AI and the Afterlife

Scenario planning for AI, death, and the afterlife

orange and blue wavy lines representing a digital face on a dark blue background

This interdisciplinary network of scholars focusses on the topics of death, dying, and how new technologies, especially AI, are likely to reshape the way we think about death from a metaphysical and ethical perspective. The network explores how innovative methodologies already used in other disciplines and areas – particularly that of scenario planning – can inform the ethics of death and dying in technologically-advanced societies of the future.

In particular, the network uses the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (Ramírez and Wilkinson, 2016) to look at the future of our relationship with AI and "the afterlife" - and indeed how the notion itself of after-life might be reshaped in light of virtual representation of dead people - ‘digital doppelgänger’ - and the way AI and other technologies force us to rethink death and dying.  

A short explainer of the scenario planning approach and methodology can be found in the BMJ Medical Humanities blog (Finch, 2024). Scenarios are widely used as a strategic and policy tool, but are also used for producing rigorous, actionable, interesting research (Ramírez et al., 2015), including novel formats which invite and encourage interdisciplinary conversation (e.g. Finch et al, 2024).

For further information about the network, contact: alberto.giubilini@uehiro.ox.ac.uk 

Team

Matthew Finch (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford)

Alberto Giubilini (Uehiro Oxford Institute, University of Oxford)

Cristina Voinea (Uehiro Oxford Institute, University of Oxford)

Halina Suwalowska (Ethox Centre, University of Oxford)

Charlotte Dewarumez (History of Art, Université Toulouse-II-Jean-Jaurès)

Eleanor Kerfoot (Faculty of History, University of Oxford)

Links

Ramírez and Wilkinson, 2016 | Ramírez, Rafael, and Angela Wilkinson, 'Strategic Reframing: The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach' (Oxford, 2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 May 2016)

Finch, 2024 | 'Stories of the Futures You Didn’t See Coming: Scenario Planning, Healthcare, and the Humanities', BMJ Medical Humanities blog post by Matt Finch (8 January 2024)

Ramírez et al., 2015 | Rafael Ramirez, Malobi Mukherjee, Simona Vezzoli, Arnoldo Matus Kramer, 'Scenarios as a scholarly methodology to produce “interesting research”', Futures, Volume 71, 2015, pp 70-87

Finch et al, 2024 | Finch, M., Older, M., Mahon, M. et al. 'Climate action and the vantage point of imagined futures: a scenario-based conversation' npj Clim. Action 3, 45 (2024)