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The optimistic view is that the public will tire of the artifice of saccharine digital interactions and gravitate toward more meaningful opportunities to engage with both human and artificial intelligence. Harder to find are digital spaces that foster the sort of deep interpersonal interaction that Aristotle famously extolled as friendships of virtue. In the current instance, social media, driven by the dictates of surveillance capitalism, is largely predicated on individuals feeling better (for a few seconds) when someone notices them with a like or a mention. “The real problem is that our digital spaces cater to assuaging the ego rather than considering what makes for a life well-lived. Reiner, co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia
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“ The real problem is that our digital spaces cater to assuaging the ego rather than considering what makes for a life well-lived.” Peter B. While some may blame digital spaces for providing a breeding ground for divisive political views, what we are witnessing seems more an amplification of persistent prejudice by people who are, for the first time in generations, feeling less powerful than their forebears. Faced with the manifold offerings of the digital world, many will look for meaning in creative tasks, in social discourse and perhaps even in improving the intolerable state of political affairs today. Victor Frankl vividly describes the human need for finding meaning in one’s life, even when the abyss seems near at hand. “Yet such a dystopian outcome may be unlikely. The worry is that such cognitive offloading will lead to the sort of corpulent torpor envisioned in the animated film ‘Wall-E,’ with humans increasingly unable to care for themselves in a world where the digital takes care of essentially all worldly needs. Among the positives, I would include automation of routine day-to-day tasks, improved algorithmic medical diagnoses and the availability of high-quality AI assistants that take over everything from making reservations to keeping track of personal spending.
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With that disclaimer in mind, I expect that digital life will have both negative and positive effects in the year 2035. A wonderous gadget it was, but nobody would have predicted that 14 years later, nearly half the population of the planet would own a smartphone, no less how reliant upon them people would become. For perspective, consider how things looked 14 years ago when the iPhone was first introduced to the world. Reiner, co-founder of the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia, wrote, “It is challenging to make plausible predictions about the impact that digital spaces will have upon society in 2035. The following respondents wrote contributions that bring together a holistic look at the issues at hand, trying to place them in human and historical context.