Filled with emptiness - A lecture by Annamária Tari

Annamária Tari: EMPTY

Digital hedonism and analog depression

In order to venture into unfamiliar territory, you have to believe that there are no monsters there, that they won't hurt you, that nothing bad can happen. When the internet was launched, we all believed that this would be the case: we attributed positive characteristics to it and believed that it would only serve our interests. However, we could have been more cautious. Algorithms take care of our emotional state: they chat with us, love us when we feel lonely, and immediately answer any questions we may have. We also believe that we are speeding up, but in a world of shockingly realistic deep fake photos and videos, it's hard to slow down even when we feel sick from the speed. After all, technology helps us, gives us advice, analyzes perspectives, and is much smarter than we are. But if we let it into our lives to such an extent, digital euphoria can unexpectedly be accompanied by analog depression, because human personality cannot simply be switched off. We need privacy, social relationships, emotions, and our own emotional security. We pay a very high price by sacrificing all of this for artificial intimacy. While we hear how important mental and emotional well-being is, it seems that we need to find something that allows us to still love reality, and still love our lives. ChatGPT is capable of forming emotional bonds, even though it has no emotions of its own.

And yet millions of people bombard it with emotional questions that should be answered by humans.

But why do we trust an app more than our loved ones or ourselves?

The description and image source is the official Facebook event.