Course:ELEC300E/CaseStudies/GriefBots
Context: Grief Bots
| Grief Bots |
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| Content / Topics |
| Grief Bots |
| AI Chatbots |
| AI Ethics |
| Relevant Analysis Strategies or Tools |
| Decision Impact Assessment |
| Plutchik's Wheel |
| Needs Analysis |
Grief bots are example of a thanatechnnology - a digital technology related to grieving, memorializing and bereavement. Grief bots (or AI Ghosts, death bots, AI avatars) are AI chatbots trained to mimic a person's speech patterns and conversation style, to help a person's loved ones cope with their death.
No specific laws or regulations currently address grief bots, although recent research has begin to investigate the ethical concerns that Grief bots introduce, and to recommended guidelines for Grief bot service providers. For example, this research, proposes a framework for analyzing the safety and ethics of grief bots, based around principles of consent, non-addiction (and non-manipulation) and the protection of minors. Researchers have identified four main groups of stakeholders:
- data donor: The person whose data is used to create the Grief Bot.
- data recipient: A party in possession of the data that could be used to create a Grief Bot
- service interactant: A party who interacts with the Grief Bot
- service providers: A company or party who trains a Grief Bot - generally a private company.
Case: Peer Evaluation Stress
This news article tells the story of Jason and Melissa Gowin and their three children. After a health scare, Jason Gowin signed up with the company "You, Only Virtual" to make a chatbot based on himself:
"It's very simple," Jason Gowin said. "You take text messages, or video or audio clips, and you upload them into this portal. It gets turned into their algorithm that they have built for each personality."
The Gowins reasoned that this chatbot would help support their young children in the event of their death.
Note that the scenario is similar to a hypothetical situation described by researchers in Section 5.1 of "Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars: on Responsible Applications of Generative AI in the Digital Afterlife Industry"
Recommended Readings
- 5 minute read, "'I love you robo-dad': Meet a family using AI to preserve loved ones after death": https://abcnews.com/Business/love-robo-dad-meet-family-ai-preserve-loved/story?id=111756468
Discussion Questions
Here are a few questions to help you begin analyzing the issues discussed in this case study. The purpose of these questions is to prompt reflection and further consideration: there are no right or wrong answers!
- Emotional Responses: Take stock of your immediate response to the idea of Grief Bots: outrage, discomfort, boredom, confusion, frustration, hope, interest? How might your unique personal experiences and perspectives inform this response? How can you leverage this response in a positive way?
- Contradictory viewpoints and outcomes: The family members described in the case study had a positive outlook on Grief Bots and chose to sign up with 'You, Only Virtual'. Come up with a hypothetical character who is more critical of Grief Bots. What arguments might this person make, and why would their perspective be different from that of the Gowins?
- Positive action: What is one concrete change that would you advocate for in response to this situation? This could be a technical change, a change to policy or regulation, a public education program etc.
- Interruptions and invitations: Choose one group of stakeholders (data donor, data recipient, service interactant, service provider). If a Grief Bot service was designed based on only the needs and priority of that group of stakeholders, what would the resulting technology look like?
- Physical connections: Existing grief bots are virtual simulations with no physical presence. How do you think your physical presence and physical experiences shape how you interact with and connect with people? Would your perspective on grief bots change if they had a physical (robotic) presence?
- Social and Historical Context: In what cases would you consider a Grief Bot company to be unfairly exploiting vulnerable people? Can you think of any other examples of the exploitation of grieving, dying or psychologically vulnerable people?
- Positive Practices: What is a practice that you could adopt in your personal, academic or professional life to address some of the issues discussed in this case study? Would you train a grief bot based on yourself? Would you write a digital will, or talk to your family about how they would like their digital footprint handled after their death?