Resurrecting the Dead Will Create a Burden for the Living复活逝者将对生者造成负担

AI technologies promise more chatbots and replicas of people who have passed. But giving voice to the dead comes at a human cost.

人工智能技术有望带来更多的聊天机器人和逝者“复制品”，但让逝者发声需要生者付出代价。

Giving enough data， one can feel like it’s possible to keep dead loved ones alive. With ChatGPT and other powerful large language models， it is feasible to create a more convincing chatbot of a dead person. But doing so， especially in the face of scarce resources and inevitable decay， ignores the massive amounts of labor that go into keeping the dead alive online.

只要有足够的数据，人们就会觉得死去的亲人能够继续活着。有了ChatGPT和其他厉害的大型语言模型，就可以造出更接近逝者的聊天机器人，但这种做法——尤其是考虑到资源稀缺，衰亡难免——忽略了让逝者存活于线上所需付出的大量劳动。

Someone always has to do the hard work of maintaining automated systems， as demonstrated by the overworked and underpaid annotators and content moderators behind generative AI， and this is also true where replicas of the dead are concerned. From managing a digital estate after gathering passwords and account information， to navigating a slowly-decaying inherited smart home， digital death care practices require significant upkeep. Content creators depend on the backend labor of caregivers and a network of human and nonhuman entities， from specific operating systems and devices to server farms1， to keep digital heirlooms alive across generations. Updating formats and keeping those electronic records searchable， usable， and accessible requires labor， energy， and time. This is a problem for archivists and institutions， but also for individuals who might want to preserve the digital belongings of their dead kin.

维护自动化系统的艰苦工作总要有人来做，比如生成式人工智能背后的注释者和内容审核者，他们加班加点地工作却得不到合理的报酬。复制逝者所涉及的工作也是如此。从收集密码和账户信息后管理数字资产，到设法操作慢慢衰亡的智能家居遗产，数字殡葬服务需要做大量的维护工作。要想将数字遗物一代代传下去，内容创作者就要依赖护理人员的后台劳动，以及由人类和非人类实体（比如特定的操作系统和设备，还有服务器场）构成的一整个网络。更新数据存储格式并确保这些电子记录永远可搜索、可使用、可访问，需要付出劳力、精力和时间。这不仅是档案管理人员和管理机构面临的问题，也是希望为已故亲属保存数字财产的个人面临的问题。

And even with all of this effort， devices， formats， and websites also die， just as we frail humans do. Despite the fantasy of an automated home that can run itself in perpetuity or a website that can survive for centuries， planned obsolescence2 means these systems will most certainly decay. As people tasked with maintaining the digital belongings of dead loved ones can attest， there is a stark difference between what people think they want， or what they expect others to do， and the reality of what it means to help technologies persist over time. The mortality of both people and technology means that these systems will ultimately stop working.

即使付出了这么多努力，设备、数据储存格式和网站仍然会像我们这些脆弱的人类一样死去。尽管人们幻想拥有可以永久运行的自动化住宅，或者可以存活几个世纪的网站，但计划性报废策略意味着这些系统肯定会衰亡。负责维护已故亲人数字财产的人可以证实，人们认为自己想要的东西（或者说他们期望别人做到的事情）与帮助技术长期存续下去的现实内涵之间，存在天壤之别。人和技术的寿命都有限，因此这些系统终将停止工作。

Early attempts to create AI-backed replicas of dead humans certainly bear this out. Intellitar’s Virtual Eternity， based in Scottsdale， Arizona， launched in 2008 and used images and speech patterns to simulate a human’s personality， perhaps filling in for someone at a business meeting or chatting with grieving loved ones after a person’s death. Writing for CNET3， a reviewer dubbed Intellitar the product “most likely to make children cry.” But soon after the company went under in 2012， its website disappeared. LifeNaut， a project backed by the transhumanist4 organization Terasem—which is also known for creating BINA48， a robotic version of Bina Aspen， the wife of Terasem’s founder—will purportedly combine genetic and biometric information with personal datastreams to simulate a full-fledged human being once technology makes it possible to do so. But the project’s site itself relies on outmoded Flash software， indicating that the true promise of digital immortality is likely far off and will require updates along the way.

制造基于人工智能的逝者复制品的早期尝试无疑证明了这一点。总部位于亚利桑那州斯科茨代尔的Intellitar公司于2008年推出了一款名为“虚拟永生”的产品。该产品利用图像和语音模型来模仿人的音容笑貌，也许可以在某人去世后代替他参加商务会议，或者与其悲伤的亲人聊天。一位评论员在为CNET网站写的文章中说，“虚拟永生”是“最有可能把小孩吓哭”的产品。2012年，Intellitar公司倒闭，没过多久其网站也消失了。倡导超人类主义的组织Terasem因创造了BINA48（依照Terasem创始人的妻子比娜·阿斯彭制造的机器人）而闻名。该组织资助了一个名为LifeNaut的项目，声称一旦技术成熟，该项目可以把基因和生物识别信息与个人数据流结合起来，模拟出一个形神俱备的人类。不过，该项目的网站本身还依赖于过时的Flash软件，这表明真正实现数字永生可能还遥遥无期，而且需要不断升级更新。

With generative AI， there is speculation that we might be able to create even more convincing facsimiles of humans， including dead ones. But this requires vast resources， including raw materials， water， and energy， pointing to the folly of maintaining chatbots of the dead in the face of catastrophic climate change. It also has astronomical financial costs： ChatGPT purportedly costs $700，000 a day to maintain. This is not a sustainable model for immortality.

有了生成式人工智能，有人就猜测我们也许能够制造出更接近逝者乃至全人类的复制品，但这需要大量资源，包括原材料、水和能源。由此可见，在灾难性的气候变化之下，维护逝者聊天机器人是何等愚蠢。这种做法还会带来数额惊人的经济成本。据说ChatGPT每天的维护费用高达70万美元。这不是一种可持续的永生模式。

There is also the question of who should have the authority to create these replicas in the first place： a close family member， an employer， a company？ Not everyone would want to be reincarnated as a chatbot. In a 2021 piece for the San Francisco Chronicle， the journalist Jason Fagone recounts the story of a man named Joshua Barbeau who produced a chatbot version of his long-dead fiancée Jessica using OpenAI’s GPT-3. It was a way for him to cope with death and grief， but it also kept him invested in a close romantic relationship with a person who was no longer alive. This was also not the way that Jessica’s other loved ones wanted to remember her; family members opted not to interact with the chatbot.