Faces and Fantasies: Managing Your body.
Step 4: How to Succeed in the AI World
This series of Substack posts is designed to help us prepare for the enormous challenges that lie ahead in an AI dominant world. If you haven’t done so already, please read the previous posts. And please share the posts with family, friends, and colleagues.
Facing the Future
Imagine that you would like to go to a Los Angeles Clippers’ game or a pop concert at the sparkling new high-tech Intuit Dome located in Inglewood, California.
To buy a ticket you first have to upload the Intuit Dome app, take a photo of your face with your phone, upload the photo to the venue portal, agree to allow your image to be used, select your seat, give up your credit card information or authorize an online payment system, and click FINISH.
When you get to the venue for the game, just walk right in. No ticket or identification is needed. Convenience is part of the experience that benefits patrons. The usher holds a device pointed at you and waves you in: “Hi James…”
In technical terms, digital facial recognition is an upgrade over analogic photographic identification, but much more precise and transferable.
Many other venues require facial recognition now, too. We all have to (literally) face the future. My last two Substack posts have asked you what you are willing to give up in order to live in the AI world. But we don’t always have a choice about that other than denying ourselves access to some kind of event or experience.
Biometrics and Your Body
It’s becoming nearly impossible not to lose at least some control of our bodies to the owners and managers of AI enabled technology and their clients. The face is a lot to give up. But if you want to enter the Intuit Dome or many other venues, you simply have to provide a high-resolution image of your face.
Facial recognition software follows from two other identification media focused on the face: Iris recognition systems, which use the same mathematical pattern-recognition principle as facial recognition, and photographs.
Fingerprints and Palm/Handprints
Governments have been documenting the surface of our bodies for many years.
Fingerprints began to be used for criminal investigations and passport identification beginning more than 100 years ago, setting the stage for later governmental interventions into bodily privacy.
Even more precise palm/handprint technology is being used widely now, usually for entry into buildings or rooms. Again we see a trade-off here between privacy and convenience. No need to carry and show an identification card. Your hand does the job quickly and precisely.
DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)
DNA is an acid contained in the chromosomes of every living organism and carries the organism’s unique genetic information.
DNA evidence has been crucial in evolutionary science to estimate the age of fossils and to show the genetic connections between different animal and plant species. But for our purposes here, DNA has been used since the 1980s to identify suspects in serious criminal investigations.
Unlike some other forms of identification, you don’t have to voluntarily give samples of your DNA to the government unless you are served with a search warrant for probable cause of a crime.
Many people do render DNA samples by choice to research companies who trace their ancestry or provide informed disease predictability.
Privacy
Biometric identification systems have evolved over the years to be incredibly effective at recognizing individuals for various purposes. Although I don’t want to over-emphasize the risks, there are dangers. Identify theft, racial discrimination, and privacy intrusions are among the issues.
And despite fine print assurances written in legalese, very few of us have any idea where our facial recognition images are stored, for instance, or how they might be used without our knowledge.
My goal with this post is to encourage reflection on all of these technologies, and take steps to protect yourself when you deem it necessary.
No doubt consulting AI sources can be helpful in finding answers to many kinds of questions—so long as we realize the information provided may or may not be accurate. We still must seek credible sources of information when we really want to know something factual.
Fantasies
Readily-available AI options that open up a whole different kind of vulnerability are chat groups and the creation of romantic “relationships.”
Exchanging deeply personal information with an AI interlocutor can turn into a lifelike emotional experience that is fraught with potential danger and disappointment. AI friends, romantic interests, and sexual partners can all be found online quickly. Love and romance among real people are often considered to be exciting, even “magical,” feelings. AI capitalizes on these emotions.
The danger is particularly acute for straight young men. Richard Reeves (Of Boys and Men), Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation) and Scott Galloway (Notes on Being a Man) are brilliant contemporary authors who warn of the link between social media use and online pornography as substitutes for in-the-flesh social and sexual relationships with women.
A direct link connects online sites like Pornhub, where you can create your ideal partner for mutual masturbation to far more complex and fulfilling AI Girlfriend and Boyfriend sites like these:
Of course every sexual preference is available every minute of the day.
These “opportunities” for romantic and sexual “fulfillment” (orgasm) represent a real temptation for some individuals who may feel lonely, afraid of interacting with a real-world romantic interest, or just curious.
I render no moral judgment. But here’s where you do have control over the potential consequences of your actions. Apparently meaningful AI relationships can have negative consequences that range from disillusionment to suicide. Choose wisely.
And if you choose to connect with one these beauties, remember one thing….
Adapt to Survive and Thrive in any Environment…
The perspective presented in my Substack posts is based on the science that explains how communication drives the development of organic life, culture, and technology. Please go to my YouTube channel to learn more about the ways communication functions as the motor of evolution.