C.S. Lewis is once again on my bedside table. This time, I am indulging in A Grief Observed, a ‘journal of essays’ put together and published following the death of Joy Davidman, Lewis’s wife, in 1960. It’s a strong, emotional read at any point in life, but I’m sure particularly so after a great loss. Though not in a position of such now as I read it, I feel the heaviness of the words on my chest.
Particularly what I want to highlight is the focus that Lewis has on the entity and existence of a person – who they were when they were alive, and the problems with keeping them alive in our memories following their departure. He finds it disrespectful to make the assertion that the dearly departed “would want this” or “would be happy with this” in regards to things happening in the land of the living. By saying so, we remove the agency of the deceased in their own thoughts and opinions about the ways of the world. Though it’s a statement of comfort and memory preservation, Lewis’ criticisms are not without merit.
And I write this in connection with the overbearance that AI has taken on our societies. Just today, I saw a comment on a post critiquing Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, stating, “The idea of AI immortalizing certain individuals is totally exciting to me. Imagine still being able to talk to an AI clone of Nikola Tesla, or a replica of Jesus Christ.” I leave the citation anonymous, because in an attempt to hold some restraint, I must say I think this person should be wholly embarrassed to have published such a thought with their name, job title, and picture attached to it.
Of course, there is danger in creating artificially intelligent personas of what we consider to be the great minds of modern human history. We do not know these people, their thoughts, the inner workings of their decisions. We cannot insert a flash drive into the brain and extrapolate the software. Instead, as Language Learning Models do, such AI would “guess” and “predict,” based on past behaviors, writings, and documentation, what this dead person would think in modern times. And dare I say, this is a disgrace to the dead. Nikola Tesla, for example, never lived in the 21st century. Actually, he never even lived through the nuclear age or the end of World War II. He died in 1943. He had no concept of the world we live in today. His mind does not belong here.
How unfair to a legacy of a person would it be to have a machine generate a persona that makes and shares opinions, and then upload them to the world as if it were human creation? Death is a finality, and to act beyond that, to attempt to ‘raise the dead,’ would be a perverted act, violating the autonomy of a person who cannot stand in defense of their inherent being.
And to create an AI replica of Jesus Christ is an action of heretics in the eyes of the Church and symbolic of a complete loss of faith, in my opinion. Not to mention, the dangers of a computer program to have control over the messaging of one of the most, if not the most, influential person in human history; someone who is a teacher of morals and actions. Because AI is not a means of public servitude as we see it being created; it is owned by the corporations and creators who control the code that develops it. What happens when politicians and conglomerates start paying for advertising on such tools – because they must become revenue-generating somehow, it is an expensive production process (fiscally and ecologically) – and suddenly the Lord is giving answers sponsored by Lockheed Martin? Ridiculous to say now, but it is completely conceptual in our modern reality of Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and the other power-hungry techies.
Years from now, I’m sure the Tech Bros of America will try to sell AI software that keeps our dead family members “alive.” To that, I ponder on C.S. Lewis’s words, his grief, and his struggles with memory preservation. What is the point of all this? What is the point of living if we only seek to exceed human intellect and design with machines? What is the point if the pursuit of happiness truly only becomes a hypertechno-capitalist apparatus that renders humans without purpose or direction? What is the point of living, if in dying, your principles, morals, and values can be altered, warped, or entirely fabricated?
Perhaps a tool like this would make it easier to grieve, easier like convincing ourselves what the dead would wish or feel in time beyond their passing. But to that I say the hard parts of living are intrinsically the parts that are most human. I think we owe it to ourselves to feel them.
Amazingly Graceless 