Can AI preserve a legacy? Reflections on mortality and memory

Everything collapsed at once.

A triad of physical and emotional stress overwhelmed me, leaving me despondent over politics, war, and a sudden change in my health.

The combination made me so depressed that I couldn’t stop crying for several days until I realized that my bad mood was fueled by accidentally stopping a high dose of steroids.

Honestly, I’m lucky I made it through those three days of withdrawal alive.

Israel’s multi-front war, coupled with the impact of the US elections and the machinations of the Israeli coalition, would have been enough to spoil almost anyone’s outlook on life. But I had a physical reason to be discouraged.

An empty hospital bed at Hasharon Hospital (Source: Courtesy)

My cancer had come back.

His sudden advance was shockingly rapid. In September, my wife Jody and I spent ten days on vacation in Portugal.

Just a few weeks later, I was writhing in pain, trying to find a comfortable position on the hard plastic waiting room chairs in the emergency room at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood.

After spending about nine hours there on a Friday evening, the radiologist’s report revealed the culprit: a tumor was pressing on my ureter – which is the tube that connects the kidneys to the bladder.

I’ve never had kidney stones, but I’ve been told that’s what it feels like.

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The super cool bispecific antibody I received for most of 2024 killed 95% of my cancer, but one tumor proved refractory.

I was prescribed prednisone because there was a chance it would shrink the tumor somewhat, even if only temporarily, before I had to start much more aggressive chemotherapy for my cancer.

As my depression progressed, I began to confront my mortality, not for the first time, but in a more open and serious way.

I’m not in danger of dying any time soon, but the failure of my previous treatments and the harshness of the next ones (and the statistical likelihood that this one will fail too) have resulted in one of the worst things that can happen to a human being.

I’ve lost hope.

Any expectations I might have had about how long I would live and what quality of life I would have in the future were dashed by the ever-present mood of doom.

When I started the bispecific antibody, I envisioned being cancer-free for years. I would live at least as long as my father (he died at age 81); Jody and I would be celebrating 50 years of marriage; I would dance at our grandchildren’s Bar Mitzvahs – maybe even their weddings!

And now – I have no idea. I could be gone in a few years, or if I’m optimistic, five or ten.

Will I have the energy to kick around with three-year-old Ilai? Pushing one-year-old Roni on the swing? Can we still hike? Are you traveling abroad?

Or will my new normal be one of restrictions and discomfort?

When I’m not feeling well, I can spend hours scrolling the internet looking for doom.

Which led to another morbid thought: Is this really what life is like – a decades-long distraction from death? Are all the things we do—from raising families to working—essentially a way to avoid fixating on the inevitable?

Is it even possible to add something lasting and meaningful to the world? Or will this all be forgotten in a generation…or less?

If I believed in life after death, perhaps I would be less worried about my eventual demise. But for me, immortality always has something to do with legacy. William Shakespeare, David Ben-Gurion, Moses – they are all unlikely to be forgotten.

For the rest of us, our children will remember us for a while after we die, but if we die too soon, to the grandchildren we will just be the old geezer with the funny voice on the videotape.

Can technology help?

31-year-old computer engineer Muhammed Aurangzeb Ahmad describes to writer David Zvi Kalman in an episode of his podcast “Belief in the Future” how sad he was that his father, who died early, would never have a relationship with Ahmad’s previous son-born children.

Ahmad built an AI tool called Grandpa Bot into which he uploaded his father’s text messages, recorded phone conversations and home videos to create an interactive simulation.

Ahmad is not alone. In South Korea, a woman reunited with her dead daughter using virtual reality. A Chinese software developer has reportedly created AI simulations for 600 families.

Ahmad knows that Grandpa Bot is not really his father. “It has no consciousness,” he tells Kalman. “It just mimics some aspects of my dad’s personality.”

Originally, Ahmad limited Grandpa Bot’s knowledge to what Ahmad uploaded. As a result, his father was unable to identify with current events. This confused his children. “So I reluctantly added some data here and there.”

Kalman sees the value of this type of AI. But it’s important, he adds, to ask whether you’re “simulating the dead because you want to stay in the past or because you want to move forward with your life.”

Could AI simulations of the dead allow us to “chat” with Maimonides or Rashi? If the wise had access to the modern Internet, would they be able to decide on current issues? Would a chatbot Talmud be more accessible to the masses than its current form? Could it “bring back” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Chabad, who died in 1994, effectively turning him into a messiah?

In my pursuit of a legacy, I realize that I may become obsessed with an outcome that is anything but predetermined for me.

My next cancer treatment could cure me. I could live well into my 90s and climb mountains (and climb over grandchildren).

Or the world could end in nuclear annihilation, and then who cares about legacy anyway?

Oops, that was the prednisone talking again.

The author’s book “Totaled: The Billion-Dollar Crash of the Startup that Took on Big Auto, Big Oil and the World” was released as an audiobook. Available from Amazon and other online booksellers. brianblum.com

Can AI preserve a legacy? Reflections on mortality and memory

ByAmelia Journalton

Can technology help?

By Amelia Journalton

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