I'm CrimsonChocobo, but I'm also Laura. Are there even more versions of myself? I reflected on the idea of the Persona theory which SiteArm explained in class a few weeks ago. This theory states that people adopt multiple personas and use different ones depending on the situation. For example, a person may act differently with their friends than with their family. The same idea applies to an online persona, even within different websites and contexts.
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| My persona in another game leaves a different first impression of me in comparison to my Second Life avatar or my description in this article. |
Daniel Dennett points out the idea of having two or more sense of consciousness. Many people associate this with dissociative identity disorder, however, can't this idea be applied to online personas? 1 I myself have multiple personas online, such as a mage in Second Life, a knight on other online games or even a more restricted version of myself on Facebook. Online is now a place for people to market themselves in the best light possible and their work on places such as Linkedin or Instagram. Even someone like me who doesn't use social media much has left a digital footprint at different stages of my life such as when I posted art on DeviantArt when I was 10 years old. In a way, I unintentionally recorded a stage in my life that I otherwise might've forgotten. I drew differently and my personality has nearly completely changed since then which is reflected in the style of the writing of my posts and the way I customized my profile.
On a social media platform such as Facebook or Instagram, I'm happy to share basic information about myself such as hobbies or where I'm currently studying, but I wouldn't be comfortable sharing my personal life or family. I prefer to display myself like this because I don't want to share too many details with people that I might not know. I also am conscious of companies trying to gather the information that could potentially be used for something malicious or unwanted such as advertisements. I've noticed that most people, including myself, tend to share their good traits and positive moments of their lives on social media rather than the bad. We can create, in theory, a 'perfect' persona of ourselves whether its intentional or not because people in real life can judge you instantly from your movements, how you talk, thoughts that you cannot control. But online, you can make your first impression in advance. Having this control can be a good thing and doesn't have to be misleading. Being authentic while producing consistent, but unique content to you is one of the keys to building a successful online brand that will grow to be more important as time goes on and more employers start looking into your social media to determine whether or they will hire you. 2
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| Virtual identity is more important than ever before [Image Source - Mediaweek.com] |
As I was doing my research I also looked into David Chalmers who is a philosopher. In a TedTalk, he discusses the idea of consciousness and the mystery of something that is universal to us all. "On the one hand, it's a datum that we're conscious. On the other hand, we don't know how to accommodate it into our scientific view of the world," he states. 3 He discussed two theories that could lead to the development of understanding this phenomenon. He says that it could be fundamental, similar to time or electric charge because there is no other way to explain it using our current understanding of science. Or it could be panpsychism which is the idea that everything in the world has a degree of consciousness, even a partial like protons. If the idea of panpsychism were a reality, it brings up a serious dilemma with regard to ethics. As technology continues to develop and if AI got to the stage where machines can have emotions and clearly show a high intelligence similar to movies such as 'Her' or 'Ex Machina', wouldn't it be morally wrong to turn them off? Would they be able to have their own personas and if not, would it be wrong to take that ability away from something intelligent? I personally think that if we have these abilities, then they should extend to AI since we wouldn't remove the conciseness of a person, why remove it from an intelligent machine? In my opinion, it's important to unite people and AI together rather than repeating the past mistakes of humanity of pushing away the unknown.
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| Will AI have consciousness and personas just like we do? [Image source - Forbes.com] |
It's interesting to think about how consciousness is something that we all have and is very important, but it's only truly realized when you step back and think about it. Virtual identities are far more complex than a simple profile picture and short caption on each photograph. While we may have greater control as to how to portray ourselves online through our personas, it's important to be aware of how much information you're sharing and ultimately, stay safe and staying true to yourself. It is also important to consider the important questions in regards to AI personas that we have to confront in the near future.
1 Dannett, Daniel, 'What is the Nature of Personal Identity', 6 September 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE6CNETNJvk
2 Desta, Yohanna, 'The lazy person's guide to personal branding', 10 November 2014, https://mashable.com/2014/11/10/personal-branding-lazy-guide/?europe=true#2Qra4IOJhGqU
3 Chalmers, David, 'How do you explain consciousness?', March 2014, https://www.ted.com/talks/david_chalmers_how_do_you_explain_consciousness
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