Biblioracle: Why I'm against ‘digital necromancy,' like the AI-driven Agatha Christie writing course
In 2012, hip hop star Tupac Shakur performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival on stage with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, even though Tupac had been killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996.
The Tupac hologram was a little Hollywood special effects trickery that cost heavy sums, but now, thanks to generative artificial intelligence, we can resurrect just about any historical figure.
Or can we?
The most recent example to come across my radar is a BBC Maestro course featuring the woman who is considered the best-selling author of all time, Agatha Christie. BBC Maestro courses are essentially slickly produced, extended informational lectures combined with some exercises the viewer is meant to do along the way. They are not interactive, nor do they count for credit. They are, to my eye, purely for entertainment purposes.
The maestros range across experts in singing, cooking, acting, decorating with flowers, and even sleeping. Still living writers who have done Maestro courses include Harlan Coben and Isabel Allende.
But Agatha Christie is new because she is deader than one of the victims of her iconic mysteries, including 'Murder on the Orient Express' and 'Death on the Nile.' But there, on screen, in the preview video, is the voice and words (sort of) of Agatha Christie briefly expounding on the essential elements of a good mystery while she walks through a stately country house.
This 'reanimated' Agatha Christie is being done with the permission of her estate, and consists of a script drawn from her writing, an AI that's mimicking her voice, and a layering of her face over that of a live actor.
While the Christie estate and the avatar developers insist that they are working hard to be faithful to the original sentiments of the living person, AI ethicists object to this resurrection, pointing out that it is literally putting words in the mouth of someone who lived, and who cannot consent to this use.
This is an example of what I have taken to calling 'digital necromancy,' and if you can't tell from my choice of term, I'm against it. There was a time where I would have brushed off the Agatha Christie example as mostly harmless, and on the scale of the application of generative AI in the service of digital necromancy, it's less egregious — especially considering its being done with permission from the people who have the rights to give permission — but I now see this and other examples as part of a bad movement that should be not just resisted, but rejected.
Worse are the historical chatbots where people who lived and spoke and wrote are compiled into bespoke large language models and then let loose without consideration or care. Earlier this year, it was found that an Anne Frank chatbot could not and would not condemn the Nazis who killed her, much of her family and millions of others.
This is likely because of Anne Frank's most famous passage from her 'Diary of a Young Girl,' 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.'
Defenders of this use of the technology say it helps students 'engage' with history, but what kind of engagement is this? It's not just pedagogically dubious, it's morally offensive.
We have Anne Frank's words. We have scholars who have written about Frank, including 'The Many Lives of Anne Frank' by Ruth Franklin, which I reviewed here.
If you want to know what someone thought, read them. If you want a writing teacher, find an interested, sufficiently expert human with whom you can interact.
We are abundant, I promise.
John Warner is the author of books including 'More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.' You can find him at biblioracle.com.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you've read.
1. 'American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis' by Adam Hochschild
2. 'The Message' by Ta-Nehisi Coates
3. 'Fraud' by David Rakoff
4. 'The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels' by Pamela J. Prickett and Stefan Timmermans
5. 'You Dreamed of Empires' by Álvaro EnrigueI think Scott is a good fit for the family drama (with a nice dash of comedy) from Luis Alberto Urrea, 'The House of Broken Angels.'
1. 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen
2. 'This Is Water' by David Foster Wallace
3. 'The Goldfinch' by Donna Tartt
4. 'The Last Samurai' by Helen DeWitt
5. 'Long Division' by Kiese LaymonFor Bill, it feels like an occasion for some oddness and wit, which is excellently met by Charles Portis and 'Masters of Atlantis.'
1. 'Lessons in Chemistry' by Bonnie Garmus
2. 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen
3. 'The Housemaid' by Freida McFadden
4. 'Booth' by Karen Joy Fowler
5. 'Memorial Days' by Geraldine BrooksI have yet to find the reader who is not charmed by Rufi Thorpe's 'Margo's Got Money Troubles.'
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you've read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
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