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‘In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind — in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.’ — Eckhart-tolle

One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Eckhart-Tolle defines identity as the story of oneself. This story is told by your thoughts through memories and expectations. Each day, as we live, we are redefining ourselves in our thoughts and actions. When we think of our identities, we often focus on the “unique” part of ourselves: our stories. This is largely due to the fact that we live in a society where “individualism” is celebrated. We like to think of ourselves as the principle architects of our identities. Although we are aware that the environment influences our identities, we have the firm belief that we are intrinsic in helping to shape our own identities.

But, is this really true?

In Social Identity Theory, psychologists have long identified that social interactions are in fact at the heart of our own identity formation processes. Our roles in our families, schools, social network, our culture, and our society reflect back to us the person that we come to know as “ourselves”. Our thoughts process this reflection. We internalize and integrate this reflection into our own identities.

In today’s technological age, our identities are further influenced by social media. Each day, we are inundated by information: world news, local news, family news and social network news. We both seek to influence news as news continuously influence us.

Each one of us (with even a small amount of followers on social media) can still see ourselves as a social media influencer.

As an influencer, each post defines the social media presence that serves a particular niche of the market with a target audience.

As an influencer, we serve up the “best” or the “worst” of ourselves in the hopes of validation and reciprocation.

Our “FOMO” or anxiety at missing out on an interesting trend propells us to “improve” our self image daily. When that social media presence does not match up to our identities off-line, we inevitably create cognitive dissonance in our own lives. Then, in an effort to remove the cognitive dissonance, we either tweak our own behavior off-line to suit our social media presence or vice versa. Tweaking our own behaviors then reinforces our own self-image. This cycle pepetuates ever greater influence of social media on our identities.

What happens when artificial intelligence systems arrive?

As AI systems optimize human activities, it is not hard to imagine the day when we have AI systems operating in every aspect of our lives. AI systems will clean our houses, serve up our food and deliver our groceries. AI systems will drive our cars, account for our finances and help us with our work. Instead of interacting with humans at every one of these activities, we will be interacting with AI systems.

What happens to our identities when we spend more time interacting with machines?

Dr. Julie Carpenter, a leading expert on human robot interactions, from University of Washington studied the relationship between robots and humans by observing the work of the military unit — Explosive Ordinance Disposal. This military unit is one of the first unit in the military to use robots in their daily work.

She observed that even though humans who handled the robots saw them as “machinery”, an emotional attachment eventually did form between handlers and their robots. Handlers often blamed themselves when a robot failed to carry out a task. Handlers also talked about the robots as extensions of themselves. They referred to the robots as “their hands”.

Clearly, these handlers formed an emotional attachment with the robots that they operated.

With time, as AI systems integrate into many aspect of our lives, will we become used to their presence?

More than likely, there will be social norms established in how we treat these “others” in our lives. That “norm” will be determined by both human’s perceptions of AI systems as well as by the AI systems’ ability to communicate with humans. In fact, the viability of AI systems often rest on their effectiveness in working with their human peers. For instance, a “robot” doctor must be able to interpret the social cues of other doctors and human patients in order to be effective in diagnosing the patient. A “robot” police officer must be able to interpret social cues in order to discern a real criminal from a person who “looks like” a criminal. In these instances, humans act more than just supervisors to provide checks and balances to the AI systems, humans provide critical information to the AI systems that contribute to the AI systems’ effectiveness.

AI researchers are currently exploring better algorithms for AI systems to communicate and adapt to unusual situations. In the field, humans also need ways to be able to teach AI systems new ways to behave in unpredictable situations. This way, the balance between humans and AI systems can be negotiated on the job.

The problem of human-robot interaction is further complicated by the effect of AI systems on the problem of “human agency”. Will we become less human and more obsolete when robots help us live our lives?

Initially, AI systems were created to help us replace mundane and repetitive tasks. Now, AI systems have advanced enough to help us with our creative processes such as “painting” and “writing”. Will the very human part of ourselves — “creative part of ourselves” be replaced by “robots”? With Deep Learning “generative models”, we can now feed an AI system thousands of images of pantings and pictures. Based on these paintings and pictures, a mathematical model can be developed to generate creative works that the system can train on. Instead of holding a paint brush, artists can now “teach” an AI system to paint in a given style. The difficult part for AI systems is their ability to create the “novel” and the “unexpected” beautiful art works. A gifted artist’s creative process encompasses many layers. These many layers of creative processes have yet to be explored by scientists. Current AI systems are still limited in their capacity to create from the information given.

“What I’m looking for out of cognitive systems is not just another form of computing but something that actually creates a presence in our life and through that presence is able to inspire us.” — Rob High, Vice President and CTO, IBM Watson

In order to balance the “human agency” problem and implement AI systems that will inspire more creativity, scientists are studying the creative processes of many professions such as film making, painting, writing, and composing. By understanding the layers of creative process in these professions, conscious decisions can be made to implement AI systems where it will add most value. Tasks that are mundane and repetitive will be most suited for AI systems to replace.

Will we evolve with our AI system peers?

As more AI systems integrate into our lives, we will observe the impacts: automation, job displacement, efficiency and more free time. These impacts will prompt us to adapt. In the process, our identities will shift. For example, workers who thrived performing repetitive tasks will see their jobs being replaced by AI systems. In those instances, the workers’ identities and how they perceive themselves will need to shift with their changing environment. One way to shift their own perception of themselves is to decrease the importance jobs hold in their own lives. Another way to shift their own perceptions of themselves is to find new creative career paths for themselves. With new social relationships created and shifts in our old social relationships, we will need to naturally shift our own social identities to adapt to this new world.

How will our social identity shift as we spend more time interacting with AI systems?

Currently, our social identity relies on traditional social groups such as family, school, church, work place and social media. Add on another dimension, how will our interaction with AI systems impact how we perceive ourselves? As much as AI systems provide us with value, AI systems will also highlight our flaws, the flaws in the human condition and our ways of interpreting the world. In each instance, how will we handle such a “clear” mirror held up in front of our faces? Social scientists are beginning to explore such questions as more AI systems are integrated into our society. As humans, who possess higher thinking power than other species, perhaps it is up to us to draw a clear boundary as to where our identities begin and where social influences end. In the age of AI systems, as a human race, we are being challenged by our environment to simultaneously adapt to our new environment as well as insulating the most important parts of ourselves from being affected by that environment.