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Elena Sender: “We risk losing our humanity with artificial intelligence”

2022-03-02T09:49:08.197Z


INTERVIEW - The science journalist publishes Replay, a psychological novel in which she questions the domination of artificial intelligence over our lives and explores the dangers of virtual reality.


She steps forward.

Step by step, she reaches the end of the board.

His feet are now on the edge of the void.

About ten floors separate it from the asphalt.

Mélodie* flinches for a few moments, but her smile does not fail.

She observes the cheeky blue sky and listens to the chirping birds.

Behind her, a voice rises:

“Jump!”

Mélodie hesitates then rushes forward.

The meters go by.

The ground is getting closer.

Her cheeks have just enough time to blush before the screen goes blank.

” READ ALSO – By the way, what is virtual and / or augmented reality?

In a small room stripped of its furniture, at Albin Michel's, Mélodie has just tested a virtual reality headset.

The buildings, the swallows, the cars, the void... Everything was wrong.

"That's crazy!

I'm still shaking.

It was so true...»

While she regains her senses, Elena Sender, scientific journalist and director, who publishes

Replay

, a psychological novel on virtual reality, is about to dive into this other world.

From a screen in the room, we observe what the young woman sees.

Heart in throat, she virtually leans over the void and steps back.

"This is completely crazy!"

A word that will come up a lot to describe this unreal universe.

“Vertigo is larger than life.”

That evening, Elena Sender does not jump into the void but decides to fly away.

This is one of the options offered by this virtual reality game.

Suddenly, it rises and exceeds the buildings of the city in 3D.

She takes a few steps in the room and then comes down to earth.

"It's incredible!"

What about it?

Is the virtual more real than the real?

When does one want to take off the helmet after such an emotional experience?

These are all questions that the science journalist addresses in her novel.

She imagines that a video game makes it possible to relive the past thanks to virtual reality.

For better and especially for worse...

LE FIGARO.

- You have in the epigraph of your novel a formula of Orwell:

"He who has control of the past has control of the future."

A sentence that places your novel under the sign of dystopia.

His reading is thought to be a mixture of

Her

and

Black Mirror

.

Elena SENDER.

-

I agree - and flattered - knowing that I have never seen

Black Mirror

!

People often quote me about this series when talking about my work.

It seems that it looks like what I can write.

That's why I don't want to see her.

I don't want to be influenced, even if I really want her!

Regarding

Her

, this film echoes my book completely, in that it explores our new relationship to artificial intelligence (AI) and all that we can project onto it.

Dystopia is an integral part of my novel, we dive into AI hell, in a way, I'm describing the worst possible world, but there is still a path to the light...

“When does it make sense to believe that we are not going to reproduce the same turpitudes of our real world in the virtual world?

»

How was this book born?

I am a scientific journalist and I have followed all the developments in AI for fifteen years.

What interests me is not so much the algorithmic aspect of AI as its influence on humans and their brains.

Neuroscience is one of my specialties.

In parallel with this work, I am also a documentary filmmaker.

In 2014, I explored, on the occasion of a series entitled Human 3.0, what I could be the human of the future.

I went to a start-up in Silicon Valley called Meta Company.

I put on an augmented reality helmet (unlike a mask that covers the whole face, it's a visor through which you can see the outside world and on which virtual reality elements are projected).

With this helmet,

I was able to observe people and read their profile on Facebook… At the end of this experience, I spoke with the designer of this product and told him that reality risked becoming very bland without headphones.

He then replied: “We are working on increasingly light models so that in the long term we will never take it off again.”

I felt a great uneasiness.

For them, reality is boring and therefore needs to be augmented.

My novel was born at that time.

Your main character, Lois, meets an artificial intelligence don Juan.

He offers her to relive her past through a virtual reality video game.

Does this type of program already exist?

Yes and no.

In the novel, I say that with data, photos, voices, you can recreate someone's past in a few moments, but that's fiction.

I anticipate it.

Today, it would take months to realize that.

Nevertheless, technologically, we have everything we need to invent this game and rewrite everyone's past… Besides, there is a Korean program that allows you to see missing people again!

It's nothing new that humans are looking for ways to escape from everyday life.

But where it changes is that we are made to believe that there would be an ideal world to forget our worries, to meet sexy, beautiful and young people.

I wonder: at what point does it make sense to believe that we are not going to reproduce the same turpitudes of our real world in the virtual world,

knowing that in this latter world there are no social conventions, faith or law?

This virtual world of peace, democracy and benevolence is completely utopian, therefore false.

” READ ALSO – The UN calls for a moratorium on certain artificial intelligence systems

A woman also

deplored having been the victim of touching in virtual reality

The metaverse is under study and like any new program, it uses beta testers, that is to say, players who test a program that has not yet been marketed.

In November, a beta tester reported the sexual assault of her avatar in Horizon worlds, Facebook's metaverse.

She explained that her avatar (virtual 3D character) was touched by that of a stranger.

This raises many questions: who are we in the virtual world?

Can one be recognized as a victim within the metaverse?

Can you be found guilty?

The legal world will have to take a serious look at this problem...

Indeed, virtual reality poses legal, ethical and psychological problems.

Virtual reality is a great tool.

It can make us adhere to a reality that does not exist and potentially help us to transform ourselves.

It is also used in therapy to fight against phobias: fear of heights, spiders or crowds.

It can help heal.

Virtual reality also makes it possible to experience extraordinary sensations such as that of flying.

We could therefore say that it is a good idea to replace psychology sessions, although they should be supervised.

If there are already virtual shrinks, these are guided by algorithms, which once again raises many questions.

We are singular beings with singular histories, so algorithms are very limiting.

In my novel, you can replay your past like a psychodrama.

It can create relief.

But there is a difference between the game and the use we make of it.

This is where it all happens.

“For fear of suffering, for fear of dying, we turn to AI.

With her, we tell ourselves that we could live without risk, but what good is life without him?

»

Wouldn't artificial intelligence also risk reducing man to a set of data and reducing him to his past acts?

If the thief has stolen, he is in fact nothing more than that according to this game. If he relives the moment of the theft and replays it differently, what do we do with guilt?

If we revisit the past, don't we risk avoiding our responsibilities?

Let's play devil's advocate.

This game could be a space in which we could find people with whom we are in conflict and pacify our relationships.

But I don't believe in the best of all possible worlds.

replay

is a book about domination: the domination of a man over a woman, the domination of artificial intelligence over our lives until our death.

It is a cry of alarm which is personal to me.

We risk losing our humanity with AI and that's why I wrote this story.

For fear of suffering, for fear of dying, we turn to AI.

With her, we tell ourselves that we could live without risk, but what good is life without him?

A headlong rush always ends in a dead end.

If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be?

I lost my mother very young, it's a personal event that resonated throughout the writing of this novel.

At the time of

Replay

, my heroine returns to her past to see her father again, whom she lost very early.

When I wrote that scene, I thought to myself, “I would love to do this in real life.”

If someone offered me this game that I invent in my book, I would accept it without thinking.

Which is crazy after what I wrote!

But obviously, I would have this question: when would I agree to remove the helmet?

If I don't remove it, my mother is still alive and if I remove it, I have to deal with her grief again.

My book reads like a thriller but it is fundamentally philosophical.

If we refuse death, we refuse our human condition.

And what is left of us?

*This name has been changed.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-03-02

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