notes.husk.org/likes images.

Top, the Mundaneum (Répertoire Bibliographique Universel) created in 1895 out of the initiative of two Belgian lawyers, Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. (They also designed the cabinets) It was aimed to gather together all the world’s knowledge and classify it according to a system they developed called the Universal Decimal Classification. Via. Via. Bottom, installation view Anne Imhof, Youth at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Oct 1, 2022 - Jan 29, 2023. Photograph by Peter Tijhuis. Via. Also.

–

(Maura) Grossman (research professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and an expert in the ethics of AI) has a dear friend whose husband passed away and who goes to a medium to connect with him. While Grossman was originally spooked and worried her friend would get defrauded or encounter some psychological trauma, the medium ended up helping her process the loss.

“Was it such a bad thing to visit a medium every other week and converse with her deceased husband?” Grossman asks. “On the one hand, it’s a distortion of reality. On the other hand, it did help her get through this.”

Not everyone can afford to visit a psychic (or believes in the concept in the first place), but an AI capable of perfectly imitating a dead loved one could provide a similar experience for anyone struggling with the loss of a loved one.

Angela Sheldon, a sixty-two-year-old from Northern Virginia, would love to use Alexa to have a chat with her dead mother — who she tries to speak to now every day anyway. “As it is now, I get no response,” Sheldon tells Inverse. “So even if I just heard ‘Yes I understand’… I would probably be happy.”

Angeliki Kerasidou, from Amazon’s new invention could let you “speak” to the dead — but should it? - Amazon, Microsoft, and other tech giants are circling closer to digital immortality for Inverse, October 10, 2022. Via.