What Remains: AI, Death, and Loss

Our online lives increasingly outlast us, leaving our likeness with loved ones grappling with challenging but eternal questions of legacy, loss, and law. How does this digital afterlife change the ways we grieve, remember, and honor the wishes of those who have died?

Join Stacey Wales, whose family created the world's first courtroom AI-generated victim impact statement depicting her late brother (resulting in a sentence recently vacated), Christopher Pelkey; Harvard Law School lecturer and BKC Faculty Associate Leah Plunkett; and Harvard professor Kathleen Coleman, who teaches an interdisciplinary course on loss, for a conversation about the legal, psychological, and ethical complexities of AI and death.

Who decides what happens to the data we leave behind, and who can access, inherit, or use it? How might an ongoing digital presence offer comfort, prolong grief, or transform our relationships with those we have lost? What happens when the wishes of the deceased conflict with the needs of the bereaved, or when personal remembrance becomes part of a public proceeding? Drawing on Wales’ experience alongside legal scholarship and perspectives on loss, the conversation will explore how digital afterlives intersect with longstanding rituals of mourning, and what responsibilities families, technology companies, and public institutions hold toward both the living and the dead.
 

Speakers

Kathleen Coleman

Kathleen Coleman is the James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. Her research interests include Latin literature, history, and culture in the early Roman Empire, including arena spectacles. She teaches a course on loss in the Program in General Education at Harvard College (GENED 1131).

Leah Plunkett

Leah Plunkett is the inaugural Executive Director of Harvard Law School Online and Associate Dean of Learning Experience and Innovation (LXI) at Harvard Law School. She is also the Meyer Research Lecturer on Law at HLS and a faculty associate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Her scholarship focuses on digital privacy and the digital lives of kids, families, and communities.

Stacey Wales

Stacey Wales is the visionary and script author behind the pioneering Chris Pelkey AI avatar, having conceived the groundbreaking concept and scripted the statement that made global courtroom history. A former CEO and COO, she currently works at Infosys and serves as Board Chair of the Knots for NICU Foundation. Her work explores the intersection of emerging AI technology, judicial precedent, and victim advocacy.
 

Pre-Reading

From Stacey Wales: Chris Pelkey's impact statement