Panasonic brings its founder back to life as an AI

Japanese multinational electronics mainstay Panasonic – founded in 1918 as Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works –has created an AI version of its long deceased founder, Kōnosuke Matsushita. Matsushita died in 1989, and Panasonic explained that the number of people he personally trained is falling, making the AI …

[Pascal Monett]

"making the AI necessary"

There is nothing that makes pseudo-AI necessary.

Write it down in a book and publish that, if you must, but do not start artificial shrines to the memory of what was nothing but a CEO.

Are you going to start worshipping it every morning before the management meeting ?

What a crazy world we live in, and this AI bullshit is just making it worse.

[klh]

Re: "making the AI necessary"

BS language models aside, I bet they already have shrines to the guy given the culture around business in Japan.

[Wang Cores]

Re: "making the AI necessary"

I fully expected the corporation to supercede the nation-state as the nation state did the church. I did not see the corporation to become a church too.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "making the AI necessary"

Share and Enjoy

[EricM]

Virtually reviving dead people to give advice - another dystopic feature has transitioned from the realm of science fiction into reality.

Note to world: Neuromancer was not meant as an instruction manual.

[blu3b3rry]

Really, choom?

Someone at Panasonic has evidently been playing Cyberpunk 2077. Saburo Arasaka, anyone?

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

One for Henry Ford

Would fit right in these days...

[Howard Sway]

Matsushita died in 1989, making the AI necessary

I look forward to them proudly switching it on and setting it to work, then looking eagerly at the output and discovering it has invented the VHS video recorder.

[Grunchy]

Lister: “He’s still just a smeg-head”

[Wang Cores]

More modern sci Fi but in Mass Effect lore quarians developed AI to digitally reconstruct their ancestors.

The quarians then also spent 300 years trapped on starships exiled from the only planets they can live on without space suits because they declared war on the AI when it got too smart.

Now, I'm not saying 1:1 here but it's be funny if it was.

[trevorde]

Can't wait for this one

Narayama Murthy - his advice is going to be awesome!

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/18/infosys_workaholic_founder/

[Brave Coward]

Pesky acronyms

'Panasonic's Peace and Happiness through Prosperity (PHP)'

Now *THAT*'s an explanation at least !

[HuBo]

Maybe

Well, I'd say making the guy's "3000 recordings" and "over 40 books" more interactive in this way seems okay to me, if his family agrees to it. It's a bit like the projects to make testimonies of holocaust survivors more approachable to broad audiences via interactivity (so-called AI) reported in 60 minutes (2022) and earlier this year.

Much less freaky than an AI Jesus IMHO.

[Bebu sa Ware]

The Nethersphere?

You used to go funerals to convince yourself that the bastard wasn't going to be bothering the living hereafter (at least from the hereafter.)

If the late lamented was actually a decent chap, you could reflect on his contributions to the world but also realiise as with each arrival, every departure is a new world with an unbounded potential for change either for better or worse.

Now the fools think it is a wonderful idea to implement a subfusc version of the (Master's) Missy's Nethersphere* where the minds of the deceased were stored for her nefarious and ultimately decidedly odd purpose.

The world changes and the living move on hopefully fixing, or a least burying, old mistakes and of course inevitably making new ones.

The (lack of) thinking behind this technology has the potential of embalming the future with the past. I seriously suspect this is something Kōnosuke Matsushita would not have approved. Your writing and even recordings are static which makes their content fair game for reinterpretation in a contempoarary context.

Imagine Kenneth Branagh having to consult an ex machina Shakespeare before making Henry V when every age has reinterpreted the Bard's plays in ways that he could not possibly have conceived but I am certain would have approved. As You Like It performed today almost certainly has quite a different complexion to performances in earlier times although I am not sure that today's would be so different from Shakespeare's intent as his were very dynamic and "interesting" times.

_{* 12th Doctor (Capaldi) Dark Water and Death in Heaven}

[HuBo]

Re: The Nethersphere?

Great points! I can see how such AI zombie regeneration raises the potential for some future download into Cyber-converted bodies (born out of an extreme desire for immortality) and subsequent attempts at fully conquering the Universe by said hardware-extended agentic software, for augmented stochastic recall, from vector database syncords.

The shellacking of the human species resulting from "embalming the future with the past" in such fashionably hyped undertaking would certainly nail polish our common coffin shut, in great obituary style, for all practical purposes.

Virtually repelling the ultimate and imperative deadlines of death and taxes could also result in widespread motivational deficits within modern societies, as there would be no overwhelming rush to get anything done really, which may then have some impacts on contemporary economies. Then again, one's agentic AI zombie doppelgänger might be able to continue "producing wealth" after one's untimely departure (but to who's benefit then?).

Complex issues indeed! Hopefully, the living-dead AI version of Matsushita will remain boxed in a cyber-secure Schrödinger enclave, from which it won't be able to readily kick off the RotM!

[An_Old_Dog]

Rail-Jumping in 3 ... 2 ... 1

CEO: "AI-Matsushita-san, our workers are complaining bitterly about their current working conditions. As current CEO, what should I do?"

AI-Matsushita: "I believe you should examine the --" *glitch* "-- you should take off all your clothes, rub your body with sticks of butter, and slide around naked on the factory floor. But, don proper personal protective equipment before doing so. The workers will be awed by your presence and will cease complaining."

[osxtra]

Visiting With The Folks

Shades of Grayland II visiting the Memory Room in John Scalzi's The Last Emperox.

[Pulled Tea]

Okay, so... hear me out.

You know how there's that joke about how the best role for LLMs is to automate upper management?

This is how you do it.

You deify the founder of the company, create a digital replica of him (and it's always a him anyway), and then set it up as Eternal President for Life.

I don't know if it'll be a good idea or not, but the corporate intrigues and behind-the-scenes jockeying will be <del>hilarious</del> the stuff of management case studies.