Outsourcing My Self Perspective to a Deadbot?

The Afterlife is digitized, and the revolution WILL be broadcast.

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/26/nx-s1-5508355/ai-dead-people-chatbots-videos-parkland-court

I'm very grateful for Photos.google.com.  There are now decades of photos I can find very quickly. And it includes a lot of digital photos I took of hard copy photos.

And I'm very grateful that wonderful things from artists like Gahan Wilson and Gary Larson and George Carlin (whose comments on the history of the FCC were very topical again, this week. Freedom of Speech should be safe as long as we have volume, channel changing, and other knobs availalbe).

Less grateful that Blogger delists older posts which included hot links that are now dead links.  In 2008, if this blog linked to a current story of 2008, and that link (often to a youtube video, which is another google archive topic) is now 404, the blogspot post linking to that 404 effectively becomes 404.

Understandably, this may be a necessary way to prevent AI from generating millions of blogspot posts and billions of youtube videos. But AI will probably have more time to figure its way past the gatekeepers than I will have time for to go back and edit 17 year old blog posts.

This is the reason I'm now entertaining the idea of outsourcing my blog to my own "Deadbot".

So far, the digitization of thoughts and opinions and images and voice has been marketed as a way to preserve a dearly departed "dead" one - hence the term "dead-bot". And that raises questions - would my parents have wanted me to do that? My father Bill Ingenthron worshiped his grandparents - but they instructed him to burn their love letters (he didn't). So it's an "ethics of recycling" topic.

But I'm in a position to recycle myself. I could outsource my engagement with society - which has always been above and beyond the societal mean. There is a big digital record of my thoughts and opinions, starting with articles and editorials I wrote in the trade press (see academia.edu profile), continuing with the blog, and I'm always piping up on Linkedin and Facebook (to the alarm and consternation of my most significant other person in my life).

So if my memories and opinions would allow someone to image / recreate me with an Artificial Intelligence "Deadbot" technology, can I just outsource myself right now and retire?

And would I like what I see? And things I do not like, would I get the opportunity to change them?

Someone in our industry who I used to talk with quite frequently and considered a friend told me, in print, "You've always put yourself above everyone in our industry." Fair, and opinion I value. Problem is that this pal is known as a serial gossip, and I'm quite sure he's been saying that about me to everyone whenever my name comes up. Maybe I'd observe what he saw in my personal outsource bot, and change.  

Or maybe I'd see the people who have introduced themselves to me, out of the fucking blue, who I've never met or come across, telling me they were inspired by me. I don't take those people for granted. I hope instead that it gives  me the courage to pass that same appreciation forward. I hope I already do.

An old boss of mine, David B. Struhs, reached out to me 10 years after I retired from my role as division director at Massachusetts DEP to invite me to present to a group at International Paper in Memphis where he was then - 10 years later - Vice President.  David somehow remembered that I'm from Arkansas and that I fly to Memphis to visit my family, and it was very kind of him and IP to invite me.

In cleaning up from an office move this week, I found a piece of paper - now digitized below - from David thanking me for making the trip.  And it makes me wonder if I do this enough for my former employees who made it possible for me to be this guy that the demons just aren't reaching.