The AI Uncanny Valley of Gun Control and Good Intentions

Activist groups are recreating the voices of children killed by mass shootings, especially those in schools, and uses those voices to call and lobby lawmakers. And I am completely conflicted by this.

I am in favor of gun control. I would require licenses, insurance, safe storage, and banning certain kinds of magazines and high-powered weapons. The idea that an armed society is a free society is nuts. If the 101st Airborne decides you are a traitor, your little cache of weapons isn’t going to save you. And the idea that an armed society is a safe society is belied but the fact that mass shootings went up dramatically after the assault weapon ban was allowed to expire and gun deaths went up again after the Heller decision that essentially outlawed almost all forms of gun control. And spare me the whining about the second amendment — the idea that it protects an almost unlimited, unregulated gun ownership is ahistorical nonsense and the Heller decision cherry picks history, ignores all the counter evidence, and reads like a treasure hunt through documents to find the one or two that support the Justice’s personal preferences rather than real analysis. (Which, frankly, is all originalism is. But that is a conversation for another day.)

All of which is to say I am generally in favor of anything that shakes our lawmakers out of their blood-drenched subservience to the NRA. But the more I think about this, the more uncomfortable I am with it.

First, it should be noted that this is being done as ethically as possible. The families of the deceased have given their approval and the message make clear that the speakers are recreations. This is not an attempt to deceive or misinform, and it has been done with the express permission of the deceased closest relatives. And I still think it is probably wrong.

First, I don’t think we should be encouraging the use of AI recreations in politics. While this specific instance is being done as ethically as possible, in general these kinds of systems are ripe for abuse. A company recently created a fake phone call of Joe Biden telling people not to vote in the New Hampshire primary. OpenAI and Google’s imitative AI systems have almost no protections against creating political disinformation, despite their promises. The vast, vast majority of the time these tools will be used to spread chaos and undermine democracy. I think, however well intentioned, normalizing their use or pretending that the mass of disinformation is outweighed by a couple of helpful, ethical use cases can only lead to more acceptance of these tools in politics, with terrible results.

More importantly to me, however, is that I cannot escape the notion that this kind of recreation does a disservice to the victims involved.

I want to start by saying that I in no way think that the parents involved are in anyway trying to manipulate their children’s memory or acting with anything other than the best intentions. I cannot conceive of the pain that they must be going through, and I am completely aligned with their horror at the complete disregard for human life our gun control debates evidence. Still, I cannot shake the idea that using recreations of deceased people is not something society should get comfortable with.

It is not my job to teach my children what to think — it is my job to teach my children how to think. Given how often they argue with me and disagree with me, I think we have done a pretty job on that front. And I think that most parents would agree with me — you don’t want your kids to be carbon copies of you, but to be the best person they can be, to be better than you. And it makes me deeply uncomfortable that parents would put words like this in their children’s mouths.

You can think that a child would agree to this under the circumstances, but you cannot know. Children turn out different than their parents all the time — that is the source of the right wing freakout over colleges and books. Their kids are turning their lived experiences and into different opinions that the ones their parents hold. Given that simple fact, I don’t think we should allow anyone to presume to speak for a deceased person, not even their parents.

By normalizing these kinds of behaviors, this kind of reproduction, for a good cause I am afraid we open a door that should remain closed. We don’t want a world where the families of deceased stars sell their AI recreations to the highest bidder. We don’t want a world where the deceased become the raw tools to create something that they themselves might not have approved of. Aside from the stagnating impact that would have on creation (why invest in something or someone new when the dead are at your beck and call?) it strikes me as just wrong. No one can speak for the dead, no one, no matter how close they were to the deceased, can know every choice they would have made, every thing they would or would not have approved of. We shouldn’t, as a society, pretend otherwise.

Again, I am not condemning the parents. They are going through an unimaginable tragedy and are attempting to prevent others from having to experience the same hell. Their motivations are above reproach, and they are not attempting to deceive anyone. But I do think that despite their good intentions, this specific tool is one that we need to stifle as a society. It simply has too many downsides, and it turns the deceased, willingly or not, into mere tools. That kind of de-humanization needs to be prevented, not celebrated in my opinion.

Lives are not property, to be used how those left behind see fit. Anything that argues through its actions otherwise, no matter how well intentioned and ethically run, is a step down a very dark path.