Believable Boundaries...




The human mind is a strangely powerful thing. While the world is busy being awed by the wonders of generative AI, we are lacking a true understanding that our brains, the OG natural intelligence to AI, have immense capabilities beyond our own human inventions. I woke up this morning with a terrible nightmare, and while I took time to control my emotions, the designer in me started observing the nitty-gritty of this generated world.

As you can imagine, everything was believable. It had to be, because it was directly connected to my neural system. But the main part was how it didn't feel alien and had elements of my existing world, which increased my believability. I saw my daughter in a space that seemed fairly familiar. The twist of the fear-producing nightmare was when, from that real space, I was taken into a totally unknown realm. I felt lost, and I had lost my daughter as well, which added to my anxiety. While this is as much as I remember in detail, what is fascinating is the degree of believable generative reality that the brain was able to produce in a short span of time.

And of course, we aren't talking about any regular computing here; this is the human brain, and it has proven time and again how reality is just a figment of its perception and imagination.

Our technology today has reached a crossroads of such believability, to an extent that we now have the capability to produce outputs beyond the comprehensibility of our very own brain. At this point, we have kept such technology away from our physical bodies. However, with the advent of technologies like transhumanism, exemplified by Musk's Neuralink, we are getting closer to a state where separating our self-generated artificial realities from the physical happenings would require a device or superhuman strength. As technology creators, we need to be prepared to empower and augment our human capabilities to distinguish between what is real and what is artificially real.

It's not that we, as humans, are just realizing this differentiation. Famous philosophers and sociologists have been pondering this issue for a long time. Whether it's Plato discussing the philosophical thought of truth, or Marshall McLuhan talking about how the medium influences the message, there have been various perspectives. Jean Baudrillard's concept of simulacra and simulacrum, which we have already encountered in consumer goods today, is particularly intriguing. Moreover, religious texts also contemplate the question of reality and perception.

Our job as technologists and designers becomes crucial in humanizing this difference and keeping alive our capabilities to distinguish between the two. While complete immersion may be the goal of ideal user experiences that we want to create, there is an element of advancement that our human brains possess. Ensuring that we continue to recognize this will not only help us create better technology but also enable us to leverage technology for the greater good of humanity and the planet as a whole.

Now that I have intellectualized my nightmare, I better go back to sleep, hoping to experience a more pleasant dream. Thank you for reading or skimming, whatever you did to reach the end. As long as this post triggered your thoughts, it serves the purpose of expressing these words. Logging out now (do we still log out of anything these days?).

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