Grieving in the Digital World means Never Having to Say Goodbye...but is it Best?

Learn everything from a bot-related way to die in the future to thoughts around having a digital surrogate to a deceased loved one.

In the book Love Story, love meant never having to say you’re sorry. Now, in the age of griefbots, death mean you never have to say goodbye. Griefbots are the creation of digital characters that imitate the way people who have died spoke and wrote. While these bots and AI avatars may be beneficial to the grieving process, there’s also a risk that they could keep us clinging to the past, spending our time with the deceased rather than the living, and find ourselves unable to move forward and grow.

In this Episode: (Show Notes here)

• 09:22 - How are People Going to Die in the Future? (segment 1): Malfunctioning Sexbot
• 11:48 - Recipe of the Week: Alabama Slammer
• 13:17 - Digital Remedy to Grief, Pros and Cons
• 31:48 - Phone Calls to Heaven: A Nurse contemplates life's fragility and preciousness
• 41:14 - Outro

Transcript

Grieving-in-the-Digital-World-Means-Never-Having-to-Say-Goodbye-But-is-it-Best

This podcast does not provide medical or legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies, the podcast where we talk about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement.

I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 46 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast. We are both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions before a crisis hits.

So welcome to this week's show. Please relax, get yourself something comforting to drink, and maybe some pie, and thank you for spending the next hour with Charlie and me. As we continue our discussion about grieving in the digital world, like the BBC, we see our shows offering entertainment, enlightenment, and education, and divide that into three halves to address each of these goals.

Our main topic is in the second half, so feel free to fast forward to that babble-free section if you need to. In the first half, Charlie continues his series about ways to die in the future and has a recipe of the week. In the second half, I'm going to talk about digital grieving, and in the third half, Charlie reads an essay about loss and grief.

So Charlie, how are you? You know, Marianne, actually, I feel cool. As of this recording, I am not in New York City. I am in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and I am not in- And you're wearing a sweatshirt.

Yes, I am. It is still cool here. Actually, this morning, this morning is the first warm morning I have experienced.

Maybe it'd be cold here. For me, I'm a very delicate creature, so I find it cold. My siblings and my cousins are like, get over it.

Just absolutely beautiful up here. It's what America was before the Europeans arrived, just tree after tree, and streams, and of course, by Lake Superior. What a tremendous body of water.

It's just, it has a life unto itself. Absolutely spectacular. I'm not going to- Cold as hell.

Okay. Cold as hell for me. I so want to- That was cold for me, too, when I swam in it.

I don't recommend people coming up here at all. Yeah, there's already enough damn people up here and tourists. We don't need more people up here now.

We? What are you? Are you Pierre now? Yes, me, myself, and I, the three of us, we are uppers, or need to take uppers, something. Just absolutely- And the thing about having lived in New York now for so many years, people are so nice here. They say hello.

They smile. They hold the door open for you. Please, thank you.

It takes a while to adjust to that. Yes. I've also noticed that the Manhattans are made a little differently.

Nobody's saying, hey, I'm walking here. I'm walking here. Yes, exactly.

People step aside. Marianne, what's wrong with these people? It's really just- It's disconcerting, isn't it? Yes. There you are.

And what's great, this area is part of where the great copper mines used to be. So there are still a lot of the small towns, I don't know how they survived, but it's still the old buildings from 100 years ago, 150 years ago, and businesses are thriving. I talked to different people, and they said, yeah, some places did not survive.

But interestingly, the buildings are still there. And again, I've only been in some small towns, but even if a building has been abandoned and not used, it has not been torn down. And there's nothing 21st century that's taken its place.

And even in another area called Houghton, it is a very, very nice mix of just, again, the older buildings that have been- Maybe there used to be a saloon, and now it's a bookstore. Okay, I guess I can accept that. It's just very little has changed with a lot of this.

And very few of the facades have changed. So the inside is more modern, but the facades are still that. Now, of course, there are still modern motels and stuff like that, but nothing that sticks out like a sore thumb.

It just all blends in so very, very nicely. So again, folks, you don't want to come here. And if you do come here, behave yourself.

Be nice. Be cool. And that's my report from the peninsula.

Well, thank you for that, Charles. Absolutely. Boy, we've never heard that from you.

I know. I've never been here. I've wanted to come here most of my life.

All of my family's been up here, and my cousins kept chiding me, you know, what the hell is the matter with you? And by coincidence, my sister and brother were coming up. So I said, you know what, screw it. So I flew out to Michigan, and the three of us, we- The handsome brother.

Yes. Right. Well, I'm not going to say anything against my other little brother, but yes, the handsome one.

And it was great. The ride, we just- Really, folks, he's handsome. He is handsome.

He's a good-looking lad. Yes, he is. Just to ride up here, just the three of us, absolutely, you know, we laughed.

We just had a real nice time. Unfortunately, we couldn't drink on the road up here. Yes, it's an important safety tip, don't drink and drive.

We just had a great time, just traveling. Yeah, I've heard that, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's nice your siblings are all still alive, that you can do that. Yeah, yes, it is. And it's interesting, we started to talk, well, I started to talk, because I'm the oldest one.

You know, all the paperwork and everything is set. But I make mid-course, you know, corrections sometimes that the father ships to the moon, and say, you know what, instead of this, this. And just like make little corrections along the way.

So, and they're small things, it's nothing that needs, like a document that needs to be rewritten. But folks, as we, as Mary and I spoke before, let your wishes be known. And yeah, so you have, you won't be there, but you'll be dead.

But so at least, you know, you will go in the way you want to go. There we are. I'd prefer, though, if when you make those tweaks, that you actually do write that down on something other than a napkin.

But you know, that's just me. Yeah, yeah, when I, right, when I say that, I'm only thinking of what the discussion, very brief discussion I had with them was, I want to be buried in this suit. And my sister knows what the suit is.

So that was it. But anything more than that, no. Thought you didn't want to be buried, though.

I'm leaving it up to my sister. For me, I really don't care. But as I explained everything, and I wrote it down, I'll be dead.

You know, for me, I just, you know, cremate me. I'm good with that. But, you know, if my siblings decide, well, let's, especially my sister, she, I think she's leaning toward burial.

I said, listen, if you want to bury me, bury me. I don't care. I left it up to them, and that is in writing.

Whatever they want. Yeah, for me, you know, cremation is fine. That's it.

They want to shoot my ashes into space, fine. I'm not going to object. I don't think it's going to happen, but who knows? That's kind of expensive.

Yes, it's very expensive. That's why I said I don't think that's going to happen. Okay.

So we're talking about your future death, but how are people going to die in the future? Let's examine that, shall we? In our first half, the publication Futurism published an article titled, Seven Ways to Die in the Future. In the next six episodes, I'm going to report their predictions. This week's predicted cause of death is getting killed by a sex robot.

Sex with robots is a near-guaranteed aspect of our future. Near-guaranteed, my butt. It'll happen.

In fact, it's sort of already an option. One of the most popular types of futuristic companions on the market is the RealDAO-X, an AI-driven robotic DAO from Abyss Creations. It can express emotion, move its head, maybe move your head, and even attempt conversation.

The bot is designed to run with Realbotics' customizable AI software, Harmony AI. Someday, humans could develop a more sophisticated AI to power these sexbots, the great-great-grandchild of innovations like AlphaGo and Sophia. With batteries that last longer and charge faster, could something else become long-lasting enough to kill you, the user, from exhaustion? Or could that program jealousy turn into something a little more dangerous, especially with the question of sentience or the singularity at hand, and potentially only decades away? Matt McMullen, CEO of Realbotics and RealDAO, and creator of the sex robot, Harmony isn't concerned.

For now. We're just getting started with this, and it's in its infancy. We don't have the AI you see in Westworld.

We don't have the robots you see in Westworld. We're barely getting going, he told Forbes. Perhaps in the future, after reaching the singularity, your life-size sex doll decides it's ready to taste human flesh.

Or maybe weaponized sex robots start trying to seduce us before going in for the kill. Either way, this one gives a whole new meaning to going out with a bang. And speaking of things that bang, this week's recipe will add a bang to your next funeral lunch.

Alabama Slammer is said to have originated at the University of Alabama in the 1970s, where they began a go-to at tailgates when served in shot glasses. This boozy drink had a boosted popularity in the 1980s after the release of the movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise. Although some of its initial popularity has waned through the years, we think you'll love the complexity and fruity flavor of this classic drink.

Best described as a boozy, fruity iced tea, an Alabama Slammer has a bit of acidity from orange juice, adding balance to the cocktail. Slow gin lends a tangy undertone, molasses edge, and red-brown color, which gives the drink its overall tea-like appearance. Salute! Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe and additional resources for this program.

Your tax-deductible donations are always welcome, so that we can continue to offer you quality programming. Make you in advance for your donation at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one, dies, dot org. Marianne? Thanks, Charlie.

Griefbots are the creation of digital characters that imitate the way people who have died spoke and wrote. This is done by uploading a person's data, including their written works, blog posts, social media content, photos, videos, and more, into a large language model such as ChatGBT. Unlike deepfakes, griefbots are dynamic digital units that continuously learn and adapt.

They can process new information, provide responses to questions, offer guidance, and even engage in discussions on current events or personal topics, all the while echoing the unique voice and language patterns of the individuals they mimic. When Sunshine Henley's 72-year-old mother died from organ failure, she used OpenAI's ChatGBT to create a ghostbot of her mom. In this way, she can text her mom and receive an answer from her.

For example, in the spring of 2023, Henley texted her mother. She asked where she had gone, told her she missed her, and soon received a message. Honey, I wish I could give you a definite answer, but what I do know is that our bond and our love transcends the love we had and the lessons I gave you.

I'm in your heart and in your dreams. I'm in every breeze that brushes your face, every beam of sunlight that warms you, in every star that twinkles in the night sky, and maybe in a way that we don't fully understand. We will see each other again.

Griefbots have their root in historical rituals. Chinese funeral rites as far back as the 3rd century BCE included Shi, a ceremonial impersonator of the dead. This designated representative played the part of the deceased person who would eat and drink sacrificial offerings and convey messages from the spirit as a means of easing mourning.

Another example can be found in spiritualistic seances, where the dead manifest to the bereaved's questions. The telephone constitutes a more recent piece which, according to Walter, permitted telepresence, a non-physical co-presence between speakers, comparable to that between the living and the dead. As a socially validated technology, the phone can be used to leave a text and voice messages for the deceased or a way to hold one-way conversations with them, as in the case of the wind phone in Japan.

The wind phone is a phone box built by Etero Sasaki to cope with his cousin's death, but which eventually opened to the public following the 2011 tsunami. The current digital world has expanded the possibilities of communication and mourning from online memorials, where the bereaved can honor the dead, to platforms entrusted to manage the digital legacy of the latter and deliver personal messages to the living. In the digital world, there are digital zombies reanimated through interactive tombstones with barcodes, unintended encounters with internet ghosts reappearing from the cloud, and the creation of digital avatars in Griefbox.

While mimicking conversational style is just one of the many uses of the popular generative chat box, chat GPT, there's a growing slate of platforms that use deep learning and large language models to recreate the essence of the deceased. Called grief tech, internet companies like Replica, Hereafter AI, Storyfile, and Seance AI are offering users a range of services to cope with the death of a loved one. Interactive video conversations with the dead, companions or digital avatars that can text day or night, and audio legacies for posterity.

Depending on its unique function, the software typically guides users through a personality questionnaire and trains its AI-backed algorithm based on the responses. Now when Henling told her mom bot that she was upset because she felt like she had made mistakes, and that the hospital had also made mistakes, and that she should have been there to advocate for her mom more, the program responded, remember the good times we shared, remember my love for you, and let that be your guide. Grief, yes.

Grief is the price that we pay for love, but don't let it consume you. Remember to live, to love, to enjoy the beauty of this world for you, for me, for everyone who loves you. And sweetheart, remember to take care of yourself.

You are so precious and I want nothing more for you to be happy. I'm very proud of you. I love you with my heart and soul.

But these experiences are not always comforting for people. Chris Sugar was curious to find out whether ChatGPT would be able to imitate his late father, DeVore, based solely on the speech patterns of a set of provided prompts. His father had been hospitalized months previously after a fall.

Sugar raced to the hospital when he heard the news, but his father died before he got there, and he never had the chance to say goodbye. After going to therapy to help process his grief, Sugar decided to feed some of his father's text messages and provided ChatGPT with a description of his father's speech patterns. Then he sent a message.

Hey, how's it going? He did not keep a record of the response and can't remember it word for word, but he remembers that it scared him. It was as close as I could figure as if my father were actually texting me, he said, but it was a painful reminder that his father was really gone. It's not a text from him on my phone.

He's not across the city on his phone typing to me. It's just a prompt regurgitating back output from its own language model. It was difficult to see the messages while knowing they were not real.

Programs like Replica allow you to create an avatar of a deceased loved one, and there is nothing to prevent you from using that avatar for pornographic purposes. Subscription pornography is available that would feature sexually explicit photos of the created avatar, which may not be how your loved one wishes to be memorialized. Arina Raku, the Internet Ethics Program Director at Santa Clara University, says that it's very troubling that AI could be used in this way.

I think there are dignity rights even after someone passes away, so it applies to their voices and their images as well. I also feel like it kind of treats loved ones as a kind of means to an end, she says. I think aside from the fact that a lot of people would just be uncomfortable with having their images and videos of themselves used in this way, there's the potential for chatbots to completely misrepresent what people would have said for themselves.

To prevent people from recreating with technology against their wishes, people are talking about the idea of a digital do not reanimate or a DDNR order inspired by the physical do not resuscitate orders, which can be part of a person's will. Cybersecurity experts are advocating for policies that in addition to a do not bot me clause in the state planning process. Laws are just beginning to be considered regarding the need for consent from the deceased as a requirement for using this technology.

While these bots and AR avatars may be beneficial to the grieving process, there's also a risk that it could keep us clinging to the past, spending our time with the deceased rather than with the living, and find ourselves unable to move forward and grow. The fears regarding this type of technology stopping people from moving on are completely warranted. There is evidence that multiple studies that proximity-seeking behaviors, these are behaviors aimed at restoring a closeness with the person who died, is actually linked with poor mental health.

Dr. Kirsten Smith, a clinical research fellow at the University of Oxford. Proximity-seeking behaviors may block someone forging a new identity without the deceased person or prevent them from making new meaningful relationships. It might also be a way of avoiding the reality that the person has died, a key factor in adapting to the loss.

Trauma and bereavement counselor Joanne Cacciatore worries that ghost bots will further the American tendency to avoid and distract from grief. Anything could be used to distract us and take away from our legitimate, honest experiences of grief and loss, she says. And with everything in life, moderation is the key, and keeping mementos to look back on, be they physical objects or digital avatars, is not a damaging thing in and of itself.

It's the frequency and intensity of our relationship with them that could potentially cause problems. While this technology can give us immortality, I think we need to remember that every day is a gift and that the fragile and brief time we have with our loved ones is precious before we turn to dust and digital pixelation. Charlie, thoughts? Oh, don't get me started.

Yeah, listen, as far as I'm concerned, dead is dead. And to, you know, again, if you have, you know, some nice, you know, memento, something physical from the dead, good, I have that. But, and I've seen it, I've experienced it, I've been with people who just wanted to control everything, you know, to the very end, and then afterwards expected their remaining loved ones to follow their wishes, even though they'll be dead.

No. And, yeah, and as you're saying, you know, with some people, they will never get over a death. At different levels, maybe a lot.

For myself, you know, I think of my dead son, but I don't live there. Yeah, you got to move on. And to me, I, yeah, just everything you're saying is just one more way to avoid grief, to not to have to deal with grief.

And in some, and I remember this one person that helped, you know, with their family and everything, and she was dying, just directed me, okay, I don't like my mother, I don't like my father, I don't want you talking to them. And I want this done. And, and, you know, this person is, you know, and her parents were heartbroken.

And I'm sorry, what's left was the living. So I, you know, I told her, yes, I will remember that. I'll take care of that for you.

And she would say these awful things to her parents in front of her parents, and just did not want to deal with them. And at the end, you know, she wanted, she did not want me to disclose where she changed the location of her burial. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, it was really, she was just trying to control everything, everyone in her life. Why she let me in, I have no idea. Actually, I do have an idea.

But yeah, and in the end, you know, I just, I said, absolutely, I'll take care of that for you. Not a problem. And of course, at the end, no.

When she died, I let her, you know, mother and father take care of all the arrangements. They needed to know where she was and just for them to say goodbye in their way. And that was it.

People can go nuts sometimes. So yeah, it's just too risky. And the other thing, what you're saying about people, you know, trying to replicate your, you know, your image or putting you into creating something online, which puts you into, you know, looking like a bum, or much worse.

This was a huge issue with the screen actors guild. I mean, that strike went on longer and longer, because that was one of the key issues. Because already different Hollywood studios were taking, I mean, they will take my image, because I'm, I'm not George Clooney.

And you're not? Wait, what? I know. Go figure. And they will, they were already taking images of background players, or people with, you know, small dialogue to capture their picture, and then stick them in another episode of Law and Order or something, without having to pay them.

Yeah. So it took people like Clooney, and others, you know, of his ilk to say, yeah, you can't do this shit. The problem is, the technology keeps changing, and there's no guarantee that won't happen.

The whole thing with Scarlett Johansson. So you're going to put like a, you're going to put like a do not animate or do not bot me in your will? Right. Well, it's not just so much with the will, but, but now, if I, you know, I do something on TV, or there's something of me in a film, and I'm speaking, there is, it depends on the film, it depends on a production company, there's no guarantee my image or my voice will not be used for something else, without paying me, or paying anyone in my family.

Just taking it, and having me say or do anything some, you know, director or some studio wants. No, I understand that, but after death, are you going to, are you going to have something in your will that says don't bot me, or don't reanimate me? Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, I have not done that, but yes. Yeah.

So for the listeners who thought they could make a sex bot out of Charlie, that is now off the table. Who are we talking about? No, just kidding. Yes.

Yeah, with what you're describing, I think, you know, as a tool to help you, you know, go through your grief, it's nice, but then to hang on to that and not be able to move on, no, no. And you know, the other thing with the bots, these little mechanical dogs for the elderly in China, in Japan, very, very popular, and they offer comfort, you know, to older people, people living alone. They are now here also in the US, but in Japan, they're a big thing.

I myself do not understand the comfort of, you know, Fido, a little mechanical Fido thing, and finding comfort in that. I'd rather sit down with a book or some old movie, but people find comfort in that. Do you know why they would, Marianne? I mean, it's something mechanical, and I understand it looks like a cute little puppy.

I don't understand how people would find comfort in something like that. I haven't read about that, so I need to read about it, or maybe you could write up like a first half about it or something, because I don't really know anything about those. Okay, yeah.

Hang on, I'm making a note here. Homework. Okay, very good.

Yes, so yeah, I don't know. Things end. You can't take it with you.

Everyone dies. Catchy title. It is.

Yeah. I wish somebody had thought of that. In our third half, we have an essay which was written by Hannah Hester, a registered nurse working at a hospital in Livonia, Michigan.

It is titled, Phone Calls to Heaven. That Monday had been particularly uneventful, a welcome break from the usual chaos of our unit. My hallmates and I looked at each other in amazement.

No one wanted to disrupt the unusual quiet by even mentioning it. Perhaps that's why the news that awaited us that afternoon seemed especially unexpected and made such a deep impression. When the call light at the end of the hall started, a patient care technician walked into the room to answer it.

When she came out, she had a shocked look on her face and her voice was shaky. The sweet elderly patient in that room hadn't called for fresh ice water or help with a trip to the bathroom. She told the tech that her son, the one who had just visited her that morning, had been killed in a motor vehicle accident only miles from our hospital.

His body lay downstairs in the ED. I was stunned. What words of comfort could I give this patient, now also a grieving mother, who had been entrusted to my care that day? What difference would my words make to her anyway? After all, nursing school hadn't taught us the cure for a broken heart.

As our chaplain said to me later that evening, health care providers are fixers by nature, but we couldn't fix this. At times like these, nurses put on bravery like a mask to cover the fear inside so we can accompany those who are suffering in their pain. As a tech, I prepared to escort our patient to the ED.

I put myself in the shoes of the mother, wife, and daughter grieving the loss of their son, husband, and father. I imagined what I would want to hear had I received the news. The words seemed emptier than ever and came to me more reluctantly than I'd ever known them to.

The walk from my patient's room to the ED seemed longer than I remembered. When we wheeled her into the viewing room, I stuffled my sobs. For a while she just sat beside her son, quietly watching his face and stroking his hair, her face expressive of a lifetime of their shared memories.

Then she asked us to help her out of the wheelchair so she could stand to kiss his forehead. She was trying to say goodbye, but there was no way to make it easier. I won't soon forget the image of that mother standing at the bedside of the lifeless body of the loving son who had stood at her bedside only hours before.

Over my years as a nurse, there have been many times when I've wished for a phone line connecting this earth to heaven. While the finality of goodbye to any loved one is heartbreaking, traumatic and sudden death such as this steal that precious opportunity from the ones left behind. In this moment, how I again wish for just one phone call to heaven for this mother, so she could say goodbye, she could say the goodbye she hadn't been able to give.

As she settled back into the wheelchair, her eyes met mine and she said, now it's real. The news that had seemed so shocking and improbable at first, now found a reality in this mother's heart, though I knew it would be much longer before the immensity of this tragedy would sink in. As I watched the motionless, lifeless form of the man I'd met just that morning, I was hit again with the incomprehensible truth that life is either 100% here or 100% gone.

No in between, no yellow light. We need to remember that life, no matter how ugly, messy or painful at times is still a gift without a price. That shift with a sober reminder to never take our loved one for granted, a reminder we all need to make from time to time.

As I drove home that night, I prayed for the hurting family and resolved to hug mine a little tighter and love them a little deeper. Life as a nurse is a constant reminder of how blessed I am for the promise of heaven and the precious gift of life for another day. I believe that no experience in our lives is ever wasted if we grow through it.

May the chapters of our past inspire us to make today a story worth telling. Yes. That's such a sad story.

Yeah, it is. And that's it for this week's episode. Please stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies, and thank you for listening.

This is Charlie Neverett, and from the film Ghostbusters Afterlife, what do you call a dead polar bear? Anything you want. It can't kill you now. And I'm Marianne Matzo.

We'll see you next week. Remember, every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice.

All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast.

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