AI and the death of dignity
October 2, 2024Thank you for listening to my pain and anger. Thank you for being there and sharing your outrage.
It meant a lot to my family and to me.
This morning’s discovery made me profoundly sad. I’m not even sure why. Jen was just 18 when she was taken from us 18 years ago. Her murder overwhelmed my family and her friends. My brother was devastated in a way that is hard to comprehend unless you’ve lived through such a terrible experience. He was and remains absolutely heartbroken.
When I first found out about Jen’s death, it was like an almost out-of-body experience. My soul felt ripped from my body. I experienced life in a daze for a while, as if I was sort of detached from my body, from the world, floating through a grayness, occasionally, quietly sobbing in the shower where no one else could see or hear.
Eventually, I—well, recovered is the wrong word—accepted what had happened, the profound loss, and moved on.
In the years since, my brother has battled his way out of his depression. Fought tooth and nail to find some purpose and way to honor his daughter’s memory. He created a non-profit dedicated to ending teen dating violence through education. He helped to change laws. He worked to spread important information through a video game design contest. Those game creations gave a new sort of life to Jen, allowing her name to be used for good..
And then my brother emailed me this morning with the link.
For some reason, seeing the smiling face of my Jenny-Penny plastered on an AI site next to her name, used as an identity for a chatbot, knocked the wind out of me. I still feel it, it’s like waves of hot and cold rushing over me. I can’t control it; it’s indescribable, but at its core, tucked inside the tight knot that’s returned to my stomach, is an overwhelming sense of grief and loss.
It feels like she’s been stolen from us again. That’s how I feel. I love Jen, but I’m not her father. What he’s feeling is, I know, a million times worse.
But I’ll recover, my brother will recover.
The thing is, why is it on us to be resilient? Why do multibillion-dollar companies not bother to create ethical, guiding principles and functioning guardrails to prevent this from ever happening? Why is it up to the grieving and the aggrieved to report this to a company and hope they do the right thing after the fact?
The damage was done; ridding the site of Jen’s stolen identity doesn’t mitigate that, and right now, there’s nothing to make me think it won’t happen to someone else or again.
I don’t have the answer, but I feel it can be found by changing policy, enacting law, enforcing some level of morality on the gold rush mentality that currently seems to surround the push to evolve AI.
