The Candy House: Patterns of affinity, artificial memories, and human consciousness

But first, about last month...

Last month, I shared an article titled, ChatGPT: The Good, The Bad, and The Obviously Automated. I called out some of the key factors on how, as a human, you can decipher what's written by ChatGPT and what's not. But the thing is, it's really, really hard to get these things right. And (major spoiler alert), I actually wrote much of the article with ChatGPT.

Of course, I provided the prompts and a very clear outline of the topics that I wanted to cover. I also thought that ChatGPT didn't make it obvious enough, so I was consistently prompting it to write more robotically and include a series of (really terrible) Batman references. This, I was almost certain, people would notice. I had hoped that someone would call it out, but I think my network is a little too kind for my nonsensical LinkedIn games.

So, what was the point? My main point is that unless you have a well-known writing style and an audience who is used to reading it, it's going to be hard to differentiate whether a human or robot wrote a piece of content, copy for an ad, or an email. For brands, this means that adopting AI is likely less scary than it's made out to be. ChatGPT is a friend, not a foe, and (as long as you're not if you're not sharing proprietary information with it,) it's time to embrace it.

But I digress... we're not here to talk about AI copywriting this month. Rather, I'd like to discuss a book I finished that provided some great insight into what the future with AI might look like when it comes to human memory and collective consciousness.

The Candy House

Jennifer Egan's 2022 book, The Candy House, provides an interesting look into the future of AI and media, and how the two combined have the potential to impact memory and collective consciousness. So granted, this was right up my alley (thank you, Mom, for the recommendation. You know me so well. ??)

Synopsis

The Candy House follows the lives of a series of interconnected individuals who are wrestling with the repercussions of Bix Bouton's groundbreaking invention, "Own Your Unconscious." This technology lets users digitize and disseminate their memories en masse. In order to use the product, you must allow your memories to be shared in a collective memory base: You give up your memories, you gain access to the rest of the world's.

Own Your Unconscious was developed using Miranda Kline's "patterns of affinity" algorithm, developed while living in a remote tribal village in Brazil. The algorithm was able to determine what made people like and trust one another. Once Kline's algorithm was published, social media moguls jumped at the opportunity to use it in their work, and Bix developed Own Your Unconscious. His reasoning? His whole life he has been plagued with the idea that his inactions led to the death of someone he knew who may still be alive. By developing Own Your Unconscious, he hoped to figure out if what he remembers was true, or if it was merely his interpretation of the events that led up to the major catastrophe.

Of course, uploading your memories into a collective consciousness has (foreseen and) unforeseen ethical and emotional implications.

In the real world

I'm still grappling with what my decision would be if granted the option to do such a thing as uploading my memories, exactly as I remember them, to the rest of humanity. While you can't see everyone's memories, you are able to see the memories that tie directly to yours.

There are already companies, like Neuralink, creating brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to seamlessly connect brains to external devices. In a few short years, the technology in The Candy House might not be that far off from reality. Some people even argue that devices like Fitbit were the start of 'Quantified Self,' where wearable technology allows for a level of self-monitoring that could be considered a rudimentary form of capturing one's "conscious" experience. Though we can't yet capture memories or unconscious thoughts, we can find out how much REM sleep we got the night before, and see when our anxiety levels might be spiking.

So, is the technology in The Candy House absurd and imaginary? Not really. We're generally closer than a lot of people realize to actualizing something like this.

Implications on collective memory

The thing with memories, even when shared, are that they aren't reliable. It has been proven time and time again that just because someone "remembers" something, doesn't mean it actually happened.

One of the most well-known examples is the Lost in the Mall experiment conducted by psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues in the 1990s. In the study, Loftus was able to make subjects believe they had been lost in a shopping mall as a child, although that event never actually occurred. This was accomplished through suggestion and reinforcement from a trusted family member.

Elizabeth Loftus is a leading expert in the field of memory and has published many studies on the malleability of human memory. Her work has shown how easy it is to implant false memories through suggestion, leading to wrongful convictions and bringing into question the validity of eyewitness testimony.

All that being said, our memories are fragile and easily influence. Would Own Your Unconscious solve these problems? It certainly has the potential to. For example, say someone has an incorrect memory. They connect their conscious to the machine, and now are able to see other people's memories that were also involved. If the incident never happened, the memory won't connect to anything. Egan doesn't touch on these types of theories in her book, but I can't help but think about the positive impact this could have on cases where human memory is relied on, heavily, as a determining factor in someone's innocent or guilt.

Egan does speak on how the device has helped countless victims of violent and heinous crimes find out the truth about what happened, leading to the arrests of violent individuals who aim to harm others. Most won't argue this is inherently bad, but many will argue about how it is still unethical. But maybe human "ethics" aren't the end-all-be-all, maybe true ethics come from beyond humanity.

I'll let the modern-Socrates' of the world ponder on that one.

In Closing

Collective memory is closer than we think, and artificial intelligence is paving the way for actualizing this dream. For now, our "collective memory" is rooted in the things we all know and love, like TV, films, and across the internet. As we share our content, data, and ideas with the rest of the world, the world's collective memories grow and grow. Perhaps some day the IoT (Internet of Things) will be a carrier of human collective conscious. Maybe not. But only time will tell.