Grief is difficult for most of us. I know of some who continue to grieve many years after losing a loved one. Like so many others, I have felt the pang of loss and a wish that maybe I should have spent more time with this or that deceased friend or loved one. Did I say enough? Did the deceased one tell me all he or she wanted to say? Did I miss out on wisdom or advice that might have made me a better me? I also realize the futility of wishing for more time, quality time. Gone means “gone” even though the permanence of the departure is difficult to accept, not so much rationally, but definitely emotionally.
Before he died, Gene tried a seance in an effort to reconnect to his deceased wife. Some others I know claim to have seen apparitions of lost loved ones. Letting go is among the most difficult of human conditions, but it might not be limited to our species. Yes, it’s human to grieve, but I’ve seen animals grieve, also, and I believe strongly that I’m not just anthropomorphizing them. It seems that more than one species embodies a mythical Orpheus seeking Eurydice; many, if not all animals, seek in some way the return of a lost one.
The Anecdote
Take a starling I once saw risk its own life over another starling hit by a car. I was on my way to the university one spring day when the driver in front of me unavoidably hit a bird that flew low and directly into his car’s path. The stricken bird flopped onto the road just as I passed, steering to avoid squashing it. For whatever reason, I looked in my rearview mirror to see the bird, most likely dead I thought and irretrievably lost to the planet. As I looked, another starling flew onto the road and stood over it, flapping a wing, apparently trying to revive the stricken bird. “Come on; get up. You can’t just lie here in the road.” A whole scenario of drama ran through my mind. Now, yes, I’m attributing a human reaction to the starling. With no traffic on the neighborhood country road, I paused to watch. The starling remained over the dead bird, flew off briefly, and then returned to perform the same action before flying off, I assumed, for good—for that I didn’t hang around, the comedy of my life driving me out of that theater and away from the tragedy I stopped to watch.
Anthropomorphizing? Projecting human reactions onto the bird? Maybe. I know birds can use tools, build complex nests, protect their young, and partner as doves do, for life. But the act of the bird standing over the stricken bird convinced me so thoroughly of a parallel between what humans do after a loss and what that starling did, that I—as this retelling indicates—continue to remember the event. The mnemonic device of driving over the same road almost every spring occasionally brings the incident to mind. And since that incident many years ago, I have witnessed other birds seem to act similarly in the presence of a loss.
Was P. T. Barnum or Whoever Right?
And dogs? Surely, at some time you have witnessed the “depression” in a dog that has lost an owner or a companion dog. Moping and not eating seem to be clues that sadness has somehow overwhelmed a once cheerful pet. Are we just anthropomorphizing? Should anyone who claims to be an animal psychologist just put a small-print disclaimer on the office shingle? Is anyone who hires an animal psychologist just another “sucker” in the words ascribed to P. T. Barnum? With eight billion of us, all destined to live lives too short for wisdom, maybe one really is born every minute. Animal grief and depression? Certainly, there’s enough evidence from history to demonstrate that gullibility is a human characteristic exhibited in both holding a seance and ascribing human nature to other species. Nevertheless, call me a “sucker.” Animals do seem to have psyches that respond in human-like ways to loss (But I wouldn’t befriend a shark).
Enter the Age of Computers.
And now, given the nature of our nature that drives some to seek profit from every human experience in the mode ascribed to Barnum, I discover that an AI company is offering seances for loved ones. Reported by Maggie Harrison for Futurism online, the story centers on a company called Seance AI that offers communication with the dead. Maggie says she tried it, finding that after she gave the AI information about her lost loved one, it carried on a brief conversation that was for a brief time a little reassuring. But in her attempt to pursue more conversation, she found that the AI merely reiterated the information she supplied, making the experience stilted. *
The Nature of Grief
Grief is a wave phenomenon like other emotions. It can also collapse into a particle at any moment. As a wave, its recurrent pattern manifests itself in crests and troughs; in cresting, it becomes an isolated particle of obsession. In that dual role, grief imitates the quantum world of duality.
But grief is also like the disturbances we see in the ocean. It can begin as storm waves large enough to sweep some of us toward a rocky headland to be crushed against an unforgiving wall of depression. Fortunately for our species, most who suffer from initial grief know how to swim out of danger or find a lifeguard to pull them to safety, eventually reaching gentler, but never completely placid, waters.
And then, unexpectedly intensifying through memory, the sea of grief responds to the winds of a different storm. Grief can be re-stirred to roughness throughout our lives, those winds being some chance circumstance, some symbolic reminder, or some conversation or self-talk in the quiet of the night. Maybe even some phenomenon we take as an apparition.
The AI Counselor and Clairvoyant
That AI can only briefly and stereotypically bring back the dead reveals its difference from us. First, it cannot understand grief, a complex of emotions sometimes shared and sometimes kept in the recesses of the brain. The sharing that occurs alters the nature of the grief and the psyche of the griever. Second, given the task of taking all recorded correspondence—letters, texts, emails, videos, photos, and audio recordings of the deceased plus those experiences in the memories of those left behind—AI is unlikely to put together a running communication in the indefinite number of likely circumstances and actual historical context humans experience. And third, AI cannot account for or mimic what human grief and empathy do: Unexpectedly renew itself with inexplicable and variable intensity.
At best, AI probably can’t do much more than what that starling did. Could AI develop algorithms that mimic human grief or its consoling empathy? That’s an enormous task because every grieving person grieves for a specific person known in a variety of contexts, many of them nonverbal; some of them just a brief glance of understanding.
Are we to send in AI Grief Counselors after a traumatic event like a mass shooting? A car accident that takes the life of a classmate? A youth taken by leukemia?
“Grieving With” Requires Algorithms So Complex They Took Billions of Years to Write
Are starlings and humans connected somehow? Is there a relationship of response that goes to the early days of life on the planet, maybe running back more than three billion years? If so, the animal response to death in both “higher” and “lower” organisms shows some unity that might not be just a projection from the human perspective, not an attempt to anthropomorphize. If there is a connection, it stands as evidence of grief’s complexity and animal empathy.
Sometimes one empathetic person sitting beside the grief stricken and quietly holding a hand, is all the support a grieving person needs. No words. Could AI ever mimic that? Is it possible to get such solace from a computer in standby mode? Think about handholding for a moment: It’s not just one kind of physical contact; it involves moving pressure, just the right amount of pressure that says without words, “I’m here for you.” It can be coupled with a look, a lean toward, a hug, and, of course, with a tear in the eye of the empathizer. It might even pass on a hint that the lost one is still around, still communicating through a mutuality born of empathy.
In the Darkness of Computation
There will be others who will try reconnecting through AI seances. P. T. Barnum has assured us of that. Some might even walk away happy and feeling reconnected. I suppose one could say that “if it works, it works.” But in reality, it only works insofar as the grief stricken wants it to work. One could just as easily read a book on grief or some academic article and walk away saying, “Oh, I feel better now.” That is, better until that next storm raises the waves.
If language, spoken language, alone could lessen grief, then the association of human and bird responses to death could easily be dismissed. But I’ll reiterate. Empathy expresses itself in an indefinite—and that means “living”—number of ways. The starling’s response is ultimately unfathomable, even for an animal psychologist, because no one can follow the bird through its later experiences, its sleep, or its memories. If that starling, presumably long dead these many years later, were to fly over the same road this spring now long after the loss, would it, like me, remember? Would it, like me, still feel the loss?
Could AI?
*Harrison: AI Company Says It'll Perform a Seance on Your Dead Loved Ones. Online at
https://futurism.com/ai-seance Accessed May 23, 2023.
Before he died, Gene tried a seance in an effort to reconnect to his deceased wife. Some others I know claim to have seen apparitions of lost loved ones. Letting go is among the most difficult of human conditions, but it might not be limited to our species. Yes, it’s human to grieve, but I’ve seen animals grieve, also, and I believe strongly that I’m not just anthropomorphizing them. It seems that more than one species embodies a mythical Orpheus seeking Eurydice; many, if not all animals, seek in some way the return of a lost one.
The Anecdote
Take a starling I once saw risk its own life over another starling hit by a car. I was on my way to the university one spring day when the driver in front of me unavoidably hit a bird that flew low and directly into his car’s path. The stricken bird flopped onto the road just as I passed, steering to avoid squashing it. For whatever reason, I looked in my rearview mirror to see the bird, most likely dead I thought and irretrievably lost to the planet. As I looked, another starling flew onto the road and stood over it, flapping a wing, apparently trying to revive the stricken bird. “Come on; get up. You can’t just lie here in the road.” A whole scenario of drama ran through my mind. Now, yes, I’m attributing a human reaction to the starling. With no traffic on the neighborhood country road, I paused to watch. The starling remained over the dead bird, flew off briefly, and then returned to perform the same action before flying off, I assumed, for good—for that I didn’t hang around, the comedy of my life driving me out of that theater and away from the tragedy I stopped to watch.
Anthropomorphizing? Projecting human reactions onto the bird? Maybe. I know birds can use tools, build complex nests, protect their young, and partner as doves do, for life. But the act of the bird standing over the stricken bird convinced me so thoroughly of a parallel between what humans do after a loss and what that starling did, that I—as this retelling indicates—continue to remember the event. The mnemonic device of driving over the same road almost every spring occasionally brings the incident to mind. And since that incident many years ago, I have witnessed other birds seem to act similarly in the presence of a loss.
Was P. T. Barnum or Whoever Right?
And dogs? Surely, at some time you have witnessed the “depression” in a dog that has lost an owner or a companion dog. Moping and not eating seem to be clues that sadness has somehow overwhelmed a once cheerful pet. Are we just anthropomorphizing? Should anyone who claims to be an animal psychologist just put a small-print disclaimer on the office shingle? Is anyone who hires an animal psychologist just another “sucker” in the words ascribed to P. T. Barnum? With eight billion of us, all destined to live lives too short for wisdom, maybe one really is born every minute. Animal grief and depression? Certainly, there’s enough evidence from history to demonstrate that gullibility is a human characteristic exhibited in both holding a seance and ascribing human nature to other species. Nevertheless, call me a “sucker.” Animals do seem to have psyches that respond in human-like ways to loss (But I wouldn’t befriend a shark).
Enter the Age of Computers.
And now, given the nature of our nature that drives some to seek profit from every human experience in the mode ascribed to Barnum, I discover that an AI company is offering seances for loved ones. Reported by Maggie Harrison for Futurism online, the story centers on a company called Seance AI that offers communication with the dead. Maggie says she tried it, finding that after she gave the AI information about her lost loved one, it carried on a brief conversation that was for a brief time a little reassuring. But in her attempt to pursue more conversation, she found that the AI merely reiterated the information she supplied, making the experience stilted. *
The Nature of Grief
Grief is a wave phenomenon like other emotions. It can also collapse into a particle at any moment. As a wave, its recurrent pattern manifests itself in crests and troughs; in cresting, it becomes an isolated particle of obsession. In that dual role, grief imitates the quantum world of duality.
But grief is also like the disturbances we see in the ocean. It can begin as storm waves large enough to sweep some of us toward a rocky headland to be crushed against an unforgiving wall of depression. Fortunately for our species, most who suffer from initial grief know how to swim out of danger or find a lifeguard to pull them to safety, eventually reaching gentler, but never completely placid, waters.
And then, unexpectedly intensifying through memory, the sea of grief responds to the winds of a different storm. Grief can be re-stirred to roughness throughout our lives, those winds being some chance circumstance, some symbolic reminder, or some conversation or self-talk in the quiet of the night. Maybe even some phenomenon we take as an apparition.
The AI Counselor and Clairvoyant
That AI can only briefly and stereotypically bring back the dead reveals its difference from us. First, it cannot understand grief, a complex of emotions sometimes shared and sometimes kept in the recesses of the brain. The sharing that occurs alters the nature of the grief and the psyche of the griever. Second, given the task of taking all recorded correspondence—letters, texts, emails, videos, photos, and audio recordings of the deceased plus those experiences in the memories of those left behind—AI is unlikely to put together a running communication in the indefinite number of likely circumstances and actual historical context humans experience. And third, AI cannot account for or mimic what human grief and empathy do: Unexpectedly renew itself with inexplicable and variable intensity.
At best, AI probably can’t do much more than what that starling did. Could AI develop algorithms that mimic human grief or its consoling empathy? That’s an enormous task because every grieving person grieves for a specific person known in a variety of contexts, many of them nonverbal; some of them just a brief glance of understanding.
Are we to send in AI Grief Counselors after a traumatic event like a mass shooting? A car accident that takes the life of a classmate? A youth taken by leukemia?
“Grieving With” Requires Algorithms So Complex They Took Billions of Years to Write
Are starlings and humans connected somehow? Is there a relationship of response that goes to the early days of life on the planet, maybe running back more than three billion years? If so, the animal response to death in both “higher” and “lower” organisms shows some unity that might not be just a projection from the human perspective, not an attempt to anthropomorphize. If there is a connection, it stands as evidence of grief’s complexity and animal empathy.
Sometimes one empathetic person sitting beside the grief stricken and quietly holding a hand, is all the support a grieving person needs. No words. Could AI ever mimic that? Is it possible to get such solace from a computer in standby mode? Think about handholding for a moment: It’s not just one kind of physical contact; it involves moving pressure, just the right amount of pressure that says without words, “I’m here for you.” It can be coupled with a look, a lean toward, a hug, and, of course, with a tear in the eye of the empathizer. It might even pass on a hint that the lost one is still around, still communicating through a mutuality born of empathy.
In the Darkness of Computation
There will be others who will try reconnecting through AI seances. P. T. Barnum has assured us of that. Some might even walk away happy and feeling reconnected. I suppose one could say that “if it works, it works.” But in reality, it only works insofar as the grief stricken wants it to work. One could just as easily read a book on grief or some academic article and walk away saying, “Oh, I feel better now.” That is, better until that next storm raises the waves.
If language, spoken language, alone could lessen grief, then the association of human and bird responses to death could easily be dismissed. But I’ll reiterate. Empathy expresses itself in an indefinite—and that means “living”—number of ways. The starling’s response is ultimately unfathomable, even for an animal psychologist, because no one can follow the bird through its later experiences, its sleep, or its memories. If that starling, presumably long dead these many years later, were to fly over the same road this spring now long after the loss, would it, like me, remember? Would it, like me, still feel the loss?
Could AI?
*Harrison: AI Company Says It'll Perform a Seance on Your Dead Loved Ones. Online at
https://futurism.com/ai-seance Accessed May 23, 2023.
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