Total Annihilation - Your AI data clone is coming "You are obsolete"

The next great innovation in social media’s second decade is emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and our social media data. That’s because, for most social media users, the time and resources required to run all of our social media channels is exhausting, if not entirely overwhelming. So it is only a matter of time before our own AI clone runs our channels for us. 

What if Facebook could take all your data, your photos, videos, the way you speak, sound, even type on the keyboard and produce the “algorithm of you”. In essence a cloned digital AI ersion of yourself. (After all companies like Facebook are data hungry, and own more of our digital footprint than we do) The AI data clone can interact with your friends, family and colleagues in the exact same way you would. Whilst the machine learning element, continues to fine tune your responses and actions simply from the data it collects via your many connected smartphones devices. Think voice clips captured by Alexa, your vital stats from a Fitbit, your satnav journey, even what you ate for lunch via your Instagram #Foodporn snaps… It knows the algorithm of you and can in turn book your parties and events, talk to your friends, and even wish them a happy birthday, in the exact style of you, with you voice! EEEK.

In fact, companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest are already working on new AI innovations that could transform the way we think about social media. Both Google and Facebook, for example, have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new AI startups that are at the forefront of “deep learning” – or the ability to understand patterns, trends and relationships in a sea of data. 

Think about how useful that technology is for a company like Facebook. It’s already using a version of this pattern recognition technology for facial recognition. Ever wondered how Facebook always seems to know who’s in the photo with you? And it’s also using AI to determine which stories and updates should appear in your news feed. There’s so much social content out there that Facebook needs some intelligent way of figuring out which content you should see. 

Even something as simple as Google being able to “auto-fill” our searches is a signal of what’s to come. That’s because AI technology will not just follow out our instructions, it will also predict what we are going to do or proactively carry out certain tasks without being told what to do. Just think of how we instinctively give apps on our smartphones direct access to our phone contacts. We assume that it’s just easier to let apps handle all this information and so we give them permission.

In time, AI will be able to run our social media channels on our behalf. AI bots will know everything about our social networks – who’s in our network, who we communicate with, what types of content we share, how different people in our network are connected to each other, and… how to reach these people if they have to.

This has enormous implications for social media – imagine having an AI “bot” go out and handle all of your everyday social media tasks that take so much time today to accomplish. Every time one of your friends on Facebook uploads a photo, this “bot” would go out and “like” it – because you would have “liked” it, right? It will automatically respond every time you receive an “e-vite” to an offline event. It may even text your friend for you on his or her birthday using a script you’ve provided.  

John invites Jess to an event.

Your A.I simply measures the usual algorithm that coexists between the two users and judging various metrics completes the task of accepting the invite. Parameters come into play here, have you had a good nights sleep (Fitbit tracked it), have you had a stressful day (weather app suggests you got caught in the rain). How often do John and Jess usually go without speaking? Combine all this and the A.i can simply respond in the same way you would to the situation. Scary stuff.

Over time, this technology will get smarter and smarter. It will be able to recognize emotions and sentiment and respond appropriately. Today, this is remarkably difficult to do for computers – even a simple phrase like “I just love Boris Johnson and Brexit” is hard for a computer to analyze. Are you being literal – or are you being sarcastic? And simply instructing a bot to go out and like every single Facebook status update of your friends is also not as straightforward as it sounds – what if your friend has just posted something tragic about their family? 

But what AI technology promises is the ability to learn over time – this is what AI experts refer to as “deep learning.” Given enough data, and given enough time to run algorithms over and over again, computers can become remarkably adept at learning to be social. 

In fact, one of the most important problems in the field of AI is known as the Turing Test (named for Cambridge University legend Alan Turing, the subject of “The Imitation Game” movie). The premise of the Turing Test is deceptively simple – it’s for a computer to fool a human into thinking that it’s a fellow human by engaging in a simple conversation. 

Over a short enough period of time, a computer can do a remarkably good job of conversing like a human. We’re more predictable than we think we are. Here’s just one sample conversation: (“How are you doing today?” - “Good.” “How’s the family? - “Great.” “OK, got to run, see you soon.” “Yes, see you soon!”) Is there anything there that a reasonably intelligent bot couldn’t handle? 

You can see how this capability might be used by businesses in unique ways. How many times have you ever gone to a website and had a “chat request” from a customer service representative? You might think that it’s a human on the other end of that chat, but it might just be a bot. It’s only when the conversation gets too tricky and too complicated that it will be handed off to a human. (And even then, there’s no guarantee that your customer service rep will be able to handle your problem!).

The risk in all this, of course, is that by trying to make our social media even more social, we run the risk of making it anti-social. If you are outsourcing bots to handle all your conversations and responses, just how “social” are you? If you are instructing bots to create tweets and status updates for you – and then post them at random times to give the illusion that you are actually doing it yourself – aren’t you really defeating the purpose of social media?

Going forward, it will be interesting to see what AI’s “deep learning” does for the future of social media. It’s clear that we’re at a tipping point of sorts – it’s just too hard to keep up with the flow of social updates around us, or to respond to everyone in our social networks. It’s only natural that we will find ways for computers to help us, to save time for us, and to manage the care and feeding of our social networks.

But let’s just hope that these artificially intelligent machines are able to capture all the nuances, emotions and beliefs that make us human. 

Should we have to begin to worry about our AI data clones slowly taking down humanity? – as some, such as Stephen Hawking, famously suggested…

What are your thoughts? 

Please comment on this post and share with LIKE minded humans…or A.i (although we don’t want them getting ideas now do we!!)