NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {C} omedian Chris Rock has a classic bit about how nobody would date you if your potential partner knew what you were really like. That’s why, “when you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them, you’re meeting their representative.”
But that quip is no longer a joke. Online dating has been around for decades now, but recently men have been using artificial intelligence to both write their profiles and help them chat with people they match up with in the apps. It used to be that their public profiles had to marginally reflect their personality. Now, the entire process can be outsourced to a lovelorn CPU chip.
(Full disclosure: A single friend of mine who had just graduated from medical school once asked me to edit his dating page, and I noticed he had misspelled the word “physician.” Needless to say, trying to convince a girl you are a “physition” makes you a red-flag factory.)
Curious as to what enticing quips Cybero de Bergerac is cranking out for the desperately awkward, I fired up ChatGPT to ask it for some conversation starters.
“If you’re passionate about [your hobby or interest], we’re already off to a good start. Let’s compare notes!”
“Seeking a partner for epic dance-offs, spontaneous karaoke sessions, and late-night stargazing.”
“I’m a firm believer in kindness, positivity, and making the most of every day. Let’s share our life philosophies.”
Undoubtedly any girl (or guy) who received one of those piping-hot messages in their dating app inbox would need to put on oven mitts just to hold their phone. (Although ChatGPT reminds you to “remember to be genuine and authentic in your profile, and don’t be afraid to showcase your unique personality and interests.” Uh, if a person is using AI to up their dating game, the horse has left the barn on that one, my algorithmic friend.)
Certainly by now people have figured out how to create a public persona that is entirely different from their private self. But AI is shifting us into an era of automation where we can completely outsource our personalities to an emotionless cyber brain that will take care of messy things like “talking to people” and “knowing things.”
As long as there have been philosophers, those wise men have debated the interplay between the body and the thing that animates it. Maybe it’s a soul. Perhaps it’s a spirit. It could be your mind. Or all of the above.
In any event, we have commonly accepted, as René Descartes described it, a “dualism” of mind and body, the inner self and the physical self. Technology has now given us the chance to add a “third self.” The third self is our public-facing persona, which exists solely to interact with other peoples’ third selves.
It used to be that only famous people had third selves. From what we know about, say, comedian Bill Cosby, his public-facing third self was very different from the private Cosby. In the pre-internet days, the media could actually protect a politician’s private self by promoting his third self in exchange for access (see, Kennedy, John F.).
Now everyone who participates in the world of social media has a third self. Maybe it says things our mind doesn’t actually believe — but who cares? It’s just the cyber realm, so you can use this spare persona to say outrageous things about people or just make things up. You can do it anonymously or use your own name. Either way, you can prove your superior virtues (by, say, correcting people who say “homeless” rather than “unhoused”). If it gets your third self attention, for whatever reason possible, you have succeeded.
The power of AI has changed the game: You can just create your third self and let go of the steering wheel. It is the self-driving car of having an actual personality.
Dial it up a little more to be a MAGA troll who believes Representative Lauren Boebert is “classy” while Taylor Swift is “trashy.” Or dial it down more to pretend Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has a “dark side” because it might cause men to be more toxically masculine, or something.
The third self is attractive also because we can always count on it to store every fact we ever need. This past week, a video of a young girl went viral after she publicly pondered (via her third self) how people possibly knew anything before they had the internet. If you saw someone who looked like an actor — “Is that the guy from that movie, you know which one I’m talking about?” — how did you remember that actor’s name? How did people drive to places without Google Maps?
In the analog days, we had to actually remember facts and faces and which exit to take. But in the ChatGPT era, all of that annoying learning stuff is taken care of. Why study the history of the Russian Revolution when AI can crank out a report for me in less time than it takes me to type out the prompt? See, I just saved enough time to post another TikTok about Taylor and Kelce!
All of this would be relatively harmless, save for one very important fact: Our politics is now run by third selves.
Being a successful member of Congress, for instance, is now largely gauged by how much of a detached, rabid, deranged attention-seeker you can be. Overly online politicians now dominate discussions, believing their job is to create 60-second viral clips of them berating hearing witnesses rather than working to find consensus or build support for their bills (if they even propose bills).
There was a time when voters demanded their elected representatives be a reasonable facsimile of a sane, rational person who understood that he or she was representing sane, rational constituents.
But now, online-driven third selves are running the show. Take Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, who recently convinced Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to scuttle the Senate dress policy so he could wear hoodies and shorts on the floor of the august body. Schumer acquiesced to Fetterman because of the latter’s need to protect his third self: Wearing a suit and tie would sap Fetterman of his “everyday guy” persona (which belies his having been born into a wealthy family). Gotta protect the brand. The rule change (since reversed) wasn’t needed because John Fetterman needed it, it was needed because “John Fetterman” needed it.
If you think members of Congress like Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) are out of their minds, it’s because they literally are: Their political personas are algorithms. They are mugging for a computer formula that is populated by people who may or may not be real, driven by clicks and AI optimization.
And, of course, the curse of the third self has made its way to the presidential race, where unserious candidates are rewarded for performing for the algorithm. Vivek Ramaswamy is entirely a third self. Ron DeSantis is campaigning almost exclusively for the social-media crowd.
Meanwhile, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and others believe that the American public wants to go back to the old days of the relatable candidate with commonsense policy preferences. They are mired in the single digits or, at best, low teens. But politics is now entertainment, and it is the candidate that can arouse the most third selves that will win the nomination.
And, of course, that candidate is former president Donald Trump, who has commandeered an army of very online soldiers to bully and harass the other, more boring candidates. Trump’s base comprises millions of online trolls who, as a group, act in ways no sane humans would if you were to meet them in person. They are all third selves, irritating, cajoling, and mocking others in an attempt to push their guy to the nomination.
Perhaps the scariest thing about Trump is that he appears to be the real deal. All the outrageous things he says appear to reflect what he really thinks and believes. It’s not an act. Nonetheless, his fans see him as a third self: “Donald Trump” as a concept rather than a human being, the avatar for their disgust with a political system they feel has failed them.
Further, AI is sneaking its way into government in other, more sinister ways. Some countries are exploring the use of AI to draft legislation, review legal documents, and assist in parliamentary processes. This can increase efficiency but also raise concerns about transparency and accountability.
(And just to prove AI’s effectiveness, the previous paragraph was written by ChatGPT.)
All of this is pushing Americans even further from sanity. In Chris Rock’s parlance, we aren’t voting for representatives, we are voting for the representatives’ representatives.