Ageing, loss and AI: the ethics of deadbots from the perspective of older adults
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2024-10-05
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper proposes to bring older adults' perspectives and experiences of loss to critically reflect on the role that the deadbot, and digital and AI technologies more broadly, can play in coping with loss today. Scholars have paid increasing attention to the digitisation of death-related practices in recent decades, from the democratisation of grief and mourning practices enabled by social networking sites to the rise of a digital afterlife industry. In both academic and media debates, the digital innovation of the deadbot - also referred to as thanabot or ghostbot - has raised fascinating ethical questions about mourning processes or postmortem privacy. In the context of an ethnographically informed research on how older adults' perspectives and experiences with technology can redefine the relationship between ageing and technology in France, this paper aims at presenting how discussing the deadbot with older adults interrogates contemporary relationships with the dead. With theoretical support from Despret's (2017) work, it analyses how older adults' experiences of loss rehabilitate other modes of existence for the dead, as well as creative, subtle and non-technological ways of relating to the dead for the bereaved. This paper contributes both to debates about digital death, by contextualising the deadbot through a critical and non-sensationalist approach, and to conversations about ageing and technology, by valuing older adults' subjective views of AI.
Language
English
Keywords
critical digital studies
death studies
AI and aging
deadbot
Event Title
The 7th International Death Online Research Symposium - Digital Death - Transforming History, Rituals, and Afterlife
Event Location
University of Helsinki, Finland
Event Date
3-5 October 2024
Subject(s)