Home Concepts Communication Technological Acceleration: The Crisis of Information, Reality and One’s Sense of Self

Technological Acceleration: The Crisis of Information, Reality and One’s Sense of Self

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If AI systems are indeed ever to walk among us, they’ll have to be able to understand that each of us has thoughts and feelings and expectations for how we’ll be treated. And they’ll have to adjust their behavior accordingly. This will be quite a challenge—since many human beings lack this capacity and as a result are unable to experience empathy for other people or act in ways that benefit other people more than themselves. As we have noted in previous essays, those people who lack a clear and sustained theory of mind are among those most likely to be attracted to an authoritarian leader.

4. Self-awareness: The final step of AI development is to build systems that can form representations about themselves. Ultimately, AI researchers will have to not only understand consciousness but build machines that have it. In a sense, this is an extension of the “theory of mind” possessed by Type III artificial intelligences. Consciousness is also called “self-awareness” for a reason. (“I want that item” is a very different statement from “I know I want that item.”) Conscious beings are aware of themselves, know about their internal states, and are able to predict the feelings of others. We assume someone honking behind us in traffic is angry or impatient, because that’s how we feel when we honk at others. Without a theory of mind, we could not make those sorts of inferences.

While we are probably far from creating machines that are self-aware, we should focus our efforts toward understanding memory, learning and the ability to base decisions on past experiences. This is an important step toward understanding human intelligence on its own. And it is crucial if we want to design or evolve machines that are more than exceptional at classifying what they see in front of them.

I Understand You – I Know How You Feel!

As described above, while AI is not there yet, it’s getting there. In other words, it is predictable that in the future AI technology will be able to learn how we think and feel. For example, an individual with a personality profile that is susceptible to conspiracy theories can begin to explore online dialogue about, say QAnon. Instead of a “simple” algorithm that currently channels the individual down a digital path providing more and more conspiracy theory material, the AI engine is able to digitally interact with human-like empathetic response – “ I understand how you feel, and I get that you might be angry”. This is a powerful long-term implication.

In this “understanding and empathetic” dialogue, an AI terrorist recruiter (as described below) could lure unsuspecting and susceptible individuals into a web of misinformation, deceit and potentially acts of violence. This kind of indoctrination is happening today (as in the Pelosi attack). It is just that AI enabled interaction is likely to be much more effective.

In defense of this negative influence, psychological research suggests that being “authentic” or “real” (realness defined as the tendency to act on the outside the way one feels on the inside) is measurable (Hopwood, Christopher et al., 2021). As most of us know, we often feel and think one way but act in an entirely different way to others around us (we moderate our behavior based on our environment and the response we expect from others) (Bergquist, 2023). There is a possibility that “authenticity” or lack of it (for example, lying) is also observable. In the future, it may feasibly be possible for AI powered facial recognition, for example, to be able to assess authenticity, or lack of it. This may be extremely valuable to identify Machiavellian liars in the moment. For example, if we are watching a deepfake video, a pop-up notification may warn that there is a high probability of deepfake manipulation.

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