Recent advances in machine learning (particularly the advent of increasingly capable, general, and multimodal generative AI models) raise profound questions that we must grapple with as a society over the coming years. These technologies will pervade, and potentially transform, a wide array of socio-technical practices. There is already widespread discussion of how AI might transform diverse aspects of modern society such as education, employment, entertainment, scientific inquiry, and military strategy. Practices around death and dying are an oft-overlooked area of cultural importance that stands to be profoundly impacted by this changing technological landscape.
AI technologies are likely to impact an array of existing practices (and give rise to a host of novel ones) around end-of-life planning, remembrance, and legacy in ways that will have profound legal, economic, emotional, and religious ramifications. Already, we are beginning to see reports describing individuals’ attempts to use AI to interactively memorialize loved ones, the use of AI to posthumously complete unfinished creative works, and start-up companies professing to offer AI-based digital afterlife services.
At this critical moment of technological change, there is an opportunity for the HCI community to shape the discourse on this important topic, much as HCI scholarship helped shape (and understand) practices regarding digital legacy and social media. We advocate for a value-sensitive and community-centered approach to designing interfaces, interactions, and systems that will empower people to shape their digital legacies.
This workshop will bring together a broad group of academics and practitioners with varied perspectives including HCI, AI, and other relevant disciplines (e.g., law, economics, religious studies, etc.) to discuss this emerging area of inquiry of "AI and the Afterlife" (so named such as to distinguish our focus on end-of-life planning, remembrance, and digital legacy from applications of AI to life extension, i.e., through AI-supported improvements to medical care and/or the science of longevity). Our objectives are
to build community around this nascent topic;
to develop shared vocabulary and priorities; and
to engage in design ideation that will facilitate new lines of inquiry.