In recent years, with technological breakthroughs, digital life has become a hot topic in society. However, unlike the fixed image that is vivid and indistinguishable from reality in the eyes of the public, the diversity of the definition of digital life also determines its rich form.
What exactly is digital life.
If life is about continuity and change, digital life may have been born as early as the end of the 20th century. These computer programs that can evolve and replicate themselves may be far from what we imagine today, but this kind of program designed for "evolution" and "replication" is indeed the beginning of the imagination of digital life.
With the improvement of computing power conditions, major breakthroughs have been made in the research and development of AI technology, and AI models have been able to accurately simulate human identities and interact with users according to instructions. AI models are able to respond to information from the outside world and continuously improve their self-awareness through learning, which is very close to the definition of digital life. The use of AI to simulate personalities has once become a trend in online communities, and more and more people choose to use AI to generate their own digital avatars to share with friends on social **, or try to "talk to themselves". Digital personalities and virtual humans are also beginning to become synonymous with digital life.
The popularity of the Internet gives each user a digital identity, we use the digital identity to communicate in the network, and when the use of the network becomes a part of our lives, the user itself is digitized to a certain extent. When the boundary between virtual and real becomes blurred, digital life is no longer independent of real life, and people have both real life and digital life. Digital life in this sense is not necessarily presented in a concrete image, it is composed of the entire projection of a person in the digital world, and the digital identity is its primary manifestation.
The core of digital life lies in the interaction with the outside world, which can be a program that constantly replicates and evolves itself in the process of communication, it can be AI and robots that communicate with people without barriers, or it can be a virtual person in the Internet space.
What digital life will bring us.
Digital life has different characteristics from real life, taking AI models as an example, AI models cannot achieve complete independent thinking, self-evolution and replication, but they have shown far more than human knowledge reserves and analysis capabilities. AI models are not affected by lifespan and health factors, can be engaged in a certain job uninterruptedly, and can also break through the barriers of physical space when combined with network technology, which has strong application potential. Digital virtual humans have a wide range of applications in public welfare undertakings and service industries, they can not only accurately analyze the user's facial expressions and language expressions, but also provide comprehensive and diverse solutions, and can even generate voices to help users understand.
Digital life is changing the mode of knowledge exchange and production of human beings, although the digital life that helps us realize the eternal existence of consciousness in science fiction movies is still far away, but it is not difficult to simulate a digital human through complete data records. The recording of personal information is actually a digitization of natural life, which can be used to reconstruct a virtual personality.
What we should focus on.
Digital life is no longer far away, and the realization of digital life does not mean that human society should collectively accept life in the digital world. In addition to imagining the benefits that digital life brings to society, it is equally important to pay attention to the impact of digital life on the real society.
Digital life will replace humans in some social functions. The ethical panic caused by virtual digital humans stems from the superiority of machines in knowledge reserve and analytical capabilities, and in most production activities and games and entertainment, machines have the potential to replace humans as the main body of labor. However, machines do not necessarily abide by human ethics, and if a reliable system of digital ethics cannot be established and the moral norms are internalized into digital life, the development of digital life is very likely to get out of control, and ethical panic and job replacement will even threaten the smooth operation of society.
The development of digital life is related to the freedom and rights of real individuals, and the governance and supervision framework is an inevitable choice to balance social interests, build social consensus, and build public trust. The main force in the development of several key technologies is resource-intensive data enterprises, and the supervision of data collection, utilization and other processing behaviors is particularly important. The quest for digital life still needs to be carried out within the safety red line. The legal system must play its role at this time, and the internalization of moral norms does not mean that risks are eliminated, and society still needs legal tools to maintain consensus and protect rights.
Another concern is the prohibitive maintenance cost of digital life. The maintenance of digital life depends on computing power, which in turn is inseparable from storage, computing equipment, and power infrastructure. AlphaGo consumes far more energy than a human player in a game of Go, and also occupies thousands of processors and data hard drives.
In the current legal framework, digital life is not yet a subject that can bear legal responsibility, they are either considered to be a program that can be manipulated artificially, ** or an identity of a specific natural person in cyberspace. In addition to ethical considerations, there are also factors that do not have the possibility of being held responsible. It is generally believed that the person who creates digital life is the person who is responsible for digital life. For example, the developer of the program, the user of the AI, the controller of the digital identity, etc. If the machine outputs something wrong or incomprehensible to a human, it is a malfunction in the algorithm and the developer or maintainer should be asked to fix it as soon as possible, rather than instructing the machine to "correct it immediately". However, at present, the new generation of AI, including GPT-4 and Gemini, have shown a certain intention to avoid asking questions, which may be related to the model's attempt to save computing resources, but once the model has the ability to choose to avoid human questions, and the use of this ability has been out of the control of developers, the conclusion that AI has no legal personality will be challenged.
The three realms of artificial intelligence, robotics, and the metaverse are equivalent to the "mind, body, and world" of digital life. The development direction of these three key technologies almost determines the future of the digital society. If digital life exists only in the virtual space created by humans, its future has no future. Therefore, digital life is inevitably inseparable from channels for interaction with the outside world. This channel can be a real-life robot body or a data interface connected to the Internet. On these foundations, digital life can continue to meet its own computing power needs while keeping up with its understanding of the world. Only under this premise can digital life have the possibility of long-term development and have greater positive significance for the real society.
*: Study Times.