Reputation matters. Reputation gets things done. It may not define us but it is a definition of us, and we in very real and substantive ways we live in this world with the reputations we have.
In a broad sense, our reputation is comprised of two elements; what I think of as a moral element and an agentive one. A moral reputation in a community gives us a right to speak or act and be trusted and valued. An agentive one speaks to our abilities to get things done. Being permitted to act, and being able to, cover almost everything.
Where does a reputation reside? If it exists … if it is really there … where is it? And if we say a person’s reputation is this or that, how can that be proved or disproved? The answer is: In conversation.
People talk about other people — whether it’s Stalin or Larry Bird or Adam Sandler — and that person’s name evokes (or provokes) conversation. Generally speaking, we find that the qualities of that conversation (the adjectives used, for instance) tend to “cluster” around terms that relate to one another. Adam Sandler has a reputation for being friendly, and supportive, and thoughtful and funny.
One hilarious example of this is from a song written by Thomas Wilson who played Biff in Back to the Future. Despite the movie being ages ago he was always asked the same questions over and over so he wrote a song to answer them all. In it, we learn who the nicest person in Hollywood is (Adam) and who is the biggest asshole (no, I will not tell you, but he will).
“Back in the day,” so to speak, we got a “rep” from people who knew us and from time immemorial, everyone knew that mattered. "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." That’s the Bible (Proverbs 22:1). I could go on but it’s too obvious to bother.
Here’s where it gets interesting:
Unless you made a name for yourself in history, your reputation tended to die off. I have no idea what reputation my great grandfathers had let alone anyone in my family before that. But now comes Artificial Intelligence.
My generation was the first generation with personal computers. The Sinclair 2000, the Commodore 64, the Apple IIe, the Radio Shack models like the TSR 80 on which we learned (or failed to learn) BASIC. As time went on, we became the first generation to create a digital footprint. But my children (13 and 16 now) are the first ones whose entire lives have digital archives from birth. There are photos and emails and videos and all the usual stuff. Five hundred years from now, this moment is time is when history will have really begun for most people. We have history and pre-history (before written records) and soon we will need a term for the pre-digital and digital ages. It really is a KT boundary in human affairs.
That what could mean is that our reputations now become immortal. Not the facts of our lives; not the truth; but how we were perceived when alive.
If you want to face the implications of this … ask ChatGPT to write your obituary.
And what if that obituary becomes all that’s left of you for the remainder of human history because … who else will know or care but AI and whoever uses it? Unless some future historian has the wherewithal and motivation to go back through primary documents to build a new one (or else make up stuff and lie), what AI thinks of us is what will be thought of us.
Once this idea gets in your head, suddenly a new imperative presents itself: What AI thinks of me is all that matters.
If that becomes the case, we’re in for a new and wild ride because people who hold that thought (and given what I’m seeing with YouTubers, Influencers, and other people desperate for the affirmation of crowds) will now orient their lives towards impressing AI — however that might be achieved. If we orient away from life and towards the afterlife and now have a vehicle for doing so we are looking at a social system unlike any we can now imagine.
— Derek B. Miller, 28 September, 2024 (and still not dead).