Are We Programming Ourselves Out of Existence?

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Imagine this:

As you lie comfortably in a padded chair, your cerebral cortex remotely controls a robot avatar that engages the outside world. You feel pleasure without pain, take risks without danger, indulge every desire without consequence.

If you've seen the movie "Surrogates," you'll remember the story line: Technology has enabled you (and everyone else) to experience life through a stylized replica of yourself -- attractive, fit and, above all, safe from harm.

Bruce Willis plays FBI agent Tom Greer, who confronts the dark side of this future Utopia when his own surrogate is destroyed. Compelled to go out into the world as his real self, he soon discovers that idealized living is really no life at all.

This world of fabricated illusion -- however pretty -- has flattened out the peaks and valleys of human existence. The challenges, failures and struggles that provide the springboard for genuine accomplishment have been eliminated; and, with them, all real joy, intimacy and satisfaction.

Literature and cinema have long cautioned us against attempting to engineer perfection. And society has ignored those warnings just as long. With life imitating art as we celebrate the arrival of AI, perhaps we should think twice before dismissing the dystopian future that may await us.

In a recent Scientific American article, science journalist Webb Wright does just that as he ponders both the promise and the fear of artificial intelligence after a close encounter with this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon:

Generative agent | noun

A system designed to simulate the decision-making behavior of individual humans.

Wright joined a thousand other subjects who sat for two-hour interviews with an AI chatbot named Isabella. The generative agents produced by Isabella successfully mimicked human decision-making with 85% accuracy.

Wright himself found his digital alter-ego's level of authenticity impressively accurate, but also eerily incomplete. "Despite those moments of pleasant surprise," he writes, "my conversation with my generative agent left me feeling hollow. I felt I had met a two-dimensional version of myself -- all artifice, no depth ... a virtual actor playing a role, wearing my data as a mask."

Of course, what Isabella accomplished was pure science fiction a mere half-decade ago. We can only imagine what future iterations might produce. And that suggests two deeply worrisome possibilities.

First, we might begin replacing the people in our lives with surrogates. This has already begun with constructed social media personas and virtual gaming avatars. But contemplate the resurrection of lost loved ones or heroes from history. Consider the allure of manufactured companions programmed to provide exactly the kind of relationships we long for without any of the irritations or disappointments of real human interaction. How easily might we lose ourselves completely in a fantasy world we find more engaging and less demanding than real life?

There's an even more insidious possibility. Because algorithms generalize group responses, they might naturally default to a collective baseline and overwrite the nuances of personality that make each of us our distinct selves. "That matters," says Georgetown University neuroscientist Adam Green, "because ultimately what you'll have is homogenization."

Could this be the next stage after Facetuning, the enhancement of photo images, and selfie dysmorphia, the surgical reconfiguration to match enhanced photo images? Why redesign myself when I can create idealized versions of friends and family, or program new friends from whole digital cloth? Why should I not withdraw completely from genuine human interaction, if I believe I can autogenerate more gratifying relationships?

We see this mindset appearing everywhere. The outcry against Cracker Barrel for emasculating its iconic logo follows the trend of Google, Microsoft, PayPal and other companies that have discarded style in favor of stylistic sameness.

As in the world of Tom Greer, the comfort of shallow familiarity leaves us viscerally warmed but internally empty. Like any addiction, the buzz of effortless gratification quickly becomes our emotional baseline while rendering us incapable of climbing to new heights of self-fulfillment.

Ethics is often not easy. Neither is embracing reality, with all its messiness and imperfection, with all its scrapes and bruises. But there are no short cuts to a life worth living.

Rabbi Yonason Goldson graduated from the University of California at Davis with a degree in English, which he put to good use by setting off hitchhiking cross-country and backpacking across Europe. He eventually arrived in Israel where he connected with his Jewish roots and spent the next nine years studying Torah, completing his rabbinic training as part of Ohr Somayach's first ordination program. After teaching yeshiva high school for 23 years in Budapest, Hungary, Atlanta, Georgia, and St. Louis, Missouri, Rabbi Goldson established himself as a professional speaker and advisor, working with business leaders to create a company culture built on ethics and trust. He has published seven books and given two TEDx Talks, is an award-winning host of two podcasts, and writes a weekly column for Fast Company Magazine. He also serves as scholar-in-residence for congregations around the country.

Previously:

• The bigger they come, the harder we try to make them fall
• How to Transform Fallacies Into Actionable Reality
• How to make life worth living --- no, REALLY!
• What Do Opposites Attract? Truth and Wisdom
• Groucho Marx and Embracing Tension
• Toward a more civil civilization
• Break Down Barriers of Thought to Build Towers of Innovation
• 'Tis the Season for Reflecting Beyond your Reflection
• Why Antisemitism Is Not Just a Jewish Problem
• The rank stupidity of 'Just let it go'
• To create a functioning, biblically-based civilization
• The difference between optimism and hope
• The Next Piece of the Puzzle Might Fill the Hole in Your Heart
• Self-Esteem Isn't Given -- It's Earned
• Remember the Past to Promote a Successful Future
• Are We Making Failure the Price of Success?
• Demoralization Is More About Culture than Feelings
• The Lesson We're Missing From the Death of Charlie Kirk
• Invest in Your Own Success by Building Up Others
• The Most Valiant Heroes Fight on a Different Battlefield
• How Pundits Came to Give Punditry a Bad Name
• The Wisdom of Knowing What You Don't Know
• Success Thrives in the Light of Purpose and Passion
• When Seeking Peace, Don't Release the Dogs of War
• Greta Thunberg Sails Toward Moral Hypocrisy
• Checking More Boxes Is Not the Solution
• Why Sometimes NOT Seeing Is MORE Believing
• A Healthy Diet for the Brain Promotes Ethical Clarity for the Mind

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