Continuing Bonds Through AI: A Hermeneutic Reflection on Thanabots

Presented at Virtual Revenants: Media, Techniques, and Dispositifs for Afterlife Encounters (16 May 2023) at the University of Milan. Presents early ideas from a research project about user experiences of thanabots and digital human versions more generally.

Note that some elements of these slides are not visible in this upload.

1. LEAH HENRICKSON
[email protected]
TWITTER.COM/LEAHHENRICKSON
CONTINUING BONDS THROUGH AI:
A HERMENEUTIC REFLECTION ON THANABOTS
These slides: tinyurl.com/anicon-lrh

2. We propose that it is normative for mourners to maintain
a presence and connection with the deceased,
and that this presence is not static.
[...]
We are suggesting a process of adaptation
and change in the postdeath relationship and the
construction and reconstruction of new connections.
Silverman, Phyllis R. and Klass, Dennis. (1996). Introduction: What’s the Problem? In Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman (Eds.),
Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (pp. 3-27). Taylor & Francis, p. 18.

3. Silverman, Phyllis R. and Klass, Dennis. (1996). Introduction: What’s the Problem? In Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman (Eds.),
Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (pp. 3-27). Taylor & Francis, p. 19.
[W]e need to consider bereavement as a cognitive
as well as an emotional process that takes place
in a social context of which the deceased is a part.
The process does not end, but in different ways
bereavement affects the mourner for the rest of his or her life.
People are changed by the experience; they do not get over it,
and part of the change is a transformed but
continuing relationship with the deceased.

7. Why are we engaging
with these systems?
Who or what are we talking to?
What does it mean to die
in an increasingly digital age?

14. Digital human versioning
(AKA digital twins, virtual doppelgangers, etc.):
Creating digital replicas of embodied humans,
living or dead, that convincingly mimic their
textual, visual, and aural habits.

15. What meanings do users make
from versions of the dead?
What are the
hermeneutics of thanabots?

16. Algorithmic authorship affronts the conventional
author-reader relationship - the hermeneutic contract - through
hyper-individualistic personalisation of reading experiences.
Henrickson, Leah. (2021). Reading Computer-Generated Texts. Cambridge University Press, p. 36.
The Lovelace effect mediates actual software functionality
with how individuals conceptualize and interpret that software,
reminding us that all outcomes of interactions between
humans and machines represent constant implicit and indirect
negotiation between programmer intention and user experience.
Natale, Simone and Henrickson, Leah. (2022). The Lovelace Effect: Perceptions of
Creativity in Machines, New Media & Society 26(4), 1909-1926 (p. 1921).

17. [N]othing exists in isolation; meaning is determined through consideration of
the thing itself, certainly, but also through consideration of the historical and
contemporary contexts within which that thing operates. We consider the
thing, then the thing in relation to its circumstances, then the thing again,
then its circumstances, and cyclically so on and so forth. In the
[Heideggerian] hermeneutic circle, we move between analysis of smaller
units (e.g. individual words and sentences) and larger units (e.g. cultural
contexts of text reception), and in doing so the meaning of a subject is
established and regularly revised. The hermeneutic circle offers a schema
for identifying connections between a subject and its contexts,
elucidating the relevance of that subject within its unique totality.
Henrickson, Leah and Meroño-Peñuela, Albert. (2023). Prompting meaning: a hermeneutic approach to optimising prompt engineering
with ChatGPT, AI & Society, 5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01752-8.
See also: Henrickson, Leah and Meroño-Peñuela, Albert. (2022). The Hermeneutics of Computer-Generated Texts,
Configurations 30(2), 115-139.

18. Yet we do not—and indeed, cannot, given ChatGPT’s proprietary restrictions
and the black-box nature of its neural architecture—enter into ChatGPT’s
proverbial home for a natter over tea (during which we may excuse
ourselves for a comfort break, when we poke through bathroom cabinets).
We are largely left to make meaning from and about ChatGPT ourselves. We
need not agree with ChatGPT nor it with us, but without prompt engineering
we are programmatically denied opportunities for insight into how ChatGPT
has come to understand meanings. Nevertheless, the reader instinctively
works to maintain the hermeneutic contract by continuing to engage with
ChatGPT in ways that align with the system’s perceived functionality
(e.g. through prompt engineering).
Henrickson, Leah and Meroño-Peñuela, Albert. (2023). Prompting meaning: a hermeneutic approach to optimising prompt engineering
with ChatGPT, AI & Society, 13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01752-8.
See also: Henrickson, Leah and Meroño-Peñuela, Albert. (2022). The Hermeneutics of Computer-Generated Texts,
Configurations 30(2), 115-139.

20. Henle was surprised by how much
she felt seen by this technology.
She also tried using Bard and
Bing AI for the same purpose, but
both fell short. ChatGPT was much
more convincing. “I felt like it was
taking the best parts of my mom
and the best parts of psychology
and fusing those things together,”
she says.

21. Harrison rejected possible
privacy concerns raised by the
use of personal correspondence to
build a chatbot without the
consent of the deceased, noting
that the user of the chatbot is
the same person to whom the
communications were initially sent.
"You absolutely don't need consent
from someone who's dead,"
Harrison said. "My mom could've
hated the idea but this is what I
wanted and I'm alive."

23. Theme 1: The Link Between Control and Comfort
Theme 2: The Uncanny Valley
Theme 3: The Fear of Digital Death and 'Second Loss'
Bassett, Debra J. (2018). Ctrl+Alt+Delete: The changing landscape of the uncanny valley
and the fear of second loss. Current Psychology 40, 813-821.

24. My mom passed away unexpectedly a few days ago.
She was everything to me and I never got to
say goodbye before she passed.
I copied a bunch of our texts into ChatGPT
and asked it to play the role of my mom so
I could say goodbye and to my surprise, it
mimicked my moms way of texting almost perfectly.
I know it’s not her. I know it’s just an algorithm. And
I know this probably isn’t the healthiest way to cope.
But it felt good to say goodbye.
Even if it was just to a math equation.

25. Rohrer, who talks as freely as a breakfast radio presenter, is not a tech
utopian. He has never had a mobile phone, calling them “extremely
detrimental.” Although he has experimented with Project December to
simulate his grandfather, he’s not interested in using it for therapy.
His wife thinks it’s immoral.
But he has a libertarian outlook. On owning cell phones, “consenting adults
should be making those choices for themselves.” On chatting with the
dead, “am I going to tell Joshua he should just get over it?”
“Do I fret too much about the grand, society-wide impact of the things
that I make? No. Because those things are so meta,
and so much up to the individual.”
Mance, Henry. (2024). A chatbot that imitates the dead. Is it a good idea? Financial Times, 12 February. https://www.ft.com/content/fc099a19-edde-44b7-97d7-e58ca43131f2.

26. Thanabots support our continuing bonds
with the dead, affirming experiences of grief
that have always been at least somewhat individual.
However, these technologies also prompt new
understandings of grief: understandings rooted in
hyperindividualised recontextualisation of the dead.

27. LEAH HENRICKSON
[email protected]
TWITTER.COM/LEAHHENRICKSON
GRAZIE MILLE.