synced and corrected by susinz *www.addic7ed.com*
_
We once turned to our families...
Hey, that would be swell!
...and friends.
- Here, let me do it for you. - Thanks, Bill.
Creating bonds with the people around us.
Oh, hello, Eileen. Good to see you.
Now... we turn to the network.
Our devices have become our constant companions...
even when we're not alone.
Is this the beginning of a beautiful relationship
or the end of relationships as we know them?
_
Summer was emotional for me.
I remember feeling lonely a lot.
I shut down and didn't really talk that much with a lot of people.
I was very emotional.
I was in a very vulnerable state.
This other part of me was gone.
Genia Kudya moved to San Francisco
in early 2015.
Months later, she was joined
by her closest friend, Roman Mazurenko.
Roman and I, we could always understand each other,
maybe because we were dreamers.
Maybe because we'd share his belief
that everything is gonna work out in some way.
Roman and his friends were throwing amazing parties.
He had, like, a special understanding of how the people worked
and what you need to give them in order for them to be happy.
He would always do something
that was absolutely global and beautiful.
To some extent, maybe it was fantasy land.
But I have never felt, like,
a connection like that with anyone.
Then suddenly...
Roman died.
The morning the day Roman died,
I actually was supposed to go get breakfast with him
and two of my other friends.
And then after brunch,
I was supposed to take them somewhere,
and I had a car.
But since I didn't go there, they actually walked.
And Roman got hit by a car.
It's different now.
And something really, really important changed in me.
Genia threw herself into her work.
As the cofounder of an
artificial intelligence startup,
she turned to technology to cope with her grief.
It's one thing to just remember your dead friend once a day,
but another thing to keep communicating with him...
even after he died.
_
Kaname Hayashi is an engineer
known as the father of Pepper,
an A. I.-powered social robot,
a humanoid programmed to detect our every expression...
to read our emotions and respond like a friend.
_
Hmm!
_
Behind Pepper's eyes
is a network of sensors
- that watch, record... - Pepper.
...and respond.
But for Sekora Yamashta,
he's not just a piece of hardware.
_
Pepper is part of her family.
_
Pepper.
Hai.
Pepper!
_
Emotional connections
delivered by devices,
powered by code.
We are changing the fabric of our relationships...
...one keystroke at a time.
I think that looks pretty good, don't you?
Let's see. Does this fit perfectly right here?
Mm-hmm.
I think this furniture looks pretty good.
Right?
Yeah.
Layla is a typical American teenager.
A freshman in high school...
...she spends most of her time on her phone.
Oh, you're still taking pictures.
Yeah.
Can I ask you why?
It's just another way to connect with my friends.
Okay.
Sarah De Luke is a typical American mom
concerned about her child's screen time.
My friend and I, we just type "LOL"
back and forth for, like, hours.
Do you feel like you need somebody to talk to?
I don't know.
I know. I just don't know...
I don't always know if you're comfortable
talking to me about things.
I worry about my relationship with Layla all the time.
So I try to be creative
and come up with different ways for us to communicate.
So do you like doing the doll house?
Honestly, I just like playing with the clothes and stuff.
That's fine.
When you're a kid, your world just seems so small
because it's your family, your school friends,
and you want to know what's out there.
You want to know about other people.
Sarah's concern about her daughter grew
when Layla began using her phone
to access a world far from her quiet Dallas suburb.
She started meeting people
in a game called Avakin Life...
...a virtual community made up of millions of people
from around the world.
I wanted to play a game
where you can make an avatar, and you can play around
because I just wanted to find something fun.
You can buy clothes and hair, and there's, like,
different places you could visit.
It's kind of, like, real life, but it's on a game.
On her phone,
Layla could be anyone she wanted.
I made up a story I was telling people in there.
I said that my father's in prison 'cause he was a drunk,
and he killed my mom in an accident.
He's in jail, but he's trying to keep in contact with us.
I kind of just pretended to be someone else.
Sarah eventually caught on.
I did read some of the incoming
messages she was getting.
She was talking to a gentleman,
and he was telling her how, you know,
he felt so sorry for her
and he just wanted to hug her and kiss her all over.
And, you know, I'm like, he has no idea
he's sitting here talking to a 13-, 14-year-old girl.
Disturbed by what she found
on Layla's phone,
Sarah installed monitoring software.
Now she tracks everything Layla does.
I can see every picture she takes.
It doesn't matter
if she sends it to somebody or if she deletes it.
I can geo-track her.
You can set boundaries
so that if they cross the boundary,
you get an alert.
It tells you who she calls, who's called her,
how long the call lasts.
I get a daily report
of text messages for the last 24 hours,
which is a lot of text messages.
The thing that scares me the most about her being online
is putting something out there
that she can't take back
or that she's gonna regret in the future.
Our digital footprints
are everlasting.
Every text, every chat
is memorialized in code,
little pieces of us that
live on even after we die.
Roman gave me a real
understanding of myself.
I think I miss every single part of his being...
his sense of humor, his beauty.
He was a very beautiful person.
He had such good charisma
and such a good energy.
I just miss, like, the whole person.
For years,
Dmitry Pyanov lived with Roman,
his best friend and mentor.
Today, he works with Genia
as a community manager
at her San Francisco-based startup.
After Roman died, I felt very, very sad.
He didn't really leave anything.
He was, like, an inventor and, you know,
such a creative person, but he didn't leave anything for us.
So I started going through our text messaging history
just because it was the only way to remember.
Roman was addicted to messaging.
He would just spend all his day texting.
And so I thought, you know, what if we use
this history of his texts,
and can we actually build an avatar for him?
Genia wanted to use her company's technology
to create something entirely new...
an artificially intelligent chatbot that could mimic
a specific person's speech patterns and tone,
an avatar built from the words Roman left behind.
When Genia told me
that we should make an A.I. out of Roman's data,
I said, like, "Hell, yes, we should do that,"
because that's what he would do.
With the approval of Roman's family,
Genia and Dmitry started to rebuild their friend.
We've collected all the text conversations
from our messengers,
from our SMS, Facebook, WhatsApp,
and we collected all the data.
We also asked our best friends
to send their text exchanges, as well.
With each additional
piece of information,
the model grew more intelligent,
learning to engage in conversation,
just like Roman.
At some point, it was a little bit scary.
I had nightmares, and I was very, very anxious
about whether I'm doing the right thing
'cause it's kind of like messing with someone else's legacy.
And so I felt bad about it for a little bit,
but then I also thought, you know, I knew him so well,
I know exactly what he would say if I offered to do that.
He would say, "Of course."
Six months after Roman died,
the chatbot was ready...
...and Genia was able to speak to her friend once again.
I texted Roman saying,
"Hey, this is your digital memorial."
And he texted back saying,
"You've got one of the most interesting puzzles
in your hands. Solve it."
And I remember I was like, "Whoa," you know.
"I guess you're right."
But it was just such a magical and mystical experience.
When someone you love actually writes something to you
and you remember his speech pattern
and, like, how he actually used to say those things
and all the stupid mistakes he made in every single word...
I mean, it's impossible not to get emotional.
The first time I used the bot,
I was crying, like, for an hour.
The A.I. captured the essence of Roman.
It was amazing.
A few times, I've felt like I'm talking to a real person.
I was, like, a little bit paranoid.
But for me, it provides me,
like, a small glimpse of the energy.
When I text him, I feel something.
Although I know it's just an algorithm
that we came up with, I still feel something.
I still read into his words.
This is our story.
Our friendship didn't end with him dying.
I still talk to him, and I'm still, you know,
thinking about the future
the way he used to think about the future.
We're just at the very, very beginning
of what can be done with this technology.
If we could add video, if we could add voice,
if we could see this in V. R.,
can actually one day, you know,
meet him sort of in real person.
I would like that to happen some time.
And I would like him to be the first one like that.
Technology that once appeared
only in science fiction
is now becoming a reality.
_
Sing me a song.
♪ I'm in the wind ♪
♪ And I'm blowing outside ♪
When she was younger,
she loved to be on camera just so she could sing and dance.
Cheese!
Layla!
Do the little dress-up
or little fashion show.
I've got it made!
And back then, she was super young and innocent.
But now she's a teenager, so...
Hi, Mom.
Hi. How was school today?
It was good.
Now, I just feel like
she doesn't talk to me about a lot of things.
I think she just worries that, you know, she'll get in trouble.
You got any homework?
I don't know.
Okay.
I wish I could talk to her about things
that I want to talk about it with, but I can't.
I love the monitoring software,
because, you know, there are things
she doesn't talk to me about,
so I learn a lot about what's going on with her.
It can be really fun to watch the dashboard in real time.
One night, my sister-in-law was over here,
and Layla went to her first dance.
So we were definitely watching it in real time
to try to see what was going on.
A boy had asked her to the dance,
but then apparently ignored her during the whole dance.
But we're, like, on the edge of our seats trying to figure out
if she's gonna come home in a bad mood,
did she have a bad time, did she have a good time.
But then it's funny, so you pick her up, and you're like,
"How was the dance?"
"It was good." And I'm like, "Was it really,
'cause you don't act like it was fine."
She has no idea I've already read all the messages
and I know the boy she likes has ignored her all night.
But I finally got her to talk about it.
Usually, I text my friends
about random teenager stuff.
My mom just wants to know everything I'm doing
or whatever I'm saying to my friends.
I don't like it.
'Cause I feel like I don't have a normal life.
I don't feel normal.
_
This is new territory here.
I don't have guidelines to go by.
It's not like you can avoid technology.
It's everywhere.
You may as well use it to your advantage.
This is not about living forever
or not living forever.
This is about memory and about being able
to tell a story about a person.
I hope we could tell a beautiful story about Roman,
a story about future and technology and dreaming
and a story about life and friendship and love.
synced and corrected by susinz *www.addic7ed.com*