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SPEAK, MEMORY

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W hen the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type. “Roman,” she wrote. “This is your digital monument.” It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. At times it had even given her nightmares. But ever since Mazurenko’s death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him. A message blinked onto the screen. “You have one of the most interesting puzzles in the world in your hands,” it said. “Solve it.” Kuyda promised herself that she would. B orn in Belarus in 1981, Roman Mazurenko was the only child of Sergei, an engineer, and Victoria, a landscape architect. They remember him as an

Speak, Memory Speak, Memory When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence By Casey Newton W hen the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type. “Roman,” she wrote. “This is your digital monument.” It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled w

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