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Should We Make Digital Copies of People? · Ethical Machines

0:01
[SPEAKER_00]: This makes sense where it might be one of the favorite ones that I've recorded because we discussed issues that frankly I hadn't really thought of before.
0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I sort of knew they were.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we didn't really know how much but thing they were.
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So my conversation is worth a tie because Lovsky, he's a visiting research fellow at Delft University of Technology.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And he talks about what he calls digital duplicates.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you and I all know about deep fakes.
0:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You can deep fake the president.
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You can deep fake a friend.
0:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You can deep fake an ex.
0:26
[SPEAKER_00]: and getting to some real mischief.
0:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you talk about digital duplicates, I just thought so you're talking primarily about deep fakes, right?
0:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's part of the conversation, but there's so much more to it, and it raises such interesting, ethical, metaphysical questions.
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So for instance, what about,
0:44
[SPEAKER_00]: the fact that we can create deep fakes or we can create recreations of loved ones.
0:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually deep fakes are in order to deceive people.
0:51
[SPEAKER_00]: But what about someone who is intentionally, knowingly, creating a digital duplicate of someone they love but they've lost?
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that okay?
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can continue to interact with that person?
1:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it okay if we have a child interact with a digital duplicate of someone who's dead?
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that good for them?
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that really bad for them?
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: How are we supposed to figure that out in
1:12
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean for you and I to consent to being digitally duplicated after we die?
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it the kind of thing for which we need to consent?
1:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And how can we consent?
1:23
[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't really know what our digital duplicate is actually going to wind up saying.
1:28
[SPEAKER_00]: do we have to figure out the guardrails around which we authorize or digital duplicate to be used?
1:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this like another thing that we need to include in our will?
1:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's so many interesting questions, including things like, can you be harmed after you die?
1:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a philosophical question, ethical question that's been around for a very long time since at least our side of our side of the road about it.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And you might think intuitively, no, once you're dead,
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: couldn't your privacy be violated?
1:58
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone reads your secret diaries that you didn't want them to read or if you're an author and they read the books that you never wanted published and then they go often they publish them.
2:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say your likeness is used in a court hearing to say that the person who killed you actually should be forgiven or something like that are treated with compassion.
2:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's actually a real life case.
2:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That just happened.
2:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So
2:19
[SPEAKER_00]: There's these deep interesting questions about can you be harmed after you die by virtue of, for instance, your digital duplicate, getting up to some mischief that you wouldn't have approved of.
2:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that actually harm you and make you worse off, even though you're already dead?
2:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Something is going on here.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like your rights can be violated, even though you're already dead.
2:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So, really interesting, really interesting conversation.
2:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, wide-ranging digital duplicates, deep-fakes, the grief industry we talk about that and how the grief industry is using it anyway.
2:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just so much here so you can see that I'm excited for you to listen to it.
2:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It was exciting for me to have and that's it.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to talk to me or you know me at EM at re-blockment.com, you can subscribe to my sub-stack at re-blockment.com.
3:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if that's okay.
3:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go talk to the time.
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's such a good conversation.
3:23
[SPEAKER_00]: TIE, you work on deep fakes, and everyone knows that deep fakes are a big problem.
3:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We see them in cybersecurity fraud, we see them with revenge pornography, there's all sorts of ways that deep fakes prevent the problem.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But from what I gather, you think that deep fakes are the tip of the iceberg, or they're one kind of thing that you call digital duplicates.
3:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So do I have that right?
3:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you explain what you mean by digital duplicates?
3:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And what else does out there other than deep fakes?
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks the reason I think he thinks are the most moments like what you mentioned now the harms are clear these are getting a lot of attention in the media and my work I try to look at.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: This phenomenon is part of a wider technological development.
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I've been working on recently is trying to understand different types of applications, which are kinds of deep takes, but shouldn't be categorized as such.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So what do I mean by that?
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Essentially, if you try to think of what is a digital duplicate, maybe we should start with that.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So you might think, by day, I companion an avatar and a girlfriend or boyfriend, what I'm focusing on are a subsection of that.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's these specific,
4:29
[SPEAKER_01]: duplicates or recreations attempts to capture a real human person in digital form.
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So the big thing is the classic example.
4:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a paradigmatic example.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But in my research and what I'm concerned with, we're seeing a lot of other types of use cases that are not getting enough attention.
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of what I focus on is try to understand what are those sort of,
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: under discussed issues that are going on to the radar, people are not noticing them, but we'll have fundamental impact on our society, on norms of behavior and so on so forth.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So one example might be, for instance, the impact that we're seeing on recreating interactions with lost loved ones.
5:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So often one thing of deep things or like you mentioned, revenge pornography and these types of things usually focused on harming someone else, but we're seeing a lot of people who are people are trying to embrace this technology and one of the biggest areas in which this being developed is in the great sector where people aren't trying to capture something of a lost love one or keep that bond alive.
5:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what doesn't exactly fall into the back category of deep things.
5:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I think it's a way a bunch of wider phenomena.
5:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess deepfakes are meant to be deceptive, whereas the kinds of duplicates you're talking about, there's no intention to deceive.
5:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The people who are creating them are precisely the ones who are using them because they want to reconnect.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, it's been years since I saw the episode, but there's a black mirror episode about this, right?
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman is a widow, right?
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're not in.
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: She creates a physical and somewhat mental duplicate of her dead husband.
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you'd add in a truck accident or something along those lines, or a car crash.
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: with the duplicate?
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: No, they have a kid and the kids sort of have a part of the episode also talks about the relationship between the child and the duplicate.
6:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember that.
6:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, God.
6:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
6:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's, yeah, go ahead.
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying the ending of that episode is very funny because they keep the duplicate alive and the addict because they realize that they can only have minimal contact with it and they send the child up there to talk with the father very weird.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And they, yeah, like our black mirror episodes.
6:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course.
6:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I want those to be a black
6:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So as part of your work, looking at the sort of ethical impacts of that or the social impacts of such a thing, because that's creepy as shit, right?
6:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that I'm a professional author says then yet my most immediate professional diagnosis is to say that's creepy as shit.
6:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it, is it just creepy?
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it ethically objectionable?
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there particular values at stake here?
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we think about these kinds of things that there's something maybe something around the value of grieving or the utility of grieving instead of trying to replace it?
6:59
[SPEAKER_00]: What are your thoughts on that?
7:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's difficult to put one title to what's wrong with these or what are shouldn't you afraid of?
7:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: What I'm trying to do is really evaluate these instances on a case-by-case basis.
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: What I did recently was try and first of all make sense of the field in general.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you look at all these different types of use cases and start making several categorizing them into different groups?
7:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the challenges that I've been working on is, how do we do that?
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I propose my own taxonomy.
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We can go into that if you'd like.
7:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do we make sense of these multiple phenomenons, right?
7:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them are in grief, others are related to business practices, some are like entertainment, so huge variety.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the ethics of it, which comes into play afterwards, is really
7:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Going down into each of these categories and seeing what are the most common types of issues or challenges that might come up and they can be ethical they can be legal.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: They can be also psychological so it's a multi-disciplinary perspective and of course the technical side also comes in because we're using really sophisticated technology sometimes beyond the understanding of the users.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: poses some challenges as well.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think because it's such a new field, we're trying at this point to make sense of a lot of this.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I said that we're starting real with how do you even categorize these objects, entities, instances, cases.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would take it that the methodology, something like, oh, a first categorize, let's get all this sort of carved up in the right kind of way.
8:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we could ask, I take it two kinds of questions.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The first question is going to be, are there something like ethical concerns, social concerns, legal concerns, or whatever, that obtain across the board?
8:41
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter the use case you're talking about, it's just, this is, for all cases of digital duplicates.
8:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if it's entertainment or business or therapy or whatever it is.
8:50
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the ethical things you really need to think about or the legal things you really need to think about and then I take it after that it's now let's ask if they're use case specific ethical concerns.
8:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there things in the grieving category grieving digital duplicates that are ethical concerns that don't apply to say the business context or something along with lines is that the overall methodology.
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, in a sense, I would say it's even the first to after what you described like the general concerns.
9:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a question of how much focus you what what high level low level right of the resolution you're looking at.
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let me give examples of a high level one and then maybe a more nuanced one.
9:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So we might ask for instance about creating duplicates of the deceased.
9:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And we might say this is the huge category.
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of different use cases.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: The more we're analyzing continuing bonds historical figures, politician to phone so forth.
9:36
[SPEAKER_01]: What types of harms are involved when we recreate the deceased?
9:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We could ask these high-level questions, right?
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
9:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you go down way lower into these really nuanced questions, should a child be legally allowed to interact with a deceased parent?
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the psychological effects of that?
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the ethical considerations when we start replacing loved ones with digital versions of themselves?
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the type of back and forth that's going on.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So for instance, I'm working now on a paper that deals with consent theory.
10:10
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it mean to consent to this type of process as a person who's going to be digitally duplicated?
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I inherently consent to that?
10:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Or in the literature often, we hear this example slavery for instance, is slavery a type of thing or a type of activity that won't cannot in principle consent to, right, to giving up your own liberty.
10:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe digital duplication is one of those issues or things, right?
10:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a type of question we're asking there.
10:36
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you consent to something that you don't have knowledge about if these systems then go on and hallucinate or are used in multiple different ways?
10:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're trying to take lessons from bioethics and from sexual harassment literature and so on and so on and then what are the parallels?
10:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Then if I'm working with metaphysicists, we're asking, what does it mean to capture an agency of an individual?
10:57
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the difficulties in that?
10:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is an extended mind and so on and so forth.
11:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay, that that's actually really helpful.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a number of places I want to take the conversation.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure which one I want to jump into.
11:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with this consent issue.
11:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you consent to it?
11:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I just ask why couldn't I just seems obvious that I could be like, yeah, sure.
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I would think that we can consent to certain things happen to our bodies or not after we die, right?
11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: We can consent to organ transplants or not.
11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You could harvest my organs or you cannot.
11:28
[SPEAKER_00]: We can consent to, I don't know,
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if we can consent to our body being used or we can donate to scientific purposes or so dissect and slice and dice away for the sake of scientific inquiry, you could even imagine, put me in the body's museum, the museum with it, whatever one strip me, whatever put my central nervous system on display, I don't care.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, so it seems like I can consent, it seems anyway, I can consent all sorts of things to happen to my body.
11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Why couldn't I just as easily?
11:58
[SPEAKER_00]: unless it's not as easy as I suppose, why can I just as easily consent to, yes, or create digital duplicate of me and to have at it.
12:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so there are two different questions that we need to start a task.
12:11
[SPEAKER_01]: One understanding in which circumstances are considered required.
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a general question that we need to ask, which is aside from whether we can or can't consent.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine, for instance, when we're dealing with historical figures, I want to create a digital duplicate of Julius Caesar, right?
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Consent is out of the picture here.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We were tasked with that.
12:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's an interesting question in itself.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's content always necessary.
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And now as to the, can I, can I not consent to it?
12:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we wanted to distinguish is between the descriptive, bit I or did I not consent, and the normative is my consent valid in some sense.
12:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the valid as because consent, there are limitations.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So for instance, in bioethics, we say, there are certain harms that a patient cannot consent to in principle.
12:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Their consent does not do the normative work that is supposed to be done by it.
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: like what so in medical experiments for instance if we're using drugs that we don't know the harms that might be called sure yeah sure so I don't know after we die we can't consent to certain things upon that right no so that's more or less about the living now the question is what kind of harms can happen to us after our passing?
13:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So some of the harms that I'm looking at are, for instance, related to legacy harms.
13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say I was a strong believer in peace, for instance, okay, I'm a peace activist, and then suddenly my digital duplicate is being used to promote war, let's say, okay, so I'm being in the AI we've called this misaligned in some sense.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Then question is, if I consent it to that, is that still okay?
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: could I have known that this type of manipulation would have happened?
13:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's the knowledge question.
13:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Do I have sufficient knowledge at how these systems will be used so that I can send becomes valid or not?
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's the hopelessization problem, right?
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I work a lot in the field of Holocaust remembrance, that's an area that I focus on specifically with context of digital duplicate.
13:57
[SPEAKER_01]: What we're trying to do there is to see how can we preserve testimonies of people who have suffered these tremendous terrible historical events and they've voted a lot of their life to keeping that memory alive and telling their story can we use this new technology to keep that for the next generation and allow it to be highly interactive and educational.
14:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Now imagine that a Holocaust survivor suddenly is being used in the context of Holocaust denialism, right?
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's completely inappropriate.
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there are other weird issues about appropriateness.
14:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So we often talk about, for instance, asymmetric power.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: These companies are the ones creating these digital duplicates.
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And the consumers are the ones interacting with it.
14:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And the question is, what rights do the companies have?
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So one of the concerns is, how do we limit market pressures from becoming involved in the outputs of the digital duplicates?
14:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So imagine, for instance, you've created duplicate of your grandmother and you want to show it to your kids, so that they have this experience of their ancestors and so on and so forth.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And suddenly, granny remembers how she loved using head and shoulder shampoo.
15:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It was her favorite shampoo and then we discover, oh, they have some kind of ad agreement there.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So at least tiny issues, right?
15:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Meet to come into plan, they can impact consent.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're conditioned that we usually think and said has to be involved with knowledge conditions.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They relate to the exact use case of specificity, vento and so forth.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So those issues were trying to understand what applies in this case and whatnot.
15:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So is this the right way of thinking about it?
15:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just so cool.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's disturbing, but cool.
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm latching too much on to death.
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I'm feeling my age.
15:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's interesting that,
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems that with consenting for people to do stuff with my body, there's a relatively limited amount of mischief that people can get up to.
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas if I consent to roughly speaking my digital identity or some facsimile of me or something like that, it's like there's a whole lot more mischief that people can get up to.
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like turning a Holocaust survivor into a Holocaust and I are turning me an ethicist into a, I don't know, evil twisted serial killer, tight character.
16:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, is that the core, is that,
16:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I focusing on the wrong thing?
16:13
[SPEAKER_01]: No, not at all.
16:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I think those are absolutely important questions.
16:16
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we limit the use of these types of systems?
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There are also other groups of questions that can be...
16:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, I want to hear those other group of questions, but I just want to note then that what's really interesting is that there's really deep interesting philosophical questions about whether you could harm someone after they die, whether you could affect people's happiness or flourishing after they die.
16:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of people instinctively think,
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you're dead, especially if you equate happiness with feeling good, if you're dead and you're feeling nothing, no one happiness can accrue to you.
16:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I think of, I used to teach this, or so, Aristotle thought your flow should be affected after you die, for instance, if your children suffer a grave misfortune after you die, that makes your life worse off, even though you've been dead for a bit.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there is a kind of instinct that you're well-fair or you're lively.
17:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe they're wrong word, you're flourishing.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: How well your life has gone to be affected by things after you die.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the most intuitive example that I can find to really clarify that kind of concern is reputational harms.
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So imagine you've lived a really saintly life.
17:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been a philanthropist.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You've done it.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And suddenly your whole reputation is being
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and yeah, you become a modern day, a white Steve.
17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
17:37
[SPEAKER_01]: One would say, let's say those were all labels, right?
17:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They were absolute nonsense.
17:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We would say that you were harmed in some significant sense, that so these reputation harms, I think people had that strong intuition, but it does directly harm the person some way, even if, you know, there will be even though, yeah, they don't have a well-being to be measured at that point in time.
17:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you say they're being harmed,
18:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to articulate what, you know, in what where they harmed.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it doesn't make a ton of conceptual sense to me, maybe I'm wrong about this, it doesn't what we mean by harm, but to say they're harmed, but they're lively, hood is not impacted or they're happiness or well-being or flourishing is not impacted anyway.
18:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose you could say something like their rights have been violated, although that doesn't affect their happiness.
18:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would then I wouldn't include all rights violations harms.
18:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're getting the weeds here, right?
18:28
[SPEAKER_01]: With the idea of standing, yeah, happiness well-being, what is a flourishing life?
18:32
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it mean?
18:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It will depend, obviously, as you mentioned, if you're taking a risk of failing in position, then you would have a certain conception.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm working with a legal theorist on understanding post-tumious harms.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And what does that actually entail from a legal perspective and from a philosophical perspective?
18:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're wrestling around these concepts and understanding.
18:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is a field that has emerged, and there's a lot of literature on it already.
18:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember, back in the day, when I was a professor, I was also a coach for what's called the Ethics Bowl.
18:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if that means I didn't into you.
19:01
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Ethics Bowl was, it's kind of like a debate group.
19:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We're debate competition, but it's more ethics focused because it's the ethics bowl.
19:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so teams debate over these ethical issues.
19:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was the coach for the team, A and...
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember the conclusion of what the team came to, but we discussed as one particular case about whether it's ethically permissible to publish the works of a great author posthumously, especially if that author said, don't publish this so Kafka says don't publish x y and z don't absolutely do it.
19:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Kafka is the castle and which was not the trial, the castle definitely.
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a postugious wall that I can't remember the second one.
19:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's really interesting question.
19:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's at least an open question.
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, maybe we should just respect his wishes and burn the material.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, suppose it's this magnificent piece of work that would greatly benefit humanity or literature lovers or something in between.
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And you might think, whatever, he's dead.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, he's not going to get upset about it.
20:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just publish it.
20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And then other people are going to be outraged.
20:09
[SPEAKER_00]: How dare you defy his wishes.
20:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a violation of his rights.
20:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if he's not unhappy, because he gets no way to still blah, blah, blah, blah.
20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So which thing that these digital duplicates questions come back to foundational questions about obligations under what conditions we have obligations to people and what impact that this is death have on our capacity as being rights holders.
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, surely.
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I came across an interesting idea.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: They were debating exactly this question about consent and whether you can or cannot duplicate me.
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And what they were saying is that on autonomy grounds, we have to allow the individual to have the final word.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they were talking about we're going to have to slowly integrate like a will based clause where people can say, Do not bot me or bot me, you know, in there.
20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's really interesting.
20:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because I have I've said for years.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what you do with my dead body like I'm not obviously I'm not particularly religious and I've joked if you want to make me into a puppet go make me to put I don't care I'm dead, but I don't exactly have that same I don't know apathy or I don't know indifference towards
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's create a digital duplicate of read, make them a Holocaust anir.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: That feels different to me, although I can articulate exactly why.
21:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So I like to use two mythical figures to highlight some of these intuition.
21:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So I take them from Jewish folklore, but there's also more modern versions.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: What is called the Golem?
21:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the goal is like a Frankenstein style beast, right?
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's created up to clay and given will and spirit.
21:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It has no voice, but essentially it's given in order and has a goal and has to meet that order and goal.
21:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's to do what it's master has commanded.
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, the goal of this obeys and becomes conscious in that sense and starts doing whatever it wants.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one side of the schism.
21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The other side is called the dibuque.
21:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the dibuque is the malevolent ghost that enters the body of an unsuspected victim and basically uses that body as a puppet of some kind.
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think these two ideas, the losing of control and the being manipulated as a puppet are
22:15
[SPEAKER_01]: almost primordial fears that we have as humans.
22:18
[SPEAKER_01]: They come back throughout history throughout all cultures, almost these ideas come back up.
22:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And with digital duplicates, it's like our modern day need to address these two really deep fears.
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Will I be used as a puppet?
22:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Will someone else's will come out from me and bring that out of my mouth?
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something very invasive about that at a fundamental level.
22:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that might speak to the intuition that you were saying of
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
22:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder, so to what extent, sorry, I'm tapping between two different thoughts in my head at the same time, one is this notion of indesiveness and the boundaries of the self, right?
22:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Cause you're talking about being manipulated, being under someone's control.
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that one of the things that defines maybe arguably, the find what we take to be the boundaries of ourselves is our sense of what's gross and disgusting, right?
23:08
[SPEAKER_00]: The emotion of what's disgusting is what's not us.
23:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's at least one way of one way of characterizing it.
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are experiments like there's a lot of spit in your mouth right now, but if you were to spit into a glass and then I say go now drink the spit, you'd be like, no, that's gross.
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's been like excommunicated from your body.
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's no longer part of you.
23:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So while things are inside your body cool, but if they were to leave your body, you don't want to put them back in.
23:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so part of this, me just made me think, and that's my reaction that I was thinking back to the to the black mirror episode, or I just thought, I don't know, there's something about that's just groups and maybe I'm mixing issues here.
23:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, and then there's this sort of more philosophical thing of, there's an undermining of autonomy, and some broad, some broad respect, so that one of the that we really need to pay attention to in the creation of digital duplicates is whether we are undermining the autonomy of people where part of their autonomy consists in,
23:58
[SPEAKER_00]: having a right to their, having a right to have control over their selves, bodily, otherwise, and digital duplicates provide an opportunity to undermine their autonomy.
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting.
24:14
[SPEAKER_01]: To the first point, I think what comes to mind is, I don't know how familiar with Derek Parfit to the philosopher.
24:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
24:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably.
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a, this thought experiment that Parfit brings up about a transportation machine.
24:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Parfit says there's this machine that will transport you to Mars.
24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a colony on Mars and you have to get there.
24:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And you enter the machine and then your body's destroyed here and you're recreated there.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And all.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Good and dandy.
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's technically different molecules and all that, but there are arranged and exactly the same way they were on Earth.
24:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And the point of the thought exerting that always gets me is that, so Parfit says, once the machine doesn't work properly, and your body on Earth is not destroyed.
24:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And the technician comes and tells you, don't worry, in 30 minutes your body's here will die, and you'll still be there in Mars.
24:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you want, you can talk to yourself in Mars right now.
25:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The way I reparfe it is by saying, the moment you see yourself, again, the illusion is broken.
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't be in two places at once.
25:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be because of the self.
25:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that's cool.
25:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
25:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, that really resonated with you on the first part of it, I think what we need to introduce in our discussion is that very often it's not other people creating these digital duplicates, but it's us creating it of ourselves.
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of people out there they're trying to create something to leave for their loved ones.
25:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Case is that I've come across a father with ALS, horrible disease that takes away voice and neurofunctions, created a digital duplicate of
25:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a very empowering, very beautiful, but a lot of weird questions.
25:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Another case is a father who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, created a duplicate of himself in order to give it advice to his kids as they grow older.
25:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So here we have an interesting question.
25:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We're training these avatars, these duplicates to represent us to act.
26:03
[SPEAKER_01]: in our place after we're gone and the concern it's can they actually do it and what does that actually mean?
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And this relates to your autonomy point.
26:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that the word we were missing there is where the eye focus on a lot of agency.
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And this idea of hand and algorithmic system truly capture what it means to be
26:22
[SPEAKER_01]: a full agent with a will of their own, and so a lot of my research focuses on what are those types of behaviors that it cannot be understood algorithmically, that they are almost like speech acts where you have to do it in order for it to be authentic in that sense.
26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the father who's trying to leave his life wisdom and advice to his kids,
26:44
[SPEAKER_01]: might come across with this problem in which, down the line, we're always going to change we adopt new views and new ideas.
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: How will the avatar develop in the same way that I want to have developed going down that?
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see that these just start coming apart.
27:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are concerns that maybe some demand to them, right?
27:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a critical work here to be done.
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Where should we not use these systems?
27:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what's the concern there that I go and create a digital duplicate of myself for the sake of whatever sharing story is giving advice, blah, blah, blah, blah.
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And it might not go well enough such that the duplicate is not sufficiently civilish to me in a way that I would approve of.
27:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the worry?
27:26
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not necessarily.
27:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That might be a concern, but I would say that's a technical problem.
27:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe there was a debate, yeah, I agree with that.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think the fundamental concern is that a lot of our behavior and actions and choices are not derived by past patterns.
27:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're acts of will at the moment.
27:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in front of a fork in the road,
27:47
[SPEAKER_01]: A digital duplicate might be able to say, you might have gone right, you might have gone left.
27:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's what I actually would have done at that moment.
27:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Only I can actually determine going right, going left, and that's it.
27:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a silly example going right, going left.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We can just do more fun trying to get to it.
28:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I see what you're saying, but I guess I don't know why it's a problem.
28:09
[SPEAKER_00]: There are acts of will that an agent, sorry, that a digital duplicate can't engage it, because they don't have a will, because it's an echo of a will.
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a real will.
28:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Something along with the shadow of a will, something along those lines.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what?
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I create a digital duplicate of myself, recognizing that it doesn't perform genuine acts of will, recognizing that it is a shadow.
28:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the real me.
28:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what?
28:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that is one answer to say, I don't care, you know, fair enough, okay, the problem I think underlying that is that we don't always recognize that aspect when using these technologies, right?
28:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We're thinking that we're capturing something authentic about us, that through our past actions, we'll be able to align these values to exactly how I would have wanted to behave.
28:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is a dangerous illusion, especially if we're thinking about consenting and understanding
29:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If we understand agent is something related to acts of will, like you just mentioned now or I was referring to, then these are aspects that can never be captured actually.
29:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're creating that simulacra in a sense, but there's a gap between that and us.
29:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when we're leading that to our children, for instance, to give them life wisdom and advice, is that actually the life wisdom and advice that I would have given that situation or something, it's a close to it, and maybe that's good enough.
29:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fine.
29:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying practically this is something that should be up, because it's not what you're using.
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm saying that we should know and understand ahead of using B5, that these are the types of fundamental limitation that they have.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And this can go, we haven't touched about living digital duplicates.
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But if a colleague wrote a paper called Exbolts, and the paper Exbolts tries to ask, what if we created a digital duplicate of someone who dumped us?
29:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
29:56
[SPEAKER_01]: My partner left us.
29:56
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to continue that relationship.
29:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's create the duplicate.
29:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's continue that.
30:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, you get the point.
30:02
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the gap there?
30:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think again, this touches on that fundamental gap.
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We're creating a version of that person, obviously, diluted from their autonomy.
30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the punchlines in paper there that they say, you think you're recreating that person, but actually you're creating a version of that person that didn't want to break up with you, which is not that person anymore.
30:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it says that you get where these aspects can take us in the difficulties that they can create.
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk more about the living duplicates.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So we spent a lot of time on the duplicates of the dead or the nearly dead.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the kinds of things that we need to worry about and thinking about those living duplicates?
30:39
[SPEAKER_00]: One, you just raise, of course, if my ex doesn't consent to my creating a digital duplicate, that's a violation of presumably something like, I guess what are they for right to exactly?
30:49
[SPEAKER_00]: What do they have for right to?
30:50
[SPEAKER_00]: If I say, here's what we're thinking.
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: She broke up with me whatever, but in my head, I imagined all the time that we're still together.
31:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have conversations and those conversations are informed by past interactions that we really had.
31:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be odd if she would have come up to me when she learns about it.
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see her finding out about this and being grossed out for sure.
31:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you, that's really creepy.
31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Get a life loser.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I get that.
31:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know that she could say you're violating my rights by doing or you're harming me by doing that, especially if I'm not I'm not stalking her.
31:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not doing any of those bad harassing her in any familiar way.
31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all, you know, in my head.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if she couldn't come up in that circumstance, why or could she rightfully come up to me and say, I can't believe you created digital duplicate of me.
31:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You've harmed me, you violated my rights, so on and so forth.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so Paul Sweeney and her paper argues that it doesn't mount to a form of harassment and stalking even.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's, but I'm setting that aside for a second.
31:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's try and break it down.
31:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what aspect can immediately we could say is data rights, right?
31:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have the right to take my data and train your system on that?
31:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That might be from a legal standpoint.
32:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We have personal texts between us.
32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So you allowed to know you that train my plot, my digital duplicate or not without my debt.
32:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That is fine.
32:09
[SPEAKER_00]: One distinction that I like to make is between data that's about you and your data.
32:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Where the ladder is a legal ownership thing.
32:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So the example that I always gave here is if I walk into cafe martin and you're in there and you write down read enters the read entered cafe martin at 1030 and you're writing down in your notebook.
32:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a right to go over and be like, hey, that's my data.
32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if we're at the page out of your notebook, it's data about me, but it's not my data in any ownership sense of the term.
32:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, sure, we would need to put a chance message that I sent you an email.
32:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's a vague area already.
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: word to you.
32:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we might say that's more problematic.
32:44
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that you own that data.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: At least that I would have maybe a right to complain about you misusing that in some sense.
32:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, take it in differently.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say I sent an intimate picture and then you posted that online.
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You've probably been in some sense in that way.
32:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree that would be a case of harm, but then my instinct, my at least, my gut reaction is to say, it's not the fact that it was there data as such.
33:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that you did something that caused them harm.
33:08
[SPEAKER_00]: People now have seen intimate photos of you, which itself constitutes a harm of violation of privacy, blah, blah, blah, blah.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wouldn't be data theft that would be concerned with in that case.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be the other kinds of harm that are downstream of that.
33:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's definitely an issue that's debatable, but I think it's a topic that is the most obvious one that we might appeal to at one point.
33:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The second point is leaks of information.
33:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So we find that it is unlike, let's say, I made a private shrine to read in my basement when I was.
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: praying to that shrine and giving homage to it and whatnot.
33:41
[SPEAKER_01]: In this case, it might be difficult to have it contained in the basement.
33:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's say I'm interacting with a digital duplicate.
33:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Am I allowed to post things online that it did?
33:51
[SPEAKER_01]: What is other people become aware of these interaction?
33:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So with these types of cases, the types of interactions might leak out and cease to be private.
33:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, if you say to me in your privacy of your own home, no one knows about it, it's only me.
34:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that significant difference from making a doll and pretending that this is my ex?
34:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not.
34:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
34:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's just what we're sloping that sense.
34:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's far easier for things to come out and for that to then cause harm.
34:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So that might be an area where I might have a claim to say, if you're doing something that's almost inflicting on my personal autonomy in that sense.
34:24
[SPEAKER_01]: What is really interesting, I think, is that
34:26
[SPEAKER_01]: all these areas need to be discussed and debated and why I mentioned the beginning that it takes us the only thing that's getting attention while all these others aren't.
34:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And now we're seeing all the vagueness that comes up here and how if these technologies become predominant and widespread, we're going to have to adjust to it very much.
34:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that might be legally, but it could be also with social norms.
34:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't raise you to have a girl friend this
34:52
[SPEAKER_00]: very big issues.
34:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So where do we go now?
34:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think we have to go one by one?
34:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to go.
34:56
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
34:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So look, let's think about digital duplicates for grief.
34:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's think about it when it's your ex.
35:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's think about it for the do we have to go case by case here?
35:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we have to proceed like as it were ethical common law or case law.
35:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we supposed to try to, I don't other, listen, read these are about three principles.
35:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I really think that we should develop digital duplicates in line with.
35:16
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we make progress here?
35:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there are obviously more common use cases and more fringe cases and we'll have to pay more attention to those common ones.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So grief bought as mentioned is a big thing.
35:27
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of companies that are zeroing in on what's known as the digital afterlife industry.
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's becoming industry.
35:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of very powerful players that are entering that arena, a lot of money.
35:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's an area that's going to be
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: slowly regulated and we're going to have to look into that, so that's one aspect of it.
35:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Then on the business side, there's a lot of use cases there.
35:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't talk about those, but for instance, there's the CEO of Zoom, Eric DeWan.
35:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He came out with this big declaration.
35:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Each one of us will have our own digital duplicate to go to meetings for us, so that we can do what's really important in life, which is going to be a niche, in this example.
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And recently, he created a digital avatar of himself and sent it to the quarterly earnings meeting of the shareholders to give the presentation.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of him, but it was more of a gimmick to show off the technology.
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
36:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so business applications will be a lot.
36:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're completely different set of questions.
36:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the issues are coming up is, do we have a right to a human contact as consumers, for instance, do I have a right to receive an explanation from a decision that was,
36:30
[SPEAKER_01]: automatically created and so on.
36:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that might be one strategy to go to the big use cases.
36:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I can go over some of the attempts to tax-onimize these different aspects and then we could see like the different approaches.
36:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So one type of attempt was to try and do this from a functional perspective, to try and ask what are different functions of these duplicates on the one side we have like cognitive duplicates that would be maybe personal assistance, they would be maybe
36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: they would replace you.
36:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So one example they discussed there is, for instance, an author who's about to pass away, but hasn't finished his last book and really wants to get it done.
37:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So he writes like a synopsis or an outline to it and then gives it to his duplicate to finish the book.
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so those will be like cognitive duplicates in his style to create that and then on the other side we have audio visual duplicate for interactive purposes.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one way to go functionality.
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Another is through motivation, so some have talked about are these meant for legacy, are these meant for relationships, are these meant for extending our experiences, not the other way to taxonomize this.
37:29
[SPEAKER_01]: My sort of approach has been to look at, to try and offer a very high level conceptualization, so I've looked at only two criteria, consent and whether the duplicate is imitating a living or disease person.
37:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you get basically four categories, and then what I do in a recent paper is go through each of those four categories and talk about the different ethical considerations that might arise in those cases.
37:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm about to be my approach to this.
37:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, and this is a long answer to a difficult question, I think we'll have to go case by case.
37:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's unavoidable to examine each specific instance because they'll raise specific challenges.
38:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's been one
38:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But they've offered a, yeah, a principle with condition that you can then measure each instance along those conditions to see how they mean.
38:19
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to go to the details of that particular, but it isn't reading the paper, perhaps.
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess I think there's going to have to be at some point some fairly clear legal principles.
38:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the law can't, I don't think it can just go case by case.
38:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess it could there could be established case law, but that'll take a while to set up.
38:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to imagine that there's going to be.
38:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll push for things like a right to your digital duplicate or something on those lines and so that no one would have the right to create digital duplicate of you if they did they be in violation of the law even if you're dead blah blah blah so I feel like.
38:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There's got to be that kind of right that gets enshrined in the law and and that would apply whether you're living or dead.
39:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, we've seen now there's been just last week.
39:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I think in Denmark, they came out with a new copyright law to say that each individual has ownership over their own image, so that any type of deep fake of person would be copyright infringement under their legal system.
39:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a very aggressive approach that I guess in the U.S. wouldn't be adopted.
39:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's, yeah, definitely there'll be a lot more clarity in the next years over these regulations.
39:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But I assume that there will be a lot of vagueness in that still.
39:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
39:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the points that we are working on.
39:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called legal and determinacy.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So that the law often leaves a lot of discretion, place for the society to not have to make its own normative choices on a lot of these different applications.
39:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm assuming that many of these issues will remain there.
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, there'll be consent issues will come up.
39:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're seeing this as fluid, even in those fields that we feel that are have been adjudicated, like in sexual harassment, that's changing often.
40:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We just saw this week with alcohol.
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a decision by a court that any intake of alcohol nullifies consent.
40:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't need to be in an extreme position, but that any type of drinking at all can be grounds for saying there was no consent for sexual relation.
40:16
[SPEAKER_01]: This is constantly being
40:18
[SPEAKER_01]: being harder or softer or stricter or more lenient in your perspective, I see what it'll be similar in that sense.
40:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I can see a world in which
40:27
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all part of our will, our last will and testament.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I think I relatively recently went through the process of creating the will and preferences around when I would be resuscitated versus just left.
40:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can imagine the same kind of a questionnaire being given to me about how I want my data or why did you like that idea or blah, blah, blah to be what I could send to one of what I don't.
40:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that being, yeah, I don't know, that kind of thing governing what can it cannot be done.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that's something that makes sense.
40:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned the do not bot me clause idea.
40:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right up, that would come some of the issues.
41:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, a lot of the issues are in a different nature.
41:03
[SPEAKER_01]: People will actively create their own duplicate.
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And that in of itself might cause certain, yeah, yeah, all blobs, not only in the case where it's done to me.
41:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I also want to mention before we close out, there was that recent case in the US court where the person, the person who was dead, a digital duplicate of the murdered person testified, I think on behalf of the,
41:29
[SPEAKER_01]: of the accused of the case was Christopher Palkey, yes, he was killed in a road rage situation murdered by a person and then at the sentencing after the trial was over, the judge allowed the family to bring a digital duplicate of Christopher to get his own victim statement.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, yeah.
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: If you see the video, it's very strange.
41:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what you find online is Christopher and you can see the judges reaction as well.
41:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Both videos are available online.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what are Christopher essentially?
42:02
[SPEAKER_01]: the avatar of Christopher's speaking, and it's very anthropomorphized.
42:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's constantly saying, I want to thank you, I'm sure.
42:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But the family wrote the script, of course, it's a sister who wrote it.
42:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the judges reaction is very weird.
42:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He seems very moved by it.
42:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And he uses very strict phrasing like, I feel so that I can see that you allowed Christopher to speak what it is in his heart, as you saw it.
42:32
[SPEAKER_01]: very strange situation and yeah, we're seeing this in the legal system appearing there are no spark rules yet as the web acceptable or not.
42:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I find that an egregious use case for some way and this goes back to this idea of the people, right?
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Christopher did not write those words, they're assuming that because he had certain Christian beliefs he would be pro forgiveness and
42:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Or he might have been like, it's like my Tyson ever just got a plan to get punched in the face because actually I just got murdered.
43:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So burning this guy alive, yeah, what the duplicate says there to the accused right to the murder and other circumstances we could have been friends, but it's a very strong thing to say right.
43:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh man.
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a total ethical mind field, legal, ethical, legal mind field.
43:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely.
43:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why it's so interesting.
43:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I think for philosopher to work there, there's so many open questions.
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it leaves so much room to think creatively.
43:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I want to end with one comment, just.
43:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I think whatever we deal with these types of technologies, I try to make very clear that I distinguish between philosophy and policy.
43:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we have to philosophize about this as much as possible.
43:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And push it to the extreme.
43:41
[SPEAKER_01]: What is, and and we do this and that.
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we trust policy.
43:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we need to be way more risk adverse.
43:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there are a lot of harms that come up from these technologies and we need to be extremely careful.
43:51
[SPEAKER_01]: What's going on with companies is a lot of marketing deception that can cause people in very vulnerable situations, a lot of harms.
43:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're, I think they're riskabbers, even though I love philosophizing about the sense of discussing it.
44:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, it's where it's going to.
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we need to be very clear about that.
44:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
44:08
[SPEAKER_00]: super interesting.
44:09
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, when you know do some more work on this stuff and you'll have to come back and talk more about it.
44:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's great stuff.
44:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
44:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I really enjoyed it.
44:16
[SPEAKER_00]: No, thank you.
44:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks everyone for listening.
44:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoyed the episode.
44:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to thank a few people who make this all possible.
44:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Delano Alexander, he's my producer.
44:26
[SPEAKER_00]: He does such an amazing job on everything that he touches.
44:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Garrett Lane is the sound engineer.
44:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That's honestly, he's just, he's too good for me.
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Authamia Jairam has joined us recently.
44:35
[SPEAKER_00]: He's helping us find the best guests to bring on to this podcast.
44:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And Ashley Wasselenko helps us organize all this.
44:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Get people on the schedule.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Get people's bios, headshots, and really keeps the chance to trade on the track.
44:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks guys, really appreciate all the hard work you do.
45:02
[UNKNOWN]: you