Solutions with Henry Blodget We Can Live Forever Through Digital Twins. But Should We?
Mar 23, 2026
Amy Kurzweil, graphic novelist and writer of Artificial: A Love Story, reflects on building a chatbot from her grandfather's archive. She discusses the eerie, time-travel feeling of conversing with a selective digital twin. Topics include archival absences, how modern generative AI reshapes grief and memory, ethical boundaries for immersive avatars, and why handcrafted art still matters.
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Building FredBot From Real Archives
- Amy Kurzweil helped build a 2018 chatbot called FredBot using her grandfather Fred's actual writings as the dataset.
- The bot was selective (non-generative) and often replied with verbatim archival passages, creating a time-travel like communion.
How Limits Preserved Historical Honesty
- The antiquated non-generative design made conversations feel like encountering the original author, not a synthesized persona.
- That limitation preserved uncertainty and prevented false filling-in of missing traumatic details like Holocaust experiences.
Screen Boundaries Matter For Grief
- Immersive digital twins remain bounded by screens and the physical world's difference matters for grief and reality.
- Maintaining the boundary helps prevent delusion; frequency of use still risks dependence and needs societal limits.
