Who Are You?

Some years ago Constantin Reliu dropped out. He left his home country for a decade in Turkey. He lost all contact with his family. His wife sought and obtained his death certificate. Mr. Reliu returned. He appeared in person to appeal the finding. Appeal denied. It was time barred -- too late, ruled the Romanian court, he would have to remain deceased. His life becomes caught up in a Kafkaesque construct – now you see it, now you don’t (Who Are You?).

Mr. Reliu, very much “alive,” no longer existed, at least in the legal sense. We might now probe the meaning of existence in a different context – that of technology or, more specifically, the world of AI with the power to create virtually what the law, in Mr. Reliu’s case, presumed to cancel by declaration. The presumptive “you” may someday be exposed, created, transformed and, yes, canceled.

As a start, a website of four years ago This Person Does Not Exist renders, almost as quickly as you can click, random hyper-realistic portraits of completely fake people. We have also explored the degree to which AI has enabled deep fakes to the extent a “non fiction” book about Russian hackers was so real with its compelling narrative, extensive interviews, and vivid pictures that its authenticity remained totally unquestioned for months. The fact of its fakery was only revealed after the Norwegian “author” confessed, his broader point having been made (MM 1/24/22 Brave New (Fake) World). This example turns out to have been little more than a warm-up of things to come.

Technology has now insinuated itself into real life such that virtually anyone’s existence – visage, voice, connections, writings – can be deep-faked such that it can bypass many, if not most, filters. The whole question of Who are you?, as a security matter, may soon become an anachronism. The “you” as defined by your tangible things are thereby exposed. Pretty much everything outside your soul becomes vulnerable. Perhaps even that will become hackable as well.

A leading digital age theorist posits an upcoming revolution with the elites having a pathological relationship with technology enabling them to “escape” the challenges of the terrestrial world (Escape Mode). While some may react with a good-riddance salute, others maintain the only way to rebel is to be human and aware as “. . . the more real-life ballast you have, the less this brittle, ideological, abstracted, social media-mediated universe bears upon your daily existence.”

Who are you?