This prompted several questions from me. First of all, doesn't anyone see the glaringly obvious problem with this idea. We've had lengthy discussions in class about how social networking profiles like Facebook are not wholesome representations of your personality. Everything you post on Facebook you are clearly comfortable with sharing with a mass audience. One of my classmates said today in class that your closest friends share their flaws and anxieties with you - in short, everything that they would not share online with the world - and that's a big part of why you love each other. I completely agree. I know at least for me that if a robot's AI was based on what I posted on Facebook - which is an extremely disturbing thought - it would not be a complete, three-dimensional reconstruction of my personality.
My second question, and the far more pressing one, is simply: WHY? What in the name of my mother's cat would be the purpose of these robots? Why would you ever want to try to download someone's personality into a robot? We talked today in class about the negative psychological effects of seeing a hologram of a deceased love one, and how that could interfere with the healing process. Nowadays, if someone passes away, they leave their Facebook behind, and it becomes a kind of memorial that friends can visit and reminisce by going through pictures and such. It occurred to me after class that if someone recently lost a loved one, and they were unable to move on and had the financial means, then they could actually pay a company like this to use the deceased's Facebook or Twitter to try and give a robot the personality of their deceased love one, "resurrecting" them so to speak in a different body. That to me is not only unhealthy, but it's also unnatural. The sad thing is, I actually find it plausible in today's culture that someone would attempt this.
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