It is argued that AI technologies offer openings for cultural critique and emotional insight, and a more pluralistic and emotionally attuned vision for how AI might shape experiences of grief and memorialization is provided.
Abstract
Popular narratives about artificial intelligence (AI) and the afterlife provide a narrow vision of grief, memory, and technology. To foster a broader view of what AI might make possible in the context of death, we hosted a speculative design workshop with interdisciplinary experts. Through a series of design exercises and group discussions, participants were encouraged to develop novel ideas including memorialization and critically reflect on the opportunities and challenges. Our analysis identified four thematic areas: reimagining memorialization practices; grappling with ethical and practical concerns around data; reshaping continuing bonds with the dead; and confronting the commercial and infrastructural challenges of sustaining grief technologies. In our discussion, we argue that AI technologies offer openings for cultural critique and emotional insight. In broadening our vision for AI, this paper provides a more pluralistic and emotionally attuned vision for how AI might shape experiences of grief and memorialization.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has transformed how we perceive technology’s role in shaping human life. Beyond its technical applications, AI has emerged as a profound subject in literature, raising critical questions about identity, morality, and the future of humanity. Fictional narratives often serve as a lens through which societies reflect on the ethical dilemmas and emotional complexities surrounding AI integration into everyday life. This paper examines the complex dynamics between artificial intelligence (AI) and humanity as depicted in contemporary literature. By focusing on Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me, the study interrogates how AI challenges traditional notions of identity, ethics, and agency. It explores questions such as: Can AI possess consciousness? How does AI disrupt human relationships? What does AI mean for humanity’s future? The novel offers a rich examination of ethical dilemmas, human emotions, and the boundaries between human and machine, set against an alternate history of technological advancement. By analyzing AI’s capacity for consciousness, morality, and emotional engagement, the paper interrogates the societal and philosophical implications of AI’s integration into human lives and tries to explore how literature critiques and reimagines humanity’s future in an AI-dominated world. The analysis combines posthumanism and ethical philosophy to critically assess these representations, offering insights into the socio-political implications of a world increasingly defined by AI.
Shruti Tripathi· Knowledgeable Research A Mul...· 0 citations
ABSTRACT:Digital grief applications, powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI), are coming on the market. How they will be received and used is a question not just of the technologies themselves and their affordances but also of the distinctive environment into which they are introduced. At present, this milieu is characterized by a highly psychologized understanding of grief and approach to mourning. It has taken shape over three time periods, from roughly the 1920s to today. First, socially prescribed grief roles and rituals steadily disappeared. Next, a Freudian science of grief work arose, which was subsequently replaced by a “new work of mourning.” The new work, currently normative, is centered on unique experience, personal storytelling, and continuing bonds with the deceased. The change has created a fertile context for AI-powered grieftech, and the article concludes with reflections on the new grief work and tech interaction.
A structured survey of AI hallucinations, synthesizing prior research to clarify their evolving definitions, underlying causes, and implications for Information Systems positions AI hallucinations as socio-technical phenomena with direct implications for trust, decision-making, and governance.
This paper examines the implications of artificial intelligence for the practice of psychotherapy by distinguishing between algorithmic capabilities and human existential capacities. Drawing on phenomenological and existential philosophy—particularly the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Waldenfels—it proposes an existential reduction that brackets what can be replicated by AI to clarify what remains irreducibly human. While AI systems can simulate therapeutic techniques, they lack the existential ground of Care (
Sorge
), ethical subjectivity, and responsivity that structure human being‐with‐others. These capacities are ontological conditions that make psychotherapy possible as a lived, relational encounter rather than techniques or skills. Through clinical illustration and philosophical analysis, the paper argues that psychotherapy cannot be reduced to technique without losing its essential character. The rise of AI reopens the question of what it means to be human. The figure of the “last scribe” serves as a historical analogy, suggesting that while methods may change, existential capacities persist beyond technological displacement.
Dan Bloom· The Journal of Humanistic Co...· 0 citations