AI - if the risk was not AI surpassing human intelligence...

After the agricultural revolution and the Industrial revolution, we are now in the digital revolution. But what are the implications ?

OUR TODAY REALITIES OF THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

1 - Social networks antagonize people.

• It was not intended but is it the observed result.
• According to Facebook, post which are ??black and white??, with catchy titles and less than 80 characters long have 80% more audience that longer post. (so much for this article :-) )
• Not to say that nuanced and argumented post have almost no audience (it is also true on TV, etc)

2 - Applications develop an unlimited knowledge on who we intimaly are.

• We do not lie to google, that would not make any sense, and that enables it to build a very comprehensive profile of each of us.
• Similarly we do not lie to AI when we use it to perform a search. But today, to be able to benefit for free of the full potential to AI, you need to (1) log in to attach all the requests to you and (2) allow the AI platform to store your query.
• Since it seems that with AI search we go further down our line of thought as with search engine, we should expect an even more precise profiling

3 - Digital and real world borders are already blurred and rather a continum

• Hatsune Miku, is a signer with lots of fans listening to her songs and attending her concerts, but she is totally digital. It went beyond its digital structure to perform live concerts
• More and more people develop real emotional relationships with digital people or with digital clones of a dead beloved. (E.g. replika)
• Thousands of people have already married officially a digital person and live with them thanks to a gatebox. Their sentiment is so strong that they do not have any love sentiment for physical persons. (E.g studies by the Japanese Antropolog Kimura)
• It is today possible to create digital virtual teammates, and integrate them in your team when you work on a project (e.g. you do not have a marketing expert, you can get a digital one)

4 - Frontal lobe of the brain weakens

• This has been analyzed by the neuroscientist Gemma Calvert
• MRI show that for digital natives, dopamine rate in the depth of the lymbic system, is orders of magnitude higher than for other stimuli (smoking, drinking, having sex) and pics happen multiple time per hour. It has very concrete impact such as
• Short term orientation since we cannot wait for the spike, and future spike will be lower in intensity
• Increasing difficulty to ignore surrounding distractions, leading to a decreasing concentration ability
• More impulsive behaviour, and less control of emotions

5 - No perceptible differences between captured and digitally generated

• Today it is impossible to identify AI generated pictures, sound and movies (e.g. Sora)
• It requires 1 picture and few seconds of sound to create a perfect video of anybody without being able to distinguish whether it is real or fake
• The two senses not yet simulated are touch and smell
• There are some initiatives to address this challenge, such as digital identity systems, or watermarking techniques (Leica has a digital camera with integrated watermarking to guarantee it is a real picture)

SOME QUESTIONS WE SHOULD RAISE FOR OUR KIDS AND THEIR KIDS

• Do we want to put a limit on the depth of the human brain hacking for commercial purposes?
• With the current trajectory, second life will strike back but in an totally realistic, immersive form. Do we need to put a limit on how deep we should live in the digital space and create emotional link with digital characters ?
• What will be the impact in the real world, in case of digital crash, where most of the population loosed its digital virtual beloved ? do we want to mitigate it ?
• If your life is mostly a digital experience, would you like to defend your country if it was attacked ? if no, what are the geostrategic implications ?
• Will AI have adverse effects on our intellectual independence and autonomy ?
• …

WHAT SHOULD OUR GENERATION DO ?

• To me, there is no way, our generation should judge this evolution, or put rule to keep the current order. This is not the way mankind progressed, and digital technologies enable an area of huge progress. We should keep investing and using digital technologies
• However, we need to massively invest in scientific understanding of these evolutions, sothat the next generation can make educated decisions on which society they want to live in, and how to achieve that.
• A set of initiatives should be launched and publicly financed by the scientific community :

Education:

• Increase investment in the education on our values, on the opportunities and challenges of technologie and how we dealt with it in the past, and what could be coming.
• Develop in each individual the competence of information strategic management (information is not sorted, identified and checked anymore) and the competence of Information related issue resolution

Neuroscience

• Keep understanding the impact of digital technologies on our brain and the implications on our collective behaviour build trajectory on our the very structure of our brain will change (as it did as part of the evolution)
• Evaluate the opportunity and threats of implants
• Evaluate the evolution of our intellectual autonomy

Anthropologist and philosophers

• Understand the new behaviours in terms of behaviour, beliefs, traditions, institutions
• Evaluate the evolution of our intellectual independence
• Compare with former civilisations to see if there are trajectory or boundary conditions which should be discussed

By embracing the complexities of the digital revolution and taking proactive steps to understand and shape its course, the next generation can ensure a future that harnesses the full potential of technology while safeguarding our fundamental values and well-being.