Necrorobotics: The Ethics of Resurrecting the Dead

By drawing from recent progress in AI, this chapter scrutinises implications of a specific aspect of automated futures: the possible resurrection of the dead. The chapter refers to these advancements as resurrection technologies – that is, methods for the training of AI-models based on data from a specific individual, such as imagery, text and voice – in order to discuss interconnected ethical and normative questions.

Under this purpose, this chapter proposes the concept of necrorobotics as a field of studies with regards to this. By drawing from various theoretical discourses this chapter discusses the possible changes to social norms that the AI-enabled capabilities of necrorobotics in an automated future. This includes legal discussions on digital remains and the concept of uncanniness as
presented by both Masahiro Mori and Sigmund Freud. It also includes philosophical notions being with the dead, that is the maintenance of and the culturally embedded active ways of caring for the dead, here seen through the concept of necrorobotics.