In "ChatGPT Resurrected My Dead Father," the author uses his personal grief and technological background to explore one aspect of developing a more "human-like" artificial intelligence.
Pair “The Machine Stops” with “ChatGPT Resurrected My Dead Father” and ask students to discuss the degree to which technology can recreate or replace humanity — if at all — and whether it is desirable to have aspects of humanity recreated by machines. Describe the ways in which human interactions have been replaced or significantly altered by the Machine in “The Machine Stops.” While speaking with his mother, Kuno says, “I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you” (Paragraph 26). Why are Kuno’s impressions of his mother muted in the way that he describes? How does this connect with Varese’s interactions with his chatbot “dad” in “ChatGPT Resurrected My Dead Father”? In paragraph 217 of “The Machine Stops” the narrator says, “And even the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lecture on the sea was none the less stimulating when out of other lectures that had already been delivered on the same subject,” and one lecturer even suggests that people should “let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element — direct observation.” What is the relationship between the ideas expressed in paragraph 17 and the way that the “training” of AI chatbots is described in “ChatGPT Resurrected My Dead Father”?
