Nah, my gram was my favorite person ever, and she lived the life she wanted to live and she chose to leave when she did. She was one of a kind and it would be a cheap, heart-wrenching impersonation to have someone try to bring her back as an algorithm. I think I would be very upset if anyone tried that.

It would not be a ghost of her any more than a biography is a ghost of someone. It could look and sound similar, it could have a lot of her memories or speech patterns, but that's all an interpretation of memories of her, but nothing of the lady herself.

Ok. That's reasonable.

I don't know how ai works. So calling it magic is ok with me. Necromancy, that is. Which makes me feel better about it.

necromancy is communication with the dead.

ai is "code running on a computer". gigantic difference and not magic.

Consider your favorite videogame. Thus you, the player, control your avatar.

Would you say that you are present within the game or not?

Does such a channel of control from outside the gameworld into the gameworld constitute presence?

If the AI was the avatar, it's of the world but also not. It is maybe the presence of an outworld entity.

Have some of its behavior depend on a true rng. Electron noise or whatever. Thus de-deterministic it. Now you have an ouija board with a personality

If you're gonna call it magic, it's illusion magic. Your grandmother is still dead in her grave, AI just tricks you into believing she's alive.

You could make it 99% ai and 1% true rng. A complex ouija board.

but a ouija board uses magic, ai does not

Nope. The thing about indistinguishable is by whose standards. As a grandkid I knew my grandparents as these old people who lived far away and I met a few times. My grandma had a litting irish broge that was just entrancing and my grandpa was skinny and walked a lot and ate little. That is pretty much what I know of them. Any vaguely close immitation would be easily indistinguishable for me but for my parents it would need to be much better and one that was for the other would need to be to be oh so much better. Ultimately though its not actually the person.

Are old home videos literally a seance?

Is a photo literally an astral projection?

The answer is No all the way down.

A ouija board uses an rng and unconscious action I think.

ok, but we understand ai way more than we understand a ouija board or "magic". my original statement was ai not being magical at all, not in the slightest.

im not sure what point youre trying to make, I got lost... im sorry lol

Controlling an avatar quite literally means you're not present.

A ouija board doesn't use electronics. No random numbers are generated.

You don't read much scifi do you

This is dumb. AI isn't what we think it is.

Is not a ghost and also it's not indistinguishable from your grandma.

If an actor studies all data available on your grandma, manages to mimic her voice and looks, and then starts a conversation with you, acting as your grandma; are you then talking to a ghost? Cause that is what an AI does: learn to predict the behaviour of your grandma, and then act out those predictions.

an AI simulation

... happens on a computer screen.

the real thing

...happens in the real world.

indistinguishable

No.

Any questions left?