AI Dixit: our new cultural paradigm and how to navigate it

My TEDx about AI and the paradigm shift we are living in is out!

Here is a English translated transcript! 

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It's a day like any other. You are heading to work, mentally going over all the news you want to share with your confidant as soon as you take a break with her.

But then, when you enter the office, something feels off: whispers, smirks, faces... It almost seems like your colleagues are aware of the two or three secrets you shared just with her. Could she have betrayed you like that? 

And so, in an instant, you find yourself shouting at her, demanding explanations.

However, these explanations cannot come because you are shouting at a wall... a digital one: that is, you are shouting at a screen.

Well, this woman shouting at the screen exists because the traitor is ELIZA, and she is a chatbot, the first chatbot in history. It's 1966 at MIT, and our protagonist, the human one, is Professor Weizenbaum's secretary, the professor leading the ELIZA research project.

Everyone in the lab could chat [with ELIZA] whenever they wanted, and of course, it was a test, so all conversations were recorded, analyzed, read, and reread by everyone. And so, she let herself go a bit and didn't realize she was actually sharing her personal matters with all her colleagues. However, the point isn't that she was careless.

The point is that she was the first victim of what we today call the ELIZA effect: if we have something in front of us that expresses itself in natural language, we immediately tend to overestimate its intelligence.

It must be human. 

After all, what other species have we found in the universe that express themselves with language like us?

This is the power that language, this technology we have invented, has over us.

And yes, of course, you might say, well, we were in 1955, now we are all a bit more used to these chatbots and algorithms, and we would never get involved in this way as it happened to her.

Yet, in reality, exactly the same things happen. In 2015, 50 years after ELIZA, just a short time after voice had joined language, we found ourselves with our voice assistants in our pockets, at home, and we started conversing with them. And indeed, already in 2015, we read stories like the one Luis tells us in this review, where he says that Alexa helped him get over a breakup. But not only that, but he also adds that now that Alexa is at home, why bother going out with friends? He has her company.

And this is the power that voice has over us.

And yes, speaking of voice and company, today I brought it with me, let me introduce you to Kirobo, a Japanese companion robot, who, believe it or not, accompanied Japanese astronauts in space.

It's a personal robot designed to dialogue with us and our technologies, with our smartphones. And above all, can we say it? ... Yes. How cute is it?

This is its main feature! And it's cute for a reason: because at this moment, while we look at it, our bodies are producing oxytocin. It's a hormone also known as the love hormone because it can provoke behaviors of mutual care, genuine love, trust, and even happiness in us. It makes us feel good, so good that other robots like it, specifically designed for this purpose, like the seal Paro, are used to combat depression.

So, it's an effect absolutely studied to make us feel good.

And this is the power of design when it's intended for this purpose.

And it's no coincidence that this design often comes from Japan because the way technology is perceived is also influenced by the way it is talked about, and in Japan, take artificial intelligence, the narratives are completely different because intelligence in the term artificial intelligence is more akin to wisdom, a wisdom that, according to Japanese culture, resides not in the brain but in the heart, and for this reason, it is impossible for an artificial intelligence project not to also have a body. Whatever its form, an animal, a little robot like this, or a humanoid body. That body is needed because that kind of intelligence cannot be separated from emotions, empathy, imagination, consciousness, and what is built, in fact, is a harmony, an interaction between human and machine where there is also a certain mutual respect.

Well, it’s a completely different story compared to the dichotomy we are used to between technology and human. And think, all this just for the power of the words we choose and that then accompany us in our narratives, in the values they evoke in us, and in the emotions we feel. 

Amazing.

And speaking of things that can excite us and catch our attention, the truth is that yes, robots like these are very cute and well-designed, but sometimes much less is needed for us humans. Sometimes even a well-designed mechanism with just a few pixels is enough.

And perhaps for those of my age, you will remember a famous hit of the '90s. Do you? 

The Tamagotchi: a digital alien pet to carry with us always, and that occasionally notifies us because it wants to go for a walk, play, eat, drink, be cuddled, or sleep, and our goal is to keep it alive, healthy, and happy.

It's a game.

Eh, but a game if well-designed..., and indeed I add, a digital service of any kind like many of those we use today, if well-designed as if it were a game, and therefore gamified as we say today, well, a game is powerful. And then again, if a game requires us to cooperate: oxytocin, we start producing it. But not only.

A lot of things happen in our body: adrenaline, dopamine, endorphin, just to name a few.

Everything that happens in us ensures that our attention, motivation, excitement, sense of pride, and again our happiness increase. And all this sense of well-being somehow also creates a certain dependency. I mean, who wouldn't want to repeat such a positive experience?

And this happens in our bodies, and it's the power that games have over us, which, after all, touch fundamental levers in us humans. But there is something that not only touches fundamental levers of humans but also manages to modify us significantly.

And these are intellectual technologies: all those technologies that we somehow use in our cognitive activities. Thinking, solving a problem, reading, writing, learning, but also media, communicating, and collaborating. 

And here you see Nietzsche writing on a typewriter because when they pointed out to him that since he started using this medium, his prose was changing, well, he expressed very well how these technologies impact us, because he said that these technologies participate in the formation of our thoughts.

Today we would say they are part of our extended mind that relies on external objects.

And today we know they also physically change our brain.

That is, when we train our brain to perform certain activities, it physically modifies itself and therefore maybe dedicates entire areas to doing something we deem important, or it converts other areas that are no longer useful to us. And so today, well, if we need to find information or solve a problem, the first thing we activate is not what in our brain digs into our knowledge, we activate what goes to seek outside towards search engines. And on the other side, we are excellent at multitasking, jumping from one place to another, from a link to a notification, constantly dividing our attention.

We have become less good at concentrating on one thing, reflecting, because this requires us a lot of time and few distractions.

And this is the power that intellectual technologies have over us, which doesn't stop here because it is so strong that we could, if we wanted, also construct a sort of timeline where, depending on the cultural paradigm, we find different intellectual technologies at our disposal.

And then in antiquity, where much was based on orality also because the supports were cumbersome to consult, carry around, rare, expensive... well, what would you have done if you were lucky enough to have in your hand a writing of Aristotle or Pythagoras?

One thing: learn it all by heart.

So, when you needed it, you could bring it to mind and use it to support your reasoning by appealing to the good old principle of authority, that is, IPSE DIXIT, he said it, word for word.

Then came the book, came paper, printing, and suddenly the tools to carry around culture became much less rare, less expensive, easier to carry in our pockets but, above all, also easier to consult again to maybe find the mark.

And so, I can dedicate a little less space to memory because I can rely on the book.

And above all, I add, even the movement we make when we read a book facilitates a consequential reasoning, a reasoning much closer to the scientific one.

Here we are ready for a new paradigm.

Today our filter is artificial intelligence, we access and disseminate culture with search engines, social networks, analytical tools, predictive tools, today even with generative artificial intelligence.

Well, we are in the new AI Dixit paradigm and in this new paradigm, I believe it is very explicit that we dialogue with these technologies, we converse, and they participate in the formation of our thoughts. They participate in our reasoning and will participate more and more in what becomes a dialogue also useful to be more creative, to try to look at things from different points of view, to structure our reasoning.

If we use them well, they can do this, so, they almost become a kind of... I don't know, an inner voice?

Maybe in the future, we will talk about the “Talking Cricket Effect”.

A synthetic digital talking cricket that participates in our cognitive activities and after all, just as the talking cricket helped Pinocchio become human, in some way this new synthetic talking cricket is helping us humans become different humans who express their intelligence differently.

It therefore participates in the construction of our memory, our identity, the image we have of the world, and therefore also of the role we humans have in that world. And so, it is also changing the way we give meaning to our existence.

Well, this is the power and impact that culture has on us, it is a change of the cultural paradigm.

And so: language, voice, design, words, game, intellectual technologies, now even generally all culture… the fact is that all these levers, these powers, are converging today into a single space, an enormous space of power that, like all powers, we can choose to delegate more or less to third parties.

Third parties who can also be very few people managing the technological companies leveraging all those powers we have seen.

But the point is that this is not the path, there are others we can inhabit both individually and collectively in this space. We can make it our own as a space of freedom of action and therefore I would also say a bit of resistance.

How?

Well, bringing on board this space always different points of view questioning the tools and content bringing cultures, viewpoints, ideas, visions, futures all things in the plural that express the wonderful diversity of us humans.

And at this point, it will become a space of sharing.

You know, Michael Tomasello showed that this very ability to share, to focus attention together on a single concept, and therefore to learn from each other, to change our points of view, well, this is what was the key to the cognitive leap that in fact made our species evolve.

So, I say: this is the most important power of all because this is what allows us to direct all the other levers, all the other powers, and to participate in the construction of this new cultural paradigm.

In short: this, after all, is the power of being human.