On the conceptual side, I think it’s fascinating. I think it’s super interesting and is where we’re headed in some sort of macro way. It gets into some things around identify that we don’t talk a lot on about this show, but I think are really moving from the standpoint of, you know, where our culture has moved and changed in the recent years and decades. I mean, as we’ve become increasingly virtual in how we interact with people, really ever since the smart phone revolution, we spend a lot of time communicating with people in real time digitally, never seeing their face, never hearing their voice a lot of times.

You know, this sort of direction is sort of inevitable for these avatars to come out. But there’s a lot of benefits to it as well. You know, I have found in myself, that a lot of my biases in a physical world go away in a digital world. When I’m dealing with words as opposed to words in the context of a person, I’m more open minded. I’m more accepting. I’m more empathetic, categorically, whereas with someone in the physical world, that’s not automatically true. Even though my instincts, my … what I’ve learned, how I like to think of myself as a person, would have me treating everyone that way, some people are treated more that way and some people are treated less that way, due to my biases. And so the abstraction that digital gives us allows us … or let me even personalize it as opposed to universalize it, allows me to interact with people in my best way consistently as opposed to in ways that are influenced by my bias of taking the world in. And so I consider that just an absolute good.

I also really appreciate the fact that digitally, I can remove myself from myself. I don’t have to be a big, hulking guy. I can express myself in ways that are inconsistent with the assumptions and biases other people would have when they look at me, and for me, that’s really freeing. As someone who has very much not identified with maleness, with testosterone, with sort of like a power and control. Those aren’t my thing, but if you look at me as a big, white guy, you might think those are my thing. But that’s not how I want to relate to people, and I feel more freed by dealing with people in a virtual way, in a way that is removed from my real physical identity because of that layer of abstraction.

So, I think there’s a lot of interesting things happening in identity and in virtualization in general, and I think it’s fascinating to see it manifesting even in these very poor CGI implementations in brand building, in, you know, people taking the fashion choices of these avatars, which are really of course the fashion choices of some operator that shares very little physically in common with those avatars, and are making sort of life-style purchase decision off of it. I think it’s really a trend to watch.

You know, I could see … I mean, in some way, you know, producers do that anyway when they select, you know … if you’re a songwriter and producer, you might be doing songs for a number of pop stars, right, but you’re sort of behind the scenes, you know. This is sort of … could represent another way of having that front for your music because you are not, you know … maybe you don’t fit the demographic that likes that music. Maybe you’re a, you know, 50-year-old guy writing pop music, and you know, it’d be much better to have a, you know, younger singer who’s attractive to people, I don’t know.

So there are lots of questions about how we construct and put forth identity in digital. Another complicating factor, or sort of interesting emerging technology that intersects with this is Artificial Intelligence, right, because that lays the groundwork for sort of the voice user interface, which is sort of the other piece of this puzzle here. So, if you look at what Autodesk is doing with their digital assistant, Ava, which was sort of originally run as a chat bot by the IBM Watson sort of back end there, and is now have this front end presented by a company called Soul Machines, which does some CGI work and other work on top of it, you know-

So if you think about all of these bots now having some kind of CGI form to them, you know, does Alexa start appearing in my mirror in the morning, you know, as I’m brushing my teeth? Does Siri have her, you know, instantiation on the phone? You know, intersecting these technologies … for me, it’s going to get a little bit weird. I mean, the disembodied voice I can kind of manage, but it’s almost … these forms, since they’re not real humans to me, they fall into that uncanny valley very much and it gives me the creeps. I think Siri as a CGI-represented avatar and Alexa … like, that would actually push me away from using those, I think. Dirk, how do you envision this intersection of AI and CGI humans coming together, or not? Just on a personal level?

But, for me, and the, you know, the Alexa on my mirror as opposed to a voice in the air … if the tech is right, that would be great. I mean, if it really behaves seamlessly like a person, if it looked like a real person, if there weren’t obvious tics in the system, I would like that. Like in … you know, all of … I think philosophically all of us in our lives, we have all kinds of needs. We have all kinds of desires and there’s a lot to us, and many of us are not being fulfilled by the lives we live in the physical world. We have lacks of how we’re connecting with people hither and yon, and if those lacks could be filled by, you know, AI-powered CGI representations that were convincingly human, certainly for me that would be a huge boon. And based on the response to Lil Miquela, I think at least for younger generations, it would be a huge boon as well.

So, I think the technology is likely to go that way, with the caveat that you do need a screen, right? So, if you’re in the bathroom, yeah, the mirror is an obvious technology … boy, I just called the mirror technology. I guess it is, but that’s a little weird. The mirror is an obvious technology to upgrade to accommodate such a thing, you know, your computer screen.

But as you’re walking through halls in your house, as you’re in other rooms that aren’t … don’t have a screen at the right size and the right proximity to your eyes, if it then becomes a disembodied voice, what is that experience like, where my Alexa is on … my custom Alexa is on the mirror in the bathroom and it feels very human to human in a sort of surreal way, but then I’m walking down a hallway and it becomes just this voice in the environment. I don’t know. You know, for me, again as an older … we’re not really older people, right? God, Lord, John, we don’t have the walkers out yet. But as someone who is a Gen X-er as opposed to a Millennial, there would be some dissonance there. But I think maybe for the younger folks, that won’t be as much of an issue.

For me, that’s the barrier in any event. If, like, there was always this persistent person visualized, if I wanted to engage with it, that would definitely be preferable for me. I just don’t know how that would hold up in sort of the entire system of the experience.

Like, I’m wanting something that is making me feel like a human who is supported and cared about, not that’s just giving me a laundry list of the things I need to do on that day. For me, that’s where the real magic and potential and power lies. I’m afraid it’s not close. I’m afraid it’s not a few years away, for the system both from the CGI looking correct and the intelligence of the AI to seamlessly take me through that experience, you know. We may not even be in the 2020s with that, so it’s a little bit of a pipe dream, but for me that’s where it becomes magical technology, and technology that can really improve my life because it is bringing someone else into my life who’s whole job and role, in a certain way, is to have a relationship with me that makes my life better and that is pretty cool.

Listeners, remember that while you’re listening to the show, you can follow along with the things that we’re mentioning here in real time. Just head out to thedigitalife.com. That’s just one L in thedigitalife, and go to the page for this episode. We’ve included links to pretty much everything mentioned by everyone, so it’s a rich information resource to take advantage of while your listening or afterward, if you’re trying to remember something that you liked.

You can find The Digital Life on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Player FM, and Google Play. If you’d like to follow us outside of the show, you can follow me on Twitter @jonfollett. That’s J-O-N-F-O-L-L-E-T-T. Of course the whole show is brought to you by GoInvo, a studio designing the future of health care and emerging technologies, which you can check out at goinvo.com. That’s G-O-I-N-V-O dot com. Dirk?