Community Perspective – Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska

I have to admit that I’ve been struggling with introducing myself for some time. It’s a very complex, difficult and taboo topic. When you say that you’re working in the area of death, or grief, or digital immortality, it [makes] some people uncomfortable. Usually, when I introduce myself, I say that I work in the field of digital death and digital immortality, which means that I’m trying to understand how the huge amount of data that we produce on a daily basis is used after our biological death. 

With the current state of technology, we are able to transform that data into various forms, including a lifelike simulation of deceased people. These simulations can hold the biography of a particular person, mimic their conversational style and personal traits. This exposes us to entirely new questions about people’s social, cultural, ethical, political views.

Trying to maintain or preserve our deceased is not necessarily new — different technologies since the piece of paper and in more recent history, the development of photography, radio, and television have been tools to preserve different aspects of people. Now we have interactive technologies — first social media, and now new AI-enabled technologies that create an opportunity for us to be in touch with our deceased. While this continues the legacy of earlier media, it also introduces something entirely new: the illusion of two-way communication, as these technologies suggest that death Ih doesn’t have to stop our relations. 

What is also unprecedented here, is the fact that we’ve let commercial companies entirely mediate our relationship with our deceased loved ones within the so-called “digital afterlife industry”, which represents today a whole new, autonomous, segment of the market. On the one hand, it shows the scale of commercial companies’ interest in digital (im)mortality, and on the other, it reminds us that caring for the dead in the digital world is almost entirely ingrained in the logic of the capitalist market.

The term “digital afterlife industry”, as I mentioned before, was introduced in 2017, by two researchers from Oxford University, to describe technologies and commercial companies that monetize how we relate to our dead. The earliest experiments in digital immortalization date back to the late 90s, but it is in the past decade that we have observed a huge acceleration, especially in the last 2 or 3 years, now driven by the development of generative AI. 

The most radical type of product or service that is offered by the market are recreation services. We use this term for companies that offer you the simulation of your loved one. We also have services that preserve your memories or wills in a way that normal archives do, or companies that simply send a message to appointed recipients when someone isn’t around to do so any more. Finally, we also have online memorial services that act as cemeteries. 

The digital afterlife industry is solely about profit at the moment and I think we need to find a way to introduce new values to this market, such as empathy, care, diversity, respect, and critical hope. We need to think about how to introduce these new values and what new stakeholders — universities, activists, artists and writers, museums — could do right in this industry and provide different perspectives. We should also work toward new ethical and design standards within the digital afterlife industry, as well as regulations, because at the moment, the entire industry is driven mostly by arbitrary decisions made by commercial companies.

What also strikes me is that when we discuss digital immortality, we discuss it in the exclusive technological, economic and cultural bubble of the West. If the West is providing answers to the problem of our mortality, it’s: Yes, we are mortal, but we can resurrect ourselves in digital form. My question is, who are “we”? Do we really all desire this? Do we really need it for ourselves, for our loved ones? 

The research questions within AI2050 that are most important for me are how people from non-Western countries perceive digital immortality, and to what extent that these projects reflect their interests or their needs in this delicate, intimate sphere. Also, what are alternative visions or conceptualizations of digital immortality? I don’t think that the simulation of the dead is the only option here. I think that different cultural backgrounds can offer us beautiful and very diverse answers to the question of how else we could use this data. Maybe there are even meaningful ways to delete this data. I think that we should equally value the right to be remembered — and the right to be forgotten.

It’s a very complex idea,  deeply embedded in culture, so there’s no single answer to this question. Immortality is — broadly speaking — about our fear of death.  Different manifestations of immortality reflect how we respond to that fear: for some, it’s cryonics, for others, digital immortality, and for many, religious beliefs provide comfort and help ease that fear. We also need the idea of immortality because we struggle to accept our own… mortality. Our brains have a hard time grasping the concept of non-existence, so we create different immortalization strategies as conceptual tricks to deceive ourselves. 

Some researchers suggest— one of them is Dr. Stephen Cave with whom I work at the CFI— that immortality is a fundamental concept for civilization. It helps us to develop and exceed ourselves, but also leads to grave harm like wars because of the very different understanding of immortality shaped by our cultures or belief systems.  Immortality is then a very powerful and complex idea to grasp, so it’s absolutely not a surprise to me that, in the 21st century, we are still struggling with it.

We have very different rituals and traditions and beliefs around death and immortality. I feel that in the digital world, we assume that because we are all connected to the internet, it means that we all share the same values, and because we use the same software or technologies, our  needs are the same. But it’s not true. Anything in such a delicate sphere, as death and grief are, require us to be much more open to different solutions. I’m curious how different cultures would respond to this question — the selected countries in my project are Poland, India, and China. I’m  looking forward to hearing their perceptions —  I don’t want to make any assumptions, and I want to discuss it as much and as openly as possible. 

If we encourage people to talk about their needs, we can expect different narratives and very different ideas, that hopefully in the future can be translated into more practical solutions. Maybe we will need new digital rituals that can help us “bury” the postmortem of others, or technologies that will help us delete our digital legacy in a meaningful way. I think the future should be much more diverse to be desirable, because we are very, very different.

Yes, in each of these three research locations, we’re planning a series of focus groups for non-experts. I call this “(Im)mortality Over Dinner”, referring to the well-established concept of “Death Over Dinner”— the idea is to talk about the topic of death in a relaxed and inclusive setting. “(Im)mortality Over Dinner” is designed to extend this notion and to invite ordinary people for dinner and have a nice and calm conversation about death, but in the context of the digital realm. What would happen with this extension after your biological death? What are your expectations? What is acceptable and what is not acceptable for you? 

I hope to encourage people to talk about their preferences regarding death and digital immortality — to hear themselves talking, maybe for the first time, about things related to this topic. Building trust between us as moderators of these “dinners” and our participants will be crucial throughout the process. What they share will, of course, be important from a research perspective, but I hope they will also realize that the preferences they express or the decisions they make regarding their digital legacy will, first and foremost, benefit them directly.

 It’s important to talk about these things for yourself and your loved ones and to actively create a space for this honest conversation as  it can be very transformative and relieving. It’s ironic, but talking about death can bring you to life.

It’d be great to draw attention to the fact that users have no protections at the moment and there are no regulations that could provide them at this moment. We also need responsible designers who care about ethical standards, and the diversity I was talking about — there are more possible approaches than only simulating the dead. I hope to enrich the discussion by providing different narratives around immortality. Narratives have a truly performative  effect, because they can influence public awareness, goals of the developers, and the way these technologies are regulated.

To be honest, no. As I mentioned, the digital afterlife industry is currently barely regulated and largely driven by decisions made by commercial companies. Ironically, it is a highly uncertain place for securing one’s immortality. What’s even more important is that my potential digital immortality is not just about me. The simulation of the deceased is not something I will take with me but something I intentionally leave behind for my loved ones. I know that my family would not be very happy to have me online as a deadbot – I completely respect that and I am glad that we are on the same page.