What we once could only see in science fiction movies has long since become reality. Technology has taken over almost every field, artificial intelligence is expected to replace more and more people in their jobs – and question marks about human behavior in this new world are piling up. Kan's new web series, Code Name, explores the relationship between technology and areas of our lives.
"Every technology that has entered our lives so far has brought with it great promise that our lives will be more comfortable and that our choices will be more accurate," says Gali Ginat, the creator of the series. "A lot of times these shiny promises come at a price we pay, but it takes a long time to figure it out. For example, Facebook, which came in and revolutionized our lives. The way we communicate has changed, diverse communities have been built, but later we also realized that it has an impact on issues such as body image or privacy. With this in mind, we set out on a path in which we wanted to examine the price we pay with the introduction of new technology."
"The choice will be on the degree of involvement." From "Code Name", photo: here
Among the topics that the series will explore are the effect of virtual reality on the brain, how to program self-driving cars (and what dilemmas programmers face), artificial intelligence and its psychological effects, the ability of various facial recognition systems to read emotions, and more.
On how the series was created, Ginat shares: "We spoke with technologists, who are now developing everything we will know in the future. We talked to experts, academics and futurists – all to try to get the full picture. When we started, ChatGPT existed, but we didn't know it. It was something of 'freaks' who understand it. And now, after not a long time, it is already common in our lives. Things move fast."
So what is the world going to look like?
"People will live in virtual reality worlds, and it will feel very real. So much so that we probably won't even remember that there's the physical world somewhere off-screen. It acts on the senses in a different way, it's an experience of immersion.
"To test this, I experienced sexual harassment in the virtual world. They looked at my measurements to demonstrate how it worked on the brain, and they showed that I was experiencing real distress at that moment, almost as if it were happening in the real world."
Sounds scary.
"It's really scary. I took it to the most personal place I could. An expert on futuristic trends sat across from me and told me that most of humanity would live on psychiatric pills, because that would be the only way to deal with the consequences. People think social media distorts our perception, but AI is going to take it much further. There are already people who have romantic relationships with artificial intelligence. It sounds ridiculous because it's a computer, but AI will just know what to tell us and how – exactly according to what we 'need.'"
Any chance not to get sucked into it?
"There's always a spectrum, but I think there's no escaping it completely. The choice will be about how involved people are in this world. I guess it's like today some people choose to have 'stupid' phones. It's possible, but it complicates life."
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