Ben: Even though people think this whole concept is kinda weird, we’re going to talk about how this technology can help us, perhaps, improve our understanding of grief.
HereAfter AI is a company that is pioneering a new way to save and share the stories of the people you love. it, you know, came about first not as any desire to found a company or to develop new technology, but really just reckoning with a problem in my immediate family life, which was losing my father to lung cancer.James: Someone building the staff rather than critiquing this stuff happened in stages.
Amory: James and his family had always talked about doing an oral history project about his dad, to preserve memories and knowledge about their ancestry. But when the cancer diagnosis came…there was no time to waste anymore. He said it was a kick in the pants to start interviewing his dad. Amory: A part of this technology is not only teaching a robot basic language, but to embody human-like traits. To have a lil’ personality. I mean, when Siri first came out on the iPhone, everyone talked about how she was so sassy! Did you ever ask Siri dumb questions, Ben, just to see what she’d respond with?Ben: I didn’t. I know that if you ask Siri why she isn’t out on a date ….
Ben: James took the time to program the Dadbot from scratch in 2016. But there are now platforms that can automatically generate AI predictive text using a common program called GPT-3, just by uploading text messages, social media posts, and chat history. And that’s what Joshua Barbeau did. He’s the guy who lives in Ontario.
Amory: Joshua and the new Jessica talked for hours. He marveled how the AI mimicked her style of speech, emoji use, and sense of humor. Some things kinda spooked him.
Endless_Thread meganisonline . is really doing some good AI content lately. How wonderful! First RadioBoston now Endless_Thread. We need even more! This tech is starting to transform our society in ways we hadn't expected.