I think it's interesting to interpret "Tears in the Rain" less broadly. The AI that we have today has much less than a four year "lifespan". It "expires" as soon as we stop typing into a session.

Interestingly, the best models can produce convincing poetry despite a lack of lived experience.

As realtime avatars and robots become more advanced, we will start to wonder more if somehow a system has some kind of consciousness, and then about real moral concerns. As technology practitioners, within a few years, our "tears in the rain" moments could come from actual interactions with AI.

But part of the point was about mortality being an aspect of nature to be accepted with grace. I think that's a practical reaction, and the typical attitude towards robots and mortality that a literature major or maybe just the average human would have.

But I believe that someone who really understands technology, and I would go so far as to say evolution (in the context of high technology), questions the optimality or at least necessity of natural death.

Is that what "Tears in Rain" refers to?

Been a long time since I've seen Blade Runner, but I thought the monologue just serves to show that the android is reflecting on what death means, in his case the irrevocable loss of his consciousness, memories, thoughts.

My first time in management, age 24, I ran the night network operations team for a network of about 300,000 users across three countries in two wars. I was a team lead over two to three direct personnel and a couple large organizations under indirect management.

HN before it turned into a toxic, low signal cesspit following 2022.