In a
previous article, I discussed the use of virtual reality to recreate people,
both dead and living, for different screen performances. It was pointed out that in the process of
creating the representations of these people, not only did the distinction
between these vacuumized representations and the real people that corresponded
to them tend to blur, but, more particularly, the vacuumized representations
tended to impart a sense of ghostliness and evanescence to the real
people. And this, in the long run, is
going to affect how ordinary people end up treating one another. If people in daily life start to appear
ghostly and evanescent to us, then it really doesn’t matter to us, doesn’t
concern us, if we then use them to pull out of our own sense of ghostliness and
evanescence, our own numbness, through making them targets for angry aggressive
behavior, even violent behavior.
Now
come the Chinese who have created an artificial news anchor on television. It has been created through a combination of
virtual reality and Artificial Intelligence.
The Chinese supposedly created it, because it is more efficient than a
human and more economical as well.
Whatever their ostensive reasons for creating this entity, there will
certainly be some unintended consequences as well.
One
of them is the manner in which the Chinese will absorb the presence of the
artificial news anchor. Unlike the
virtual representations of Michael Jackson and other famous people, the
artificial news anchor is not meant to represent any known human being. So the artificial news anchor does not
entirely partake of any specific mass, matter and substance of a human being
who lived at any one time. There may
have been a human model for the news anchor, but the connection between the
model and the anchor would be much more tenuous than that of a famous human
with his virtual representation. So the
artificial news anchor has a much greater lightness of being than a virtual
representation of a famous person. It is
much more like an avatar, except without an actual known human being referent
point. It is a highly vacuumized complex
behavioral entity. The complexity makes it believable as a human-like screen
reality creature. So the Chinese will be
drawn to it and will commune with it, to the extent that one can actually
commune with a machine. And in communing
with it, the distinction will blur between the real human and the artificial
human in the fields of experience of these Chinese. And the highly vacuumized artificial news
anchor will contribute to vacuumizing the viewers watching it. And the viewers will be watching it much more
than they would be watching virtual representations of famous people. Such an experience will touch the Chinese
viewers with ghostliness and evanescence on a regular basis.
There
is a sense in which the news anchor is a kind of trusted authority figure. First and foremost, he is supposed to be
someone who is dispensing the truth about the people and events that are
appearing in the news. And in a world as
vast, complex and overpopulated as ours, it gives us a sense of control over
things if we have true knowledge about what is going on. But the fact is that the presenter of the
news in Chinas is soon going to be something (not someone) that is not what it
appears to be. It is not an actual human
being but rather a vacuumized representation of a human being. A representation that can be manipulated to
say, without any problems of conscience, whatever the Chinese government wants
it to say. Unlike a human being, a
vacuumized representation is incapable of forming its own opinions about a
political situation. It is incapable of
betraying any subtle unconscious disagreement with the opinion that it is given
to express on air.
So,
in the end, the fact that the entity is pretending to be something that it
isn’t, leaches into the perception of veracity of the content of what it is
saying. An untrustworthy presentation of
what it actually is leads to a loss of trust in the content of its
message. In other words, the Chinese
will develop a skepticism with regard to believing him. And this will be contrary to what an
authoritarian government like the Chinese government is trying to achieve. A vacuumized entity like an artificial news
anchor just does not have the gravity to make and prepare meaningful imprints
on its viewers. And, therefore, the news
it conveys does not make and preserve meaningful imprints on its viewers.
Not
only will the vacuumized quality of the news anchor rub off on the viewers, but
also the vacuumized quality of the communications themselves will rub off as
well. The numbness will spread to the
communication between the Chinese. As
people become more and more numb in their skepticism as to what they are
hearing from the artificial news anchors, it will make meaningful communication
among those Chinese who view it more difficult.
It will make them feel more disconnected from the external world.
And
then, of course, as a reaction to enveloping numbness, many Chinese will become
more and more aggressive both towards themselves and towards one another: one
person explosive tension-pockets. It is
not good to try to subtly fool masses of people by creating a vacuumized entity
for screen reality that pretends to be a human.
The ripple effects will be far reaching, and the upshot is that viewers
won’t be able to trust reality anymore.
This will lead to severe psychopathology. And it’s all being done to cut costs and
create a frictionless efficiency. The
problem with frictionless efficiency is that what seems frictionless and
efficient today, can seem very abrasive and very inefficient in comparison to
what later inventions can do, as humans become increasingly intolerant of any
form of friction. Who knows what some
day might replace artificial news anchors, but something will. And this invention will push the Chinese and
perhaps others into deeper layers of a vacuum, disconnecting people more and
more from one another. And such a trend
threatens the very survival of the human race.
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