Digital table turning: Two AI programs invite you to chat with historical personalities. Cheerful, but things get bad with Hitler.
One of the most beautiful obituaries ever written is that of Jean paul Sartre on Albert Camus. The two fell out for political reasons. But, as Sartre wrote, “It didn’t stop me from thinking about him, imagining his gaze resting on the newspaper he was reading, and asking myself, ‘What does he say to that?'” As long as one lives , whose opinion is valuable to us, we can hope for an answer. After that, this hope coagulates into a senseless longing. There are those long dead whose beliefs shaped us, and we would be keen to hear how they would have reacted to our new problems, new doubts, in a world changing so disturbingly rapidly.
Lo and behold: As if a fairy godmother had heard our wish, there are two new apps in the store. Artificial intelligences that invite you to chat with celebrities: “Character.ai” also with living figures, “Historical Figures Chat” only with dead ones. Trial versions of both are freely available, as is Chat GPT, the joy and terrifying text generator. But unlike this billion-dollar investment, the developers of the new gimmicks are renegade employees of tech giants who, as carefree renegades, don’t give a damn about security concerns. Does that make the messages from the afterlife they stage more authentic, less ironed out than the dull statements of the cheat sheet algorithm?