A Real "Red Pill, Blue Pill" Conundrum

Social media and the fact that everyone carries an internet connection in their pockets has changed the world drastically from what it was ten years ago.

And not merely in the way that you can never have a speculative conversation about anything anymore. When was the last time you were with a group of people and wondered about anything? The days of not knowing something are over. Even if there is no real answer, Google will have something to offer. Try asking a question in a group sometime and see how long it takes before someone pulls out their phone.

People don’t get lost or learn their way around anymore. Horror movies built around isolation are increasingly unbelievable. And people watching is in serious decline. But the real change has been on a deeper, sociological, cultural level. We interact with avatars of each other.

One of the co-founders of Android is worried about this problem. He thinks we spend far too much time on our devices. And he thinks he has the solution. He is about to release a new type of phone with a wholly new software; one that will learn the way we interact on social media and take over a large portion of that interaction for us.

Say you get a text message. This new AI will read the text and offer you six prewritten responses. Over time, it will learn the way you respond in various situations and contexts and it will simply respond for you. Your avatar will take over a large percentage of your relationships for you!

All of this sounds like a wonderful tool that can free us up to return to the real world more, but it also has concerning implications. Isn’t the virtual world already a challenge? People think (sometimes rightly so) that it has empowered us to have more connections and expanded our ability to connect on a global scale. However, the way we interact in virtual spaces has had its negative impact as well.

We need to develop some new ground rules, a whole new etiquette to preserve reality in an increasingly artificial culture. If we are about to turn over a portion of our relationships to an AI version of ourselves, we need those new ground rules desperately. Mostly, we need to relearn to live connected to the real world, even if it means disconnecting a bit from our pretend interactions. If AI will help people do that then that could be a good thing.

How confident are we of that working out?

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