Grief, Artificial Intelligence and Our Eternal Hope

There’s something about grief that changes us. It changes the way that we see life. It changes not only how we view the future but how we look back at the past.

Sometimes grief makes us look at the past with regret. Sometimes we become trapped in our memories that we never want to move on with life anymore.

But what if you can hear your deceased loved one’s voice again? What if you can somehow talk to a voice that resembles that of the person you lost?

How will this possibility affect the way you process your grief?

Alexa’s New Feature

An article from CNN recently reported how Amazon’s Alexa will soon have the feature of mimicking our deceased loved ones’ voices. For those who have lost their mother, father or any close family member or special someone, they can soon hear them again through a gadget that can interact with them in a limited way.

This innovation will be a part of an update to Amazon’s voice assistant where Alexa will soon be able to mimic any voice, including the voice of your loved one.

Dwelling on Memories

If this new feature of Alexa works, we’d soon be able to virtually travel back in time through the memories of the people we have lost. Hearing their voices would bring us back to those days when they were still with us, when we can ask them a question and they can talk back to us.

If mere photos and video recordings can help us recall our better days with our loved ones, a voice assistant that sounds just like them could change our everyday life. Imagine waking up in the morning through a voice that resembles that of your deceased spouse. Or imagine doing research through the voice of a dear friend who just passed away.

The Loss in our Hearts

The one drawback, however, is that at the end of the day, no matter how much those voices sound alike, you know that you can’t bring back to life your loved ones who passed away. Alexa may sound like them, but they are not Alexa.

The sound of their voices may bring you comfort from time to time, but at other times, hearing these voices may only remind you more of your loss. They can amplify that feeling of helplessness, your powerlessness to actually talk to those people that you loved.

After the death of those close to me, I appreciate looking at photos that remind me of them. But a time came when I felt that the more I looked at those photos, the more that I missed them, and the more I felt the pain in my heart for losing them.

Maybe the same would be true for other people and the use of artificial intelligence devices like Alexa. They would have to determine for themselves if hearing their loved ones’ voices again could comfort them or if this could only prevent them from healing and moving on.

Our Hope for the Future

I think that love, more than any other thing urges us to search for the eternal. It just doesn’t seem right to have death end all that is good and beautiful in life.

And so we do all we can, even after our loved ones have passed away to stay with them. We keep their photos and we look at them from time to time. We listen to their voice recordings at times when we miss them so much. But nothing can ever replace the presence of those whom we have loved.

We want to see not only their photos, but their faces. We want to hold them again and hug them with love. And thanks be to God who gives us hope that we can indeed do these things again.

As Christians, our hope is not limited by the physical keepsakes we have from our deceased loved ones. We may grieve, but we should not fall into despair.

Even if one’s life on earth is ended, we believe that there is another life that awaits us, a life where we can be reunited with the ones we love. In that life, there shall be no more parting and no more grief. Death is conquered forever and love will have the final say.

It may not happen today or the day after, but we hold on in faith for that beautiful tomorrow where we’d see in reality those timeless memories we can now only hold in our hearts.

“Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” – St. Thomas More

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died...Therefore encourage one another with these words.” - 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14,18 (NRSVCE)

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Jocelyn Soriano is the author of the book “Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief” — click here.