Recently I made a post about AI, and someone responded by saying that my blog “scared” them. To be honest, as part of Gen Z, the onset of a dystopian reality feels pretty par for the course at this point. If I hear “once in a lifetime event” once more in my lifetime, I may lose it. That said, the wording was interesting. I wouldn’t have phrased it that way. I might have thought that what I said was a bit “depressing” or “unfortunate” or—more eloquently—that “we’re fucked”, but I wouldn’t have said “scary”. Maybe I’m a bit numb to it, and honestly that’s more scary to me. So, let me tell you a little horror story since it’s Halloween.
I’ve put an ungodly amount of hours into Cyberpunk 2077 this year, and it’s become my favourite game in the process. It’s not just fun, but it has pretty incredible lore—much better than Tron, Star Wars, Star Trek, and maybe even Doctor Who. In the game, there’s this phenomenon called “cyberpsychosis” that can happen when people overdo it with their cyberware—that is, the cybernetic implants that augment or alter our ordinary humanity. They can make you run faster, jump higher, react quicker, interface with tech better, or just drive you plain crazy. Interestingly, in the original RPG from the ’80s, I’ve since learned that cyberpsychosis was determined by a character’s “humanity level”. That is, the more they install, the less human they become, and the more empathy they have to start with, the higher their tolerance for cyberware. As one’s humanity decreases through cyberware, people begin to relate more to machines, and they eventually begin to lack empathy. You might imagine the outcome, and all of this happens through the use of technology.
Of course, this is sci-fi. Well, it’s a subgenre within sci-fi called cyberpunk. In the real world, we don’t generally get cybernetic implants that turn your into some superhuman. Maybe we have appendages that can help you walk or run. Maybe a supplement can boost your adrenaline or tweak some brain chemistry a bit—all of which are tinker toys compared to what you find in Night City. Cyberpsychosis isn’t a real phenomenon, not really… or is it?
Marshall McLuhan famously came up with the idea of technology, or media, as “extensions of man”. Historically, technology has been used as an extension of human intellect and ability. Only recently have we begun to automate these extensions more and more, and only very recently have we begun to think up creations that could possibly act of their own accord. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting there, so the point stands: we are already, in fact, cyborgs of a kind. We might not visibly be “chrome junkies” like the characters in Cyberpunk, but we are most definitely chrome junkies of a kind. We use tools all the time to get things done. The same way a cigarette kills you as it gives you relief, take a moment to think about how the tech that helps you are only digging you a deeper grave.
We don’t even need to use our voices, faces, or text to communicate with each other anymore. Truth be told, assuming you’ve got some money, you can spend your life in what is effectively solitary confinement. Food, for example, can be ordered straight to your door. Face-to-face social interaction can be replaced with social media. Word-of-mouth can be replaced by feeds shaped by algorithms designed to keep you hooked so that corpo-rats can acquire more data to sell you shit that you didn’t even need to speak to a cashier to pay for. This isn’t just younger generations either. I know older people—Gen X and Boomers, even—who’ve expressed (dare I say?) pride on how little they go out: there’s plenty to keep them busy at home. And even if they’re not addicted to doom-scrolling, you might find them doing pretty much the same thing as they watch FOX News or CNN. Or listen to radio. In all these areas, it’s still entirely possible to create parasocial relationships that simply don’t exist since they’re mediated by the cyberspace we’re all plugged into.
And in the future? Let’s imagine that it might get worse. Maybe someday ChatGPTs great grandchild will be my secretary: answering the calls and inquiries that I don’t want to or don’t have the time for. It can get to know my mannerisms, and go from there. People have already begun to ask AI to write sensitive emails, draft essays, and perform other mundane tasks for them. It can already ape your voice if you tell it to. So when does it take the next step? When does it start to project a lifelike avatar that looks like you, speak with your cadence and sarcasm, and run your life for you? Why wouldn’t this happen? It’s already begun.
You want me to really blow your mind, though? A bit of conventional wisdom argues that success is “about who you know” more than anything else, but it will not be necessary to know anyone. Job hunting isn’t about the human touch anymore. We went from word of mouth to posters to classified ads to job boards and now to automated systems that flush you out if it thinks you’re shit. Human interaction is discouraged, machine interaction is encouraged. Know why? Because the human cost of labour is enormous. Finite as we are, our time is valuable, our energy is valuable. We need food and rest and sleep and leisure and fulfillment—none of which a machine needs. It does what it’s fucking told to do without complaining. And sure, it needs a lot of electricity to function, but power generation is only important if you have planetary dwellers that require a certain climate to function. You could wipe out the ocean, turn up the temp, and a machine couldn’t give a shit.
But luckily for us, we’re already part machine. We rely on them to survive—it’s a fact! Even The Matrix makes this point when a councilor marvels at the fact that some machines are keeping them alive while other machines are trying to kill them. “Old men don’t bother with making points,” he says, but he makes a good point for an old man. So we’re already well on our way to cyberpsychosis, if you’re not already a psycho. But take heart: sanity in a world of madness only implies that you yourself are mad. We’re all mad here.
And I’m somewhat at ease with this. It’s the world I was born into, the world I grew up in, and it’s the world I’m headed into. Not just for me, mind you, but for all of us. We look for meaning outside of the human and create these machines—these systems—that, if we’re not careful, become the very things that strip of us our humanity, the only real source of meaning that we can realistically hope for. Rather like how you read my words instead of living your life to find out for yourself. Unsettling? Scary, even? Maybe your mask of sanity is beginning to slip a little bit by bit.
Photo by SCARECROW artworks on Unsplash
Leave a Reply