Good morning. A new frontier in grief tech is emerging, with chatty digital avatars of the dead – more on that below, along with Notre-Dame’s gleaming restoration and the Bank of Canada’s next rate cut. But let’s begin with the latest from Syria.
Syrian opposition fighters in Damascus celebrate the fall of the government.Omar Sanadiki/The Associated Press
Syria
The sudden end of the Assad regime
After half a century of dynastic rule, 13 years of civil war and one rebel offensive that unfolded over a matter of days, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime came to an abrupt end in Syria yesterday. The insurgents – who captured the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs last week – seized Damascus on Sunday morning to little resistance from government forces; members of the army had already deserted their posts and changed into civilian clothes. Abu Mohammed al-Golani, leader of the lightning offensive, entered the capital’s historic Umayyad mosque surrounded by supporters, while crowds pulled down statues and portraits of the president and his father, Hafez. Flights out of Damascus International Airport were suspended – but not before al-Assad and his family caught a private plane to Moscow, where they’ve been given asylum, according to Russian state media.
“The fall of Assad’s dictatorship ends decades of brutal oppression,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted on social media. “A new chapter for Syria can begin here.” Still, al-Assad’s swift departure leaves the country in uncertain hands, The Globe’s senior international correspondent Mark MacKinnon reports. Al-Golani’s rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is designated a terrorist group by Canada and the United States. They’re also not the only fighters on the ground: The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and U.S.-protected Kurdish forces each hold sway in parts of the country. Russia, meanwhile, has maintained a presence in Syria with air and naval bases, which it used to support military operations in Africa and to launch bombing attacks against the rebels who just ousted al-Assad. It’s unlikely that the new government – led, for now, by Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali – will want to let the Russians stay.
More than 500,000 people died in Syria’s long civil war. Half the country – about 12 million people – have been displaced from their homes, and five million live abroad as refugees. Much of the country lies in ruins; the economy has shrunk to half its 2010 size. But most Syrians believe their future is far brighter now that al-Assad is gone. “This day has been a dream for 13 years,” Asaad Hanna, an exiled Syrian journalist, told The Globe. “We are a free country right now. I’m going home as soon as possible.”
Why say goodbye?The Globe and Mail
Artificial Intelligence
Ghost in the machine
Project December’s pitch is pretty simple: It claims to be the first AI system that can “simulate a text-based conversation with anyone. Anyone, including someone who is no longer living.” And it doesn’t take much to kick off that conversation: After ponying up $10, you plug in some of your departed’s biographical details, tick a couple personality traits, and include a short sample of their writing. The Globe’s Ian Brown thought he’d give it a try.
He chose his mother, who passed away 15 years ago at the age of 95. It wasn’t exactly a convincing chat. But Cecily Brown left behind pudding tins and gardening shears and battered copies of bad light verse – not the abundance of texts, e-mails, videos and voice notes that now shape so much of our relationships. Trained on that material, these beyond-the-grave bots will only become more, well, life-like. They’re also just one branch of the burgeoning “grief tech” industry, which includes virtual-reality memorials (part graveyard, part family album), digital goodbye messages (like a high-tech Victorian memory box) and, inevitably, holograms (they did this with Tupac).
In his new feature, Brown weighs the value of a digital afterlife, and examines whether AI reconstructions can possibly deliver the solace – and kind of immortality – they promise. But I couldn’t stop thinking about his strange journey with MomGPT, so I spoke with Brown to find out more.
Tell me first about your actual, flesh-and-blood mother. What was she like?
My mother was a complicated woman. She was part of the generation born between the first and second waves of feminists – smart, enormous drive, funny, but with no outlet beyond a family. We used to say she ought to have been running a major weapons manufacturer. She was a person of immense talent and energy, but she was a drinker and furious a lot of the time. One reason my brothers and sisters and I are so tight to this day – though we live miles from one another – is because we were allies against her unpredictability. She was terrified of being alone, I think, and so needed to control everything. I had a very fractious relationship with her, but I liked making her laugh.
What sort of mother did Project December offer up? On a scale of one to Lazarus, how faithful was this restoration?
I would say maybe 1.5? It captured her forthrightness (not afraid of a confrontation), but my mother wouldn’t have been caught dead (so to speak) uttering the lines the avatar speaks. “I have my memories and my faith to keep me company”? That may have been true of one part of her, as it is of many mothers. But it doesn’t acknowledge the complex and contradictory feelings she had toward what she often described as a life of drudgery – which many women also experience. I mean, I still remember the Thanksgiving dinner where my mother, several Manhattans to the wind, stood up at the head of the table and said “Fine job I’ve done! Two old maids (my sisters were as yet unmarried), a homosexual (my brother had just come out) and another one shacked up, in an apartment, with an American!” So: very much not the avatar.
Given that, how did your exchange with the avatar feel?
I was impressed Project December could create a character so easily, but I found my avatar mother hard to take seriously. It – and I use the impersonal article intentionally – did not feel like an emotional replacement for my ma. I much prefer the more contradictory mother I recreate and reinvent every time I think of her. Conversing with the avatar felt a bit like the sort of conversation I imagine one might have in an HR workshop – something with good intentions, but too impersonal to be effective.
It may look like MS-DOS, but this is the Project December interface. Brown's mother called him Willie; he called her Ma.Project December/Supplied
One grief-tech executive told you her customers are hoping for the big conversations they never got to have with their loved ones. In real life, those conversations can be so scary – what if they don’t go the way we want, or provide the emotional catharsis we’re after. I wonder if some of the allure of these avatars is the chance to get the reward without contending with the risk.
Yes, that’s very true: a chance to resolve the issues in a relationship, without any living repercussions. But that’s a fantasy. Alas, the avatars so far are much less fluid and capable than I imagined. And they are certainly no substitute for sitting down with your real parents and getting them to talk, to hell with the consequences. Because you have no shot once they are gone. I think those talks are easier today, because parents are way more open. Mine were Edwardians, and talking about anything emotional was basically evidence of treason.
Currently, chats with the dead are pretty generic – ChatGPT meets a Hallmark card. But these simulacrums will get more persuasive as the technology improves and the source material deepens. Would you have wanted to check in with your mother if she seemed like the realer deal?
This is the fascinating thing: I actually think I would rather not. First of all, I think there are two distinct reasons why the grief-bot biz is on the upswing. Some people want a simulacrum of someone or even a pet they loved. But others – many tech billionaires among them – want an avatar of themselves, so their so-called genius can live on. I would say that’s the more viable business model if we’re talking avatars and not just memorials. I mean, do you think for a femtosecond that Elon Musk is not going to create an AI-powered eLON2.0 to carry his ego into the coming centuries?
There was an Ed Asner hologram that interacted with mourners at his own funeral. Former co-stars found it pretty convincing! Any interest?
Interest, yes. But that’s because it’s actual footage of Asner, with a bunch of his answers sampled and combined. Of course it sounds like him. But it’s ultimately no more interesting than the audio-animatronic Abe Lincoln at Disneyland. Ask him anything not on the menu, he burps and suggests you try again.
The real question is, what is it one seeks in longing for the dead? What does a grieving person want? The departed person back? Or some kind of peace? I suspect it’s the latter. I wonder, if you really knew someone, and you let yourself go back to them, in your mind, you might find the thing that made your relationship with them so valuable. And if you then make something with the memory – paint it, write to it, sing to it, play it, memorialize it, whatever – you salve your grief more than some avatar ever will. Think of the best of the many books about grief: C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, Calvin Trillin’s memoir of his wife, About Alice, David Macfarlane’s Likeness – that’s what happens. The prepackaged AI product can’t measure up.
The Shot
Notre-Dame rises from the ashes
The cathedral before its reopening this weekend.Sarah Meyssonnier/The Associated Press
On April 15, 2019, an electrical short circuit – or maybe an errant cigarette butt – caused Notre-Dame to erupt in flames. Its 750-ton oak-and-lead spire collapsed, sending a fireball into the attic; the blast was so powerful it slammed all the cathedral’s doors shut. But after five years, about $900-million in donations and the efforts of more than 2,000 workers, Paris’s 861-year-old Gothic monument reopened this weekend, looking unbelievably sparkly and bright. See more photos of Notre-Dame here and read more about its first mass in five years here.
The Week
What we’re following
Today: The satirical news site The Onion will be back in court to see whether it can go ahead with its purchase of Alex Jones’s Infowars.
Tomorrow: After repeated delays, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will take the stand in his long-running corruption trial, which includes charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes.
Wednesday: The Bank of Canada is expected to deliver an oversized half-point rate cut to revive a sluggish economy after last week’s less-than-stellar jobs report.
Thursday: Creditors are set to vote on a proposed settlement that would see three tobacco giants pay $32.5-billion to provinces and smokers across Canada.
Saturday: The government’s GST break goes into effect for the next two months – although the NDP would very much like to make the holiday permanent.