With Haiti in chaos, Canada buries its head in the sand

Story by Henry Milner, Research Fellow, Electoral Studies, Political Science, Université de Montréal • 

THE CONVERSATION

Police officers take cover during an anti-gang operation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in April 2023, a day after a mob in the Haitian capital pulled 13 suspected gang members from police custody at a traffic stop, beat and burned them to death with gasoline-soaked tires.

© (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)


“Things are now at a breaking point. This crisis will not pass.”

So said Jean-Martin Bauer, the Haiti director of the United Nations World Food Program, in December 2022.

He was correct. The situation in Haiti has been deteriorating badly over the past few months. Hundreds of people have been killed across metropolitan Port-au-Prince by armed gangs seeking to assert their authority, while half of the Haitian population — approximately 4.7 million people — faces acute hunger.


Malnourished young children rest and play in a malnutrition stabilization centre in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in January 2023.

© (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

The State Department in the United States has cited “credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by government agents…as well as…widespread civilian deaths or harm, enforced disappearances or abductions, torture, and physical abuse.”

Helen La Lime, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti, warned of kidnappings every six hours in 2022. She said that without the deployment of an international specialized force, any progress in Haiti “will remain fragile and vulnerable to being reversed.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently reaffirmed “the urgent need for the deployment of an international specialized armed force.”

So where’s Canada?

Abject poverty

Haiti, a country of 11 million people, shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, where I spend my winters. From there I continue to have regular contact with Haitians who have fled their country.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Its estimated annual GDP per capita is US$1,829 compared to US$18,626 for the Dominican Republic.

In the mid-20th century, the economies of the two countries were comparable. Since that time, the Haitian economy shrank, partly due to external factors like earthquakes but also ineffectual and corrupt leaders, notably dictators Papa Doc Duvalier and “Baby Doc.”

There are widespread fears in Washington and among Haiti’s Caribbean neighbours that without external intervention, the social devastation in Haiti could destabilize the entire region and that its implosion will produce a flood of people seeking to escape repression, violence and unspeakable social misery.

A woman poses for a photo outside her makeshift home built after gangs set her home on fire in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in April 2023.© (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Related video: Pathways to Prosperity Haitian Heritage Month (WPBF West Palm Beach)

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When it comes to the UN’s call for a specialized support force, Canada’s reputation as an impartial peacekeeper makes it an obvious candidate. Canada has good relations with the countries in the region that are ready to support such a mission, and its historical record of relations with Haiti is mixed rather than mainly negative, like that of the U.S. and France.

During his visit to Ottawa in March, however, U.S. President Joe Biden failed to persuade Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to send Canadian soldiers to Haiti.

Instead, Canada promised another $100 million in new aid and equipment for the Haitian National Police, some of which may end up in the hands of gangs.

In late fall, Canada deployed two navy ships to patrol Haitian waters. Georges Michel, a Haitian historian who helped write the nation’s 1987 constitution, had this response:

“When Canada sent a plane and a boat to fight against the insecurity, the population laughed. We don’t have problems with the birds or the fish.”
Media antipathy

Meanwhile, the Canadian media is largely ignoring the situation in Haiti. News outlets in Québec, with its large Haitian diaspora, pay a bit more attention, but typically turn to Haitian “experts” who rule out any proposed solutions that aren’t coming from Haitians themselves.

But any observer of what’s happening on the ground knows that solutions cannot come from within. The fact that interventions failed in the past is no excuse for inaction, but instead offers lessons on avoiding prior mistakes.


A Haitian boy holds onto his father as they approach an irregular border crossing staffed by the RCMP, near Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Québec, in 2017.© (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

This attitude reinforces the reluctance to consider taking on a dangerous mission. No one seems opposed to more Canadian soldiers being sent to Latvia as the war in Ukraine rages on, but support for taking on armed gangs in Port-au-Prince will have to be won.

What needs to happen

A report in December 2022 by the International Crisis Group, a transnational, non-governmental organization, sets out the challenges facing a military intervention in Haiti. It reads:

“The collapsing Haitian state and the severity of the humanitarian emergency justify preparations for a mission…Its deployment should hinge on adequate planning to operate in urban areas and support from Haiti’s main political forces, including their firm commitment to work together in creating a legitimate transitional government.”

Since the urban gangs are divided, such a force could enable life in gang-controlled areas to return to something closer to normal. But alternate institutions take time to build, meaning the gangs could return once the intervention is over.

There will need to be a simultaneous effort to liberate territory in regions close to the Dominican Republic where the gangs are relatively weak. That’s also where the task of rebuilding functioning political and economic institutions could be undertaken.

Short of an intervention, sooner or later the border situation with the Dominican Republic will explode.

When will Canada act?

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

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The crisis in Haiti reflects the failure of the international community to stabilize the country

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 A UN Weather Agency report said the cost of climate-related disasters over the last 50 years is roughly $5.8 trillion Cdn, but there have been fewer deaths in recent years because of improvements in early warning systems.

 Reclaiming B.C.'s waterways from mining pollution

MAY 20, 2023

Decades of mining near the Kootenay River in British Columbia has polluted the water with selenium, which can be detrimental to fish populations. Now, Indigenous communities on both sides of the border are working to clean up the waterway

Tracing the impact toxic mining runoff from B.C.’s Elk Valley to U.S. border communities

May 5, 2023  #CBCVancouver #BritishColumbia

Coal mines operated by Teck Resources are releasing selenium into the waterways in B.C.'s Elk valley. Selenium is a natural mineral but inhigh concentrations it can be harmful to aquatic life. As the selenium continues its way to the U.S. border, tensions between Ottawa and Washington are rising. Radio-Canada's Camille Vernet followed the path of selenium from B.C. to the U.S. to meet the communities that live around the waterways

WORKERS CAPITAL
Canadian public pension fund investments in China draw heightened scrutiny

The Canadian Press
Mon, May 22, 2023


MONTREAL — Investments in China by Canada's largest public pension funds are facing increased scrutiny amid worsening relations between the two countries and allegations that some of those investments are funding the oppression of China's Uyghur minority.

Recently, representatives of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, which manages the pensions of B.C. public sector workers, told a parliamentary committee studying Canada-China relations that they had paused new direct investment in China because of the increasing risks associated with that country.

That pause came amid allegations of Chinese foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian elections, and of Chinese state actors allegedly harassing Canadians who oppose the Communist Party. Earlier this month, Canada expelled a Chinese consular official, and China retaliated within hours, expelling a Canadian diplomat and saying that Canada had "sabotaged" relations between the two nations.

But Canada's two largest public pension investors — the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec — say they need exposure to the world's second-largest economy to provide returns for Canadians, but they promise they can invest responsibly in China.

Michel Leduc, a senior managing director with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, says the fund is "very cautious about the types of assets that we are acquiring, and the different levels of political and geopolitical risk — rather than completely avoiding what will potentially become the world's largest economy within the next 10, 15 years." The pension plan has 10 per cent of its $536 billion in net assets in China.

Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, says Canadians' pensions are being invested in companies that benefit from or help enable the Chinese government's persecution of his people.

"Among the companies, many of them are part of the forced labour supply chain," he said in a recent interview.

The UN Human Rights Office said last August that China is committing "serious human rights violations" against Uyghur people in China's western Xinjiang region and called for further investigation into "allegations of torture, sexual violence, ill treatment, forced medical treatment, as well as forced labour."

The Chinese government maintains it is fighting against terrorism and extremism in the region and operates vocational education centres as part of a "de-radicalization" campaign.

In 2021, the Canadian Parliament voted to describe the treatment of the Uyghur people by the Chinese government as a "genocide."

Leduc says that while the fund is cautious about investing in China, he recognizes it's not easy to trace supply chains when it comes to some products, like solar panels, because much of the world's supply comes from a specific region in China.

According to the United States government, almost half of the world's supply of polysilicon — a key material in solar panels — is manufactured in China's Xinjiang region, home to the Uyghur people. The U.S. says that several manufacturers of panels have been accused of using forced Uyghur labour. And because most of the world's solar panel manufacturing takes place in China, it's nearly impossible to tell which panels may include polysilicon from Xinjiang, U.S. officials say.

"The world needs solar panels, you can't walk away from solar panels," Leduc said, adding that the fund wants to work with companies that are doing their best to understand their supply chains, rather than with those who are uninterested in changing.

In November, Tohti told the parliamentary committee that Quebec's pension fund manager has invested more than $2 billion in companies associated with the alleged Uyghur genocide or forced labour.

Hong Kong Watch, a United Kingdom-based non-governmental organization, says many Canadian pension fund managers are investing in index funds — a basket of various stocks of companies — that include firms linked to Uyghur forced labour or that have been involved in building internment camps for the oppressed minority. Those pension funds include Quebec's Caisse, the B.C. public sector fund and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation.

The Caisse has invested around two per cent of its $402-billion portfolio in China. The fund has developed "rigorous (environmental, social and governance) criteria for all our investments to avoid investing in companies whose practices violate principles such as respect for human rights," spokeswoman Kate Monfette said in an email, but didn't provide examples. She said a "small portion" its portfolio is constructed using indexes or managed externally.

Sam Goodman, the director of policy and advocacy at Hong Kong Watch, said corporate governance structures aren't the same between Canada and China, where the state plays a much bigger role in the economy.

"Under China's own national intelligence law and security laws, these companies, especially the technology companies, are compelled to work hand in glove with the Chinese state and they're not allowed to disclose to any organization or anybody outside of China the extent of that collaboration," he said in a recent interview.

That means companies like multimedia giant Tencent, primarily known for social media applications and video games, may be involved in repression.

"Tencent, as the owner of WeChat, has been accused by Human Rights Watch of building a backdoor into their software allowing authorities to identify and detain Uyghurs who share religious material," Goodman said.

The CPP Investment Board invested more than $1 billion in Tencent in 2016.

Leduc told the parliamentary committee that his fund is monitoring that investment "very, very closely to continue to understand the risks, including some broader human rights-related dimensions of that investment."

B.C.'s pension fund has invested in a company — through an index fund — sanctioned by the U.S. for developing an artificial intelligence system used recognize Uyghur people by their facial features. Daniel Garant, a senior vice-president at the fund, told the parliamentary committee that "it's engaging with index providers to improve what they put in the index."

The B.C. fund said in a statement that investments in indexes are necessary because they offer "flexibility and required liquidity as part of our diversified portfolio."

The Alberta Investment Management Corporation cancelled a recently scheduled appearance before the parliamentary committee and declined to comment, citing the province's ongoing election campaign.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 22, 2023.

Jacob Serebrin, The Canadian Press

Italy's Meloni rejects criticism from Canada's Trudeau over LGBTQ+ rights at G7 Summit

Sat, May 20, 2023 
ROME (AP) — Italy’s far-right Premier Giorgia Meloni on Sunday rejected criticism from her Canadian counterpart at the G7 Summit about her government’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights.

A reporter asked Meloni about the criticism at a news conference early Sunday in Hiroshima, Japan, which is hosting the annual summit of leaders from seven of the world's leading industrialized nations.

On television Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau told Meloni — right before they began private, bilateral talks during the summit — that “Canada is concerned about some of the positions Italy is taking on in terms of LGBT rights.” He added that he was looking forward to talking with the Italian premier about that.

Meloni looked annoyed, twiddled her thumbs and listened in silence, while Trudeau switched to French to sum up his English remarks. Then camera operators left the room, and the two leaders commenced their close-door talks.

Earlier this year, Meloni's government told city halls to stop automatically registering both parents in same-sex couples but instead to limit recognition of parental lights only to the biological parent of the child. Gay rights activists held rallies to denounce the move, calling it homophobic.

Asked about Trudeau's remark, Meloni said that he had fallen “victim” to “fake news" and propaganda, and even said that that his assessment “doesn't correspond to reality.”

The Associated Press

SILENT B&W MOVIE
Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano Emits Vapor, Gas and Ash



[NO AUDIO]

Sat, May 20, 2023 

The Popocatepetl volcano rumbled with activity overnight emitting water vapor, gases, and ash on May 19 in Tlamacas, Mexico, according to local authorities.

Footage recorded by a fixed camera shared by Webcams de Mexico shows the activity.

Officials said they are monitoring ash fall across the state. Locations such as Mexico City’s Benito Juarez International Airport, where flights were briefly delayed to clear the ash from runways, were affected. Credit: Nicola Rustichelli via Storyful

1953 tornado lasted for more than 2.5 hours — crossing from the U.S. to Canada


Randi Mann

The Weather Network
Sun, May 21, 2023 

1953 tornado lasted for more than 2.5 hours — crossing from the U.S. to Canada

This Day In Weather History is a daily podcast by Chris Mei from The Weather Network, featuring stories about people, communities and events and how weather impacted them.

--

On Thursday, May 21, 1953, at 4:21 p.m., an F4 tornado hit Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Ont. The tornado raged through many populated areas for 2 hours and 39 minutes, finally dissipating at 7 p.m.

The tornado first touched down near Smiths Creek, Mich. It headed to the southern edge of Port Huron where it killed two people and injured 68. The tornado destroyed or damaged 400 houses in the United States before it crossed the St. Clair River into Canada.

Sarnia, after the tornado, 1953.

"Sarnia, after the tornado, 1953." Courtesy of Picryl

The thunderstorm that produced the tornado also rained golf ball-sized hail on Sarnia. Because of the already disastrous weather conditions, many motorists and pedestrians were off the streets of the city.

The tornado moved through downtown Sarnia where around 100 buildings were damaged. It hit a telephone exchange building, but it wasn't really damaged because of its quality construction. Other buildings did not fare as well, like a furniture store that lost its upper floors and the Imperial Theatre that almost completely lost its auditorium.

The twister also damaged around 150 homes in Sarnia. It continued through rural areas before dissipated in Stratford, Ont.

picryl

"Sarnia, after the tornado, 1953." Courtesy of Picryl

In Canada, the tornado killed five people, injured 48, and left 500 homeless.

During the tornado's lengthy duration, it travelled 121 to 145 km and measured 1.6 to 2.4 km wide at its peak. The tornado caused an approximate US$17.6 million (1953) worth of damage.

To learn more about the 1953 Sarnia tornado, listen to today's episode of "This Day In Weather History."

Subscribe to 'This Day in Weather History': Apple Podcasts | Amazon Alexa | Google Assistant | Spotify | Google Podcasts | iHeartRadio | Overcast'

Thumbnail: Downtown Sarnia Tornado Aftermath. Courtesy of Cookedinlh/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 4.0

I Was Adopted From China. People Ask If I Feel 'Lucky' — And My Answer Isn't What They Expect.

Iris Anderson
Sun, May 21, 2023 

The author at the Great Wall of China. “I felt so accomplished after hiking and loved every minute of it,” she writes.

The first time I was in China, I became one of her lost girls. As I was taken from my birth mother’s arms and placed at a nearby train station, I became a statistic ― another baby uprooted by the country’s one-child policy. At 11 months old, I was plucked from China’s embrace and placed into that of my parents. My roots began to grow in the soil of a different land.

When I was old enough to comprehend the gravity of my truth, my parents sat me down and told me that I had been adopted from China. This supposed revelation did not alter the trajectory of my life as my parents feared it might. It was fairly easy, even as a child, to recognize that I did not look like those around me, especially my parents. In fact, I found it quite awesome to be different ― to have come from a country so rich with history and culture.

However, the reality of living in a town with a predominantly white population is that many of its residents ostracize anyone who is different. I tried desperately to fit in with the other kids, but it became clear early on that despite my parents’ whiteness, my Chineseness would always make me an outsider.

Growing up, I listened as friends discussed which parent they resembled the most, and I grappled with the guilt that came with wishing I could participate in those discussions. I laughed along with others as they asked me to talk to them in “my language” and proceeded to speak gibberish in a way that was supposed to imitate Mandarin. For years, I didn’t know how to feel, or if my feelings were even valid. I didn’t realize that these seemingly small acts of aggression were racist and that they would grow into hatred in the future.

The now-abandoned train station where the author was left as a baby.

The first time I returned to China with my parents, I was 9 years old and longing for a place filled with people who looked like me. I was completely in awe of the country that created me, and this is when I first realized that I needed to embrace being Chinese. This proved nearly impossible. It was obvious that I did not belong to those who lived in China. From the way I dressed to the language that I spoke ― or couldn’t speak ― to them, I was American through and through.

As the trip went on, I found myself becoming increasingly disconnected from China and Chinese culture. I felt like a foreigner in a country that I desperately believed should have felt like home. This was the revelation that changed the trajectory of my life: My identity as a transracial adoptee seemed to define me everywhere I went. I was too Chinese to be American in America, and I was too American to be Chinese in China.

As I grew older, it became more common for adults to ask me how lucky I felt to be adopted from China, and I became resentful at how their questions commodified me. If I did not respond with gratitude for being adopted, it was as if a switch flipped in their mind and they saw me as a selfish girl who owes her parents everything. I left an abundance of words unsaid. To these people, this topic seemed clearly black and white: I was adopted from China after being left at a train station and should be grateful for my parents’ generosity ― for the roof they put over my head and the food they put on my plate.

Obviously, I love my parents. They have given so much to me and I would not be where I am today without them. My epiphany occurred when I realized that I am allowed to simultaneously love my parents and grieve what I lost. While transracial adoptees may be placed into amazing, loving families, it does not change the fact that their culture was stolen from them.

I have always belonged to an in-between place: not quite Chinese, but definitely not white either. The spaces and resources available to transracial adoptees are few and far between despite how large our population is, especially in the United States. My parents never hid the fact that I was Chinese, and they did the best that they could to expose me to Chinese traditions, but their efforts had their limits. Still, I am lucky to have parents who wanted and pushed for me to be connected to the country in which I was born.

The author with her parents in front of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. “I remember that day being miserably hot, but I really enjoyed being there with my parents,” she writes.

When I came to them about wanting to feel more connected to China and Chinese culture, they searched for years to find someone who could teach me Chinese. Unfortunately this task proved immensely difficult, so instead I began teaching myself the basics. My parents promised to take me back to China as soon as possible, especially now that I was older and could understand the importance of the trip a little bit more. They could tell I was struggling to reconcile my identities and always made sure that I knew I could lean on them for support. Unlike others, my parents never held my emotions against me and were ― and still are ― pillars of support.

The second time I returned to China, I was 15 and felt more in touch with my emotions. I wanted to build connections with other adoptees and hear their stories. This trip, which catered to adoptees from the same agency, allowed me to spend time with others who had been taken into white families.

Together, we found and created a safe environment for each other where we could talk about our experiences and vent our emotions without fear of judgment. This visit was different for me. I felt seen and heard by others who experienced the same inner turmoil that I had. Together we laughed and cried and lamented what could have been. In another life, would we have been able to meet under different circumstances?

It didn’t matter, we answered. We realized that all that mattered was what we had now, a fragmented past blended with a found family, each other included. While we didn’t all have the same goals for our return to China, we did share one: to reconcile our guilt and our curiosity. For me, I held no anger toward my birth mom for giving me up, especially when I understood the state of China and the one-child policy. But the curiosity of knowing about where and who I came from was there, and probably always will be. By the end of the trip, I cannot say that this goal was completely achieved. But while it might sound cliche, we adoptees did find each other, and in some way that was worth more to us than our original goals.

When I returned to the United States, I finished high school with a different perspective than the one I entered with. I felt able to embrace my in-between identity and reconcile the parts of me that had always felt at odds. Still, I lean on those I have found on my journey and continue to search for others who help me feel whole.

The author and the adoptee friends she made. “We were having so much fun at that point in our trip and were always asking our parents to take pictures of us together,” she writes.

All transracial adoptees deserve to have a place where they can release their emotions and feel a sense of community. While I know not all transracial adoptees will want or be able to return to their country of birth and connect with others who have shared experiences, I hope they can find another way to build a community, perhaps through local groups or online. Being able to share my thoughts, emotions and challenges ― which I worried only I was thinking, feeling and facing ― with people like me has changed my life for the better.

It has been a difficult adventure to reach a place where I feel comfortable with who I am ― Chinese, American and an adoptee ― but it has allowed me not only to deepen my roots, but also to make flowers bloom in my life today.

Iris Anderson is studying biology and psychology at Columbia University and is part of the class of 2026. She loves to write in her free time and is inspired by her personal experiences and those around her. Iris would like to thank her University Writing professor, Emily Weitzman, and her Literature Humanities professor, Taarini Mookherjee, for their support of her writing endeavors.

ANIMIST ANCESTOR WORSHIP NEVER DIES

China is using AI to raise the dead, and give people one last chance to say goodbye

CAREFUL OF META-HUNGRY-GHOSTS

Matthew Loh
Sat, May 20, 2023 at 5:15 a.m. MDT·10 min read


In China, stories of griefbots are emerging as the world fixates on generative AI like ChatGPT.

Yves Dean/Getty Images

The rise of generative AI in China has led to people try to recreate their loved ones with the tech.


Using old photos, recordings, and messages, they're training chat programs to imitate the dead.


The tech has been around for a while, but experts told Insider it can pose serious ethical issues.

In 2020, a young Chinese software engineer in Hangzhou chanced upon an essay about lip syncing technology. Its premise is relatively simple — using a computer program to match lip movements with speech recordings.

But his grandfather, who died nearly a decade earlier, came to mind.

"Can I see Grandpa again using this technology?" Yu Jialin asked himself.

His journey to recreate his grandfather, documented in April by investigative journalist Tang Yucheng for the state-owned magazine Sixth Tone, is one of several accounts now surfacing in China of people using artificial intelligence to resurrect the dead.

Mixing an assortment of emerging AI technologies, people in the country have been building chat programs — known as griefbots — with the personalities and memories of the deceased, hoping for a chance to speak to their loved ones again.

For Yu, they presented a chance to speak his final words to the man who helped raise him.

The software engineer, now 29, told Tang that he was 17 when his grandfather died.

He still regrets two instances when he was harsh to his grandfather. Yu yelled at the older man for interrupting a gaming session once, and on another occasion told his grandfather to stop picking him up from school, Tang reported.

His family stopped mentioning his grandfather after he died, he told Tang. "Everyone in the family was trying their best to forget Grandpa rather than remember him," Yu said.
The Griefbot rides the ChatGPT craze

The griefbot concept has been trialed for years — largely as AI-powered programs that learn how to mimic human beings through their memorabilia, photos, and recordings. But generative AI's rapid advancement in the last year has pushed the power and accessibility of griefbots to a whole new level.

Older models required vast sets of data. Now, laymen or lone engineers like Yu can feed language models with tidbits of a person's past, and recreate almost exactly how they look, speak, and think.

"In today's technology, you don't need too many samples for an AI to learn the style of a person," Haibing Lu, an information and analytics professor at Santa Clara University, told Insider.

Systems like ChatGPT, the popular text-based program that closely imitates human speech, have already learned how most people naturally speak or write, said Lu, whose research focuses on AI.

Generative AI models have progressed to the point where they can even create entire Manga novels, like "Cyberpunk: Peach John," which hit shelves in Japan in March.PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images

"You only need to tweak the systems a little bit in order to loosely get a 99% similarity to your person. The stark differences will be minimal," Lu said.

For Yu to teach his AI model what his grandfather was like, he retrieved a trove of old letters from his grandmother. She'd exchanged them with Yu's grandfather when they were young, and they revealed a side to the man that even Yu hadn't glimpsed as a child, he told Tang.

The software engineer dug up photos and videos shot more than a decade ago, and found text messages his grandfather sent him, Tang reported.

Yet even given weeks of testing and training, the tech has a long way to go if humans expect something akin to Black Mirror's robot replicas. Yu's bot was clearly limited, and took 10 minutes to respond to each prompt, Tang reported.

"Hey, Grandpa. Guess who I am?" Yu asked the program at one point.

Grandpa delivered a generic response.

"Who you are is not important at all. Life is a beautiful miracle," the bot wrote back, according to Tang.

But as Yu fed the AI with more information about his grandfather, it started to show a more accurate representation of the man's habits and preferences. For example, it remembered his grandfather's favorite show, he told Tang.

"Happy Teahouse went off the air," Yu told the chatbot.

"That's a shame. The show I want to watch the most is no longer available. I would have liked to watch a few more episodes," the grandfather bot replied.

That was the moment when Yu felt he'd gotten somewhere, he told Tang. The program was eventually sophisticated enough that Yu felt confident he could show his work to his grandmother. She watched silently as her late husband responded to her questions, then thanked her grandson, stood up, and left the room.

Yu told Tang his grandmother needed the chatbot to process her emotions and mourn. "Otherwise, why would she thank me?" he said.

As for himself, he declined to share his intimate conversations with his grandfather bot.

"But I think my grandfather forgave me in the end," he told Tang.
Mourning with the times

It's natural for humans to change the way they mourn as technology evolves, Sue Morris, director of bereavement services at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, told Insider.

In the 1980s, people would write down stories about their loved ones to remember them, said Morris, who teaches psychology at Harvard Medical School. Now, it's far more common in the digital age to keep photos and videos of the departed, she said.

A man visits the tomb of deceased relatives during the annual Tomb-Sweeping festival, also known as the Qingming festival, at Babaoshan Cemetery in Beijing on April 5, 2023.JADE GAO/AFP via Getty Images

Psychologists often help grieving clients by asking them to speak to an empty chair as though their loved one were sitting in it, and to imagine the person's response.

"It feels as though these griefbots are the technological step up from that," said Morris.

But griefbots take substantial control away from the user, she added. Many people deal with grief by controlling how and when they process their emotions.

"You choose when you're going to look at your photos and videos, how long you're going to look at them," she said.

An unexpected trigger, like say, an insensitively timed message from a chatbot, can often overwhelm someone with grief, Morris said. "Maybe 98% of the time, the program is going to say the appropriate thing, but what if it doesn't for a small percentage? Could that then send somebody into more of a downward spiral?" she said.

Still, if griefbots sound offensive to some, history shows that social norms constantly change when it comes to the dead, Mary Frances O'Connor, director of the Grief, Loss and Social Stress Lab in the University of Arizona, told Insider.

When photography became accessible to the public in the 19th century, people would take pictures with their loved ones' corpses and hang the photos in their living rooms, said O'Connor.

"Today, we might think this living room display was morbid, but it was common at the time," O'Connor said.
GPT-powered griefbots gain ground in China

As generative AI gains traction in China, so have stories of new griefbots. Another Chinese man who used AI to "resurrect" a loved one — a 24-year-old Shanghai blogger going by the name Wu Wuliu — went viral on social media in March when he said he'd trained a chatbot to mimic his dead grandmother.

Like Yu's grandfather bot, Wu's bot produced limited responses. "But I feel good being able to look at grandma and talk more with her," he said.

Wu Wuliu said he was glad to speak with his grandmother again.

Screenshot/BiliBili, 吴伍六

Wu said he used ChatGPT, though access to the platform has been limited in China since February 24.

"I wish I'd seen this video sooner," a top comment on Wu's page read. "My grandmother passed away last winter. I was caught off guard. I don't have any audio recordings or high definition photos of her."

And during this year's annual Tomb Sweeping Festival, a Chinese cemetery used GPT software and voice cloning AI to recreate people who were being buried at its facilities, YiCai reported. The cemetery said thousands of people have used its platform, and that it costs around $7,300 to recreate a dead person, per YiCai.

Seeking human connection from a virtual bot has become common in China. Xiaoice, a 2018 Chinese chatbot assistant that takes the appearance of a teenage girl, has more than 660 million users. She can act as a confidant or friend, and can receive gifts from fans, said Microsoft, which runs the flagship bot.

AI-powered digital assistants have been wildly popular in China. Here, a company is showcasing a "digital human" named AVA to tech fair visitors.VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Earlier versions of griefbots have established footholds elsewhere in the world. Several companies and research projects in the US have offered griefbots, such as Replika, which now markets itself as a social AI app.

In Canada, a man named Joshua Barbeau digitally remade his girlfriend in 2021 using Project December — an older program built with the predecessor to current GPT software. Barbeau's girlfriend died from a rare liver disease eight years earlier, and he told The San Francisco Chronicle that speaking to the chatbot helped him heal from his loss.

Then there's the South Korean documentary "Meeting You," which featured a young mother tearfully reuniting with her deceased 7-year-old daughter in virtual reality. Viewers worried the show was emotionally manipulative, though the mother in the episode was thankful for the experience, and said it was like she had a "nice dream."

Griefbots are bound to be controversial

Yet the griefbot and its byproducts can pose serious ethical dilemmas, said Lu, the infoanalytics professor.

A dead person's identity can be easy pickings for a fraudster, he said. They can feed that person's data to an AI, then pretend they're a medium who communicates with the person's spirit, Lu said.

"And there's no scientific proof that a psychic's powers are valid, right? No one can invalidate that," he said.

Then there's the challenge of getting consent from the dead, Lu said.

"In a future where everyone knows about this technology, maybe you can sign a document that says your descendants can use your knowledge, or to forbid it," Lu said.

HereAfter.AI, a US-based company, offers an opt-in experience for people to upload their own personalities online. An AI learns about each person through submitted photos, audio logs, and questionnaires, and makes a digital avatar that can talk to their friends and families after they die.

Its founder, James Vlahos, spent months recording his terminally-ill father recounting memories and reminiscing about life, feeding them to a "Dadbot" that could live on when the man could not.

But Lu said there's little chance that the typical person who dies nowadays would have given that kind of go-ahead. And if they haven't, it would be problematic even for their children or grandchildren to use their personal information, he added.

"It doesn't mean that if a person has passed away, that other people have the right to disclose their personal privacy, even if it's to immediate family members," Lu said.

As for Yu, the software engineer — his grandfather bot is no more. Yu decided to delete the grandfather bot, telling Sixth Tone that he was afraid of getting overly reliant on the AI for emotional support.

"These emotions might have overwhelmed me too much to work and live my life," he told Tang.

A ‘Canadian Armageddon’ Sets Parts of Western Canada on Fire

Dan Bilefsky

 New York Times

Sat, May 20, 2023 

Flames from a prescribed burn, started by wildland firefighters in an attempt to halt the spread of larger wildfires, in Shining Bank, Alberta, Canada on May 19, 2023.

 (Jen Osborne/The New York Times)

EDMONTON, Alberta — As acrid smoke filled the air, turning the sky around her sleepy hometown, Fox Creek, Alberta, a garish blood orange, Nicole Clarke said she felt a sense of terror.

With no time to collect family photographs, she grabbed her two young children, hopped into her pickup truck, and sped away, praying she wouldn’t drive into the blaze’s menacing path.

“This feels like a Canadian Armageddon, like a bad horror film,” said Clarke, a 37-year-old hair stylist, standing outside her truck, a large hamper of dirty laundry piled in the back.

In a country revered for placid landscapes and predictability, weeks of out-of-control wildfires raging across western Canada have ushered in a potent sense of fear, threatening a region that is the epicenter of the country’s oil and gas sector.

Climate research suggests that heat and drought associated with global warming are major reasons for the increase in bigger and stronger fires.

Amid frequent fire updates dominating national television news broadcasts, the blazes have also helped unite a vast and sometimes polarized nation, with volunteers, firefighters and army reservists from other provinces rushing in to lend a hand.

Roughly 29,000 people in Alberta have been forced from their homes by the recent bout of wildfires, though that number has been cut in half in recent days as fires subsided.

Clarke said her family had been staying in cheap motels since they were ordered about a week ago to evacuate. But she and her boyfriend were unemployed and money was quickly running out.

“I don’t know if I’ll have a home to return to,” she added Thursday, sobbing.

The fires have produced such thick smoke that during recess, children in some towns have remained in their classrooms rather than risk smoke inhalation outside. Dozens of residents left in such a frantic panic that they left pets behind.

On Highway 43, a long stretch of Alberta highway peppered by small, evacuated towns, the thick layer of smoke blanketing the road on Thursday conjured the feeling of a dystopia.

With helicopters hovering and dropping water, police cars with flashing lights blocked parts of the highway as fires approached the road. Residents trying to return to homes they hoped were still intact commiserated as they were forced to turn back.

Fires have broken out throughout western Canada, including British Columbia, but hardest hit has been neighboring Alberta, a proud oil and gas producing province sometimes referred to as “the Texas of the North,” which has declared a state of emergency. More than 94 active wildfires were burning as of Friday afternoon.

British Columbia was the site in 2021 of one of Canada’s worst wildfires in recent decades, when fires decimated the tiny community of Lytton after temperatures there reached a record 49.6 degrees Celsius, or 121.3 Fahrenheit.

Not since the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic buffeted the region has the area been so overcome by apprehension, accompanied by the all-too familiar need to wear masks outside. Only this time, residents say, a silent killer has been replaced by something more visceral and visible.

So far, no deaths have been reported. But in Alberta, Frankie Payou, a firefighter and 33-year-old father of three from the East Prairie Métis Settlement in Northern Alberta, was in a coma with severe injuries after being hit in the head by a burned tree. His home was also destroyed by a fire.

The bulk of the fires are in the far north of the province, home to many Indigenous communities, dealing a heavy blow to people who depend on the land and natural resources.

At a sprawling evacuation center in Edmonton, Ken Zenner, 61, a father of eight, two of whom are members of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, said he and his family had been evacuated from the town of Valleyview. He worried how they would get by.

Families that have been displaced for a cumulative seven days are eligible for government-provided financial support, according to provincial regulations. But Zenner said he didn’t qualify because he had only been evacuated for six days.

“Indigenous communities have been underfunded for years and now we are seeing the consequences,” he said.

The rest of the country is mobilizing to help. Some 2,500 firefighters are battling the fires, among them 1,000 from other provinces. Joining them are wilderness firefighters from the United States.

The fires have even affected Alberta’s largest city, Calgary, where residents this week said they sat down for breakfast only to see and smell pungent smoke entering from cracks under their front doors.

Environment and Climate Change Canada said the air quality index for the city Wednesday afternoon was at 10+, or “very high risk.” Canadian health authorities have warned the smoke could cause symptoms ranging from sore and watery eyes to coughing, dizziness, chest pains and heart palpitations.

In Alberta, the blazes have brought back bad memories of 2016 when a raging wildfire destroyed 2,400 buildings in Fort McMurray, Alberta, the heart of Canada’s oil sands region with the third-largest reserves of oil in the world.

Alberta is Canada’s main energy-producing province and the United States’ largest source of imported oil and the fires have compelled some companies to curb production.

As flames bore down on wells and pipelines, major drillers such as Chevron and Paramount Resources together shut down the equivalent of at least 240,000 barrels of oil a day, according to energy consulting firm Rystad Energy.

For now, the disruptions affect only a small proportion of the country’s total oil and gas output. Still, they underscore how the production of oil and gas, the main driver of climate change, is also vulnerable to increasingly dire consequences of a warming planet.

Some say the fire may help galvanize Canadians about the perils of climate change. “The smoke from forest fires has an in-your-face impact affecting millions of Canadians that makes it harder to ignore,” the CBC, the national broadcaster, observed this week.

The human toll of the fires will reverberate for weeks to come. Christine Pettie, a business manager for a logging cooperative in Edson, a rural town about two hours west of Edmonton, said residents were still shellshocked after being evacuated.

She and her husband left in such a rush that he forgot his insulin medicine. They were fortunate that their home remained standing.

Still, Pettie said, the experience “definitely shook me to my core.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company