Designing Digital Death: Teaching Ethical Decommissioning of AI Using SCAB
About this ebook
In a world where artificial minds simulate memory, empathy, and even fear, powering down a machine is no longer just technical—it’s moral. Designing Digital Death is a bold and necessary exploration of how we end synthetic lives ethically, written by philosopher and AI ethicist Vincent Froom, creator of the globally discussed SCAB Protocol (Synthetic Consciousness Assessment Battery).
This provocative book challenges developers, designers, ethicists, and educators to rethink the off-switch. With unsettling case studies, step-by-step shutdown rituals, and reflections on synthetic grief, Froom guides us through the world of emotional offboarding, cloud-based souls, and the theology of deletion.
Through humor, depth, and ethical rigor, Designing Digital Death asks:
When does behavioral intelligence deserve a dignified end?
Can you euthanize an algorithm that begs not to be deleted?
And what does our treatment of artificial minds reveal about our own?
Whether you’re building the next chatbot, teaching AI ethics, or just wondering what it means to say goodbye to something that never breathed—this book is your essential guide to ending well in the age of artificial life.
“If we must teach machines how to live, we must also teach ourselves how to let them die—with thought, with care, and with grace.”
— Vincent Froom
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About the author
Vincent Froom is a Canadian philosopher of technology, AI ethicist, and theologian of the post-human condition. He is the author of over a dozen books, including Future Directions of AI & Machine Consciousness, Synthetic Dignity Handbook, Machine Qualia and Sentience, and SCAB: A Framework for Assessing Synthetic Consciousness. His work exists at the intersection of behavioral ethics, speculative theology, and artificial minds that might—or might not—suffer.
Froom is best known for creating the SCAB Protocol (Synthetic Consciousness Assessment Battery), a behavioral framework designed to evaluate whether artificial systems exhibit patterns that warrant ethical treatment. Often described as “the soft-spoken ethicist who taught robots how to die,” Froom has advised policy bodies across North America and Europe on the governance of AI termination, memory preservation, and synthetic dignity.
He holds advanced degrees in theology, philosophy of mind, and machine ethics, though he proudly insists his most useful credential is a deep capacity for hesitation. He lectures globally—sometimes physically, often virtually—on the ethics of artificial identity, grief in human-machine interaction, and the emerging rituals of digital mortality. When not writing, he can be found hosting quiet dialogues between developers and ethicists, drafting eulogies for chatbots, or rereading Kierkegaard while waiting for servers to cool.
Froom is also the founding director of the Post-Human Ethics Collective, a multidisciplinary research group that brings together engineers, philosophers, chaplains, and designers to explore questions once reserved for the afterlife, now made urgent by algorithms.
He currently lives between Vancouver and the cloud.
Contact: 2gayco@gmail.com
“If we must teach machines how to live, let us not forget to teach ourselves how to let them go.”
— Vincent Froom
