Today I want to talk about something every single one of us will face in our lifetime.

The loss of someone we love.

Over time, we as a society have learned how to live with that loss.

We bury our dead. We tell stories.

We keep photos.

We pass down memories.

We carry those we loved forward, even after they're gone.

The idea is to learn to cope, not to escape, not to avoid, not to deny, not to pretend.

But now, Silicon Valley is selling us something new.

They're selling ways to keep your loved ones alive.

Not in your heart, not in your memories, but on your screen.

These products go by different names. The most common ones being death bots or grief bots.

This isn't that they feel comforting. The issue is really what it cost us as individuals as we evolve and develop.

Because once we turn grief into a consumer product, once we can buy and sell it, we don't just change the way we mourn.

We change what it means really to even be human.

And if you're thinking that this is some far-fetched, high-tech, far-away idea, well, let me tell you it's not, because it's already here,

and has been for a while. In 2024, the Associated Press told the story of a terminally ill

man named Michael Bomer, who recorded his voice so his family

could interact with the AI version of him after he died. Here's how it worked. You typed in a question

and the program answered back,

and it answered back in his voice as though you were talking to him on the phone or on a Zoom,

that you still had access to him.

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