A friend who works at a long-term care home, where many of the residents suffer from Alzheimer’s, sent me this webpage on a new technology. It’s developed by an engineer from Quebec (made in Canada!), whose grandmother has the disease. He visits her, and a minute later, she forgets, and becomes anxious, thinking that no one has come to see her and she’s always alone. Trying to convince such patients that this isn’t true often makes them only more upset.
The number of Alzheimer’s patients is growing rapidly and there aren’t enough people who can, or will, visit them constantly.
To fill in the gap, behold, ‘Amical’, which is basically a phone that connects a patient to an AI companion, which is programmed to hold a pleasant and comforting conversation, with appropriate responses. The patient thinks they’re talking to a real person, one who has ‘infinite’ patience, who will speak as long as they like, and who always makes the ‘right’ responses, or at least ones that give comfort.
They usually forget the conversation soon afterwards, but there’s always another one whenever needed.
Is this morally sound?
There is a brief passage on such AI ‘companion technology’ in Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas, that struck me when I first read it a year ago. He lays out some of the caveats:
The apparent objectivity of the responses and suggestions these systems provide can lead us to overlook the fact that they reflect the cultural assumptions of those who designed and trained them, with all their strengths and limitations. The artificial imitation of positive human communication — words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love — can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful. However, for less discerning users, it can also be misleading, creating the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject. When words are simulated, they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance. The artificial imitation of care or support can become particularly risky when it enters contexts where real relationships and emotional bonds are lacking. Here, the danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections. (Magnifica Humanitas, 100).
‘Genuine human connections’, indeed. I must confess it is disconcerting to watch the older lady in the above video in the hyperlink chat away to a voice that belongs to someone who doesn’t exist. Students share my discomfiture when I showed them, and we discussed this in class. To put it bluntly, she’s talking to a thing, which has no idea she exists, no care for her, no interest – just an illusion of such. Can such be a good thing, even if it does fill a need, and keeps the patients calm and even happy?
There are the other problems, including over-reliance on the technology, and a consequent decrease in real, human visits, if granny can talk to Amical all day.
The company does not permit the AI ‘cloning’ of relatives – their voices and likely responses and such – so there’s a limit to the illusion and Potemkin façade. Still.
I must confess that, although I have an ominous feeling, which I think the Pope shares, my mind is not fully made up on this. Should not human voices, at least in human conversation, proceed from a human soul?
Or is this a necessary medical technology to deal with an increasingly critical situation?
If you have any thoughts, please do feel free to send them along, especially those with relatives who suffer from this debilitating illness.
