Robot death care: A study of funerary practice

Abstract

Across the globe, human experiences of death, dying, and grief are now shaped by digital technologies and, increasingly, by robotic technologies. This article explores how practices of care for the dead are transformed by the participation of non-human, mechanised agents. We ask what makes a particular robot engagement with death a breach or an affirmation of care for the dead by examining recent entanglements between humans, death, and robotics. In particular, we consider telepresence robots for remote attendance of funerals; semi-humanoid robots officiating in a religious capacity at memorial services; and the conduct of memorial services by robots, for robots. Using the activities of robots to ground our discussion, this article speaks to broader cultural anxieties emerging in an era of high-tech life and high-tech death, which involve tensions between human affect and technological effect, machinic work and artisanal work, humans and non-humans, and subjects and objects.

Media, mortality and necro-technologies: Eulogies for dead media

“…The CataCombo Sound System , for example, appears pointless at first glance, but if its inventors were enabled to explain the emotional power of music in grief, and while communing with the dead, the product might become meaningful. Similarly, the idea of driving CARL around during a funeral was, on first impressions, easy to deride as intrusive, distracting and undignified, but there were nonetheless positive experiences associated with its use (Gould et al, 2021). Alas, in a crowded market with infrequent consumer engagement, there are few opportunities to explain the imagined value of specific necro-technologies such as CataCombo or CARL , let alone the imaginaries of more general innovations within the contemporary attention economy, leading to many premature deaths.…”

Information science and the inevitable: A literature review at the intersection of death and information management: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…Finally, although research on changes to funeral practices and in the funeral industry is outside the scope of this review, it is worth mentioning that technologies are intertwined with the materiality of the funeral practices (Nansen et al, 2014) and therefore death rituals and funerary practices are being changed by information technology (Nansen et al, 2014(Nansen et al, , 2017(Nansen et al, , 2023Uriu et al, 2019), for example through online funerals (Alexis-Martin, 2020) or the application of robots (Arnold et al, 2021;Gould et al, 2021). Thanatotechnology is thus an important intersection of information, technology, and people, including culture; for example, as funeral industries in Western societies become more privatized, their death-related practices are developing toward more individual-focused services (Odom et al, 2010).…”

Where in Society Will Ai Agents Fit? A Proposed Framework for Understanding Attitudes Toward Ai Occupational Roles From Theoretical Perspectives of Status, Identity, and Ontology

“…Religion is an underexplored domain that is starting to see more AI integration. There are instances of using AI bots for praying (Öhman, Gorwa & Floridi, 2019), worship (Cheong, 2020) and funeral ceremonies (Gould et al, 2021). Thus, in a first descriptive step reported below, we compare the public's views on automation in the spiritual realm where it is less prevalent and arguably has higher ontological stakes against views on automation in domains where AI has been more commonplace.…”