Lessons from a holographic husband
Play’s AI spouse might soon become a reality
It’s the year 2062. A woman in her 80s with silvery blue hair rests in an armchair to chat with her husband. All seems to be in order — until the man speaks. And moves.
He doesn’t stand unless he’s called upon. He must be fed information about his two children. He’s curiously accommodating.
Walter Prime is an artificially intelligent hologram meant to comfort the woman, who has Alzheimer’s. Her husband, the real Walter, has died.
This is the plot of “Marjorie Prime,” a sci-fi play showing at the O’Reilly Theater in the Cultural District.
This future is already underway. Companies in Japan and the U.S. are developing holographic, artificially intelligent assistants and selling them for a profit. The holographic display market will be worth $3.57 billion by 2020, according to Markets and Markets, a market research firm headquartered in India.
Music goes virtual
Holograms, at their core, are displays that rely on a high-resolution 3-D rendering of an object to reconstruct the image with a projection of light. The graphic becomes a virtual video in the real world. Holograms are not perfect twins of the real thing, but the technology is quickly improving.
A Michael Jackson hologram played a set at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards, doing the iconic moonwalk alongside a very much alive five-piece band and a troupe of 16 dancers.
In 2012, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg played a set at the Coachella music festival in Indio, Calif., alongside Tupac Shakur, the West Coast rapper shot and killed in 1996.
“There’s more intersection between AI and the arts than people might expect,” said Kenny Chen, founder of Pittsburgh AI, a nonprofit that aims to “democratize the design, development and use of AI,” according to its website.
Productions are put on by companies like Hologram USA and BASE Hologram in Los Angeles; Jupiter, Fla.-based Pulse Evolution (creators of the Michael Jackson hologram); and Eyellusion Hologram Production.
During the NFL’s 2018 Super Bowl halftime show in Minneapolis, a projection of Prince was cast onto a billowing white curtain. But it wasn’t a hologram. While he was alive, the musician reportedly told his friend and collaborator Sheila E. to not “ever let anyone do a hologram of me. Not cool if this happens!” she recounted in a tweet.
That points right at the problem: Is it morally acceptable to create a representation of a person after that person has died and can’t consent?
Risk of ‘absolute garbage’
While AI is the heartbeat of Pittsburgh’s tech scene, there’s not much movement here by way of hologram-focused startups or products. There are local ethicists considering the future as it’s portrayed in “Marjorie Prime.”
Mike Skirpan, a special faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University who teaches ethics in computing, is also a self-described “concerned citizen.”
Despite his work in artificial intelligence, he expressed some pessimism during a Tuesday panel conversation on ethics held in the rehearsal room of the O’Reilly Theater before showtime.
Mr. Skirpan wonders what the ramifications will look like in developing smarter and smarter AI systems.
“Particularly, what does it mean to sort of make decisions that really impact your life based on data?” he asked. “Algorithms could have all sorts of errors in them or biases in them.”
Mr. Skirpan calls out charlatanism as one of the dangers.
“People fundamentally don’t understand AI and even some experts don’t understand how they’re getting results, and it’s very easy to take something like a document or a bunch of text input and say, magically, I got this really cool output that looks really smart,” he said.
“And investors, people with millions of dollars, are like, ‘Wow, that’s great,’ and pour money into it — but this idea could actually be absolute garbage,” Mr. Skirpan continued.
‘Enjoy human-like communication’
The consumer electronics market is in a nascent research and development phase when it comes to holographic tech.
In 2018, an Apple patent surfaced showing a virtual keyboard that projects onto a surface in front of a Macbook, allowing users to tap that surface — typing without ever really touching a keyboard.
Many patents never become actual products. They’re often experimental and the ideas are protected just in case a company decides to pursue that option.
But there are also hologram toys for kids being sold at Walmart and Macy’s, including the “Kidzlabs Hologram Science Kit,” and the “Children’s Mirage 3D Hologram Maker.”
In Japan, one firm, Vinclu, builds and sells a GateBox system with AI holographic assistants that look like anime characters. They appear as a different versions of a blue woman in a jar. GateBox cost about $1,380.
“You can enjoy human-like communication with the character that is possible to be with you near, such as smiling or waving her hand at you when making eye contact,” according to the website.
If the whole Walter Prime idea is appealing to you, this is probably your best bet for now.