Exploring Mind Uploading & Ethics in a Virtual World with Grace Chan – Synthetic Minds EP12

Welcome to Synthetic Minds, where science fiction and technology converge to offer insights into the future. I'm your host, Dr. Mark Van Remenham, and together with my digital twin, we dive into the world of speculative fiction, ethics, and the profound implications of mind uploading. Our guest is Grace Chan, an award winning speculative fiction writer and psychiatrist whose debut novel, Every Version of youf explores the complexities of identity, consciousness and love in a future dominated by virtual reality and mind uploading. We'll explore how these themes can provide valuable lessons for organizations navigating the future of AI and technology. In this episode, Grace and I discuss the ethical implications of technological advancements, focusing on the allure of convenience, the commodification of human consciousness, and how corporations influence our perception of reality. We also talk about the delicate balance between embracing new technologies and the consequences they bring. Join us in this thought provoking conversation that will leave you questioning what it means to be human in a world increasingly dominated by virtual spaces. Don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for more insights into the future of technology and society. Welcome Grace.

So glad to have you on my show.

Thanks, Mark. It's a real honor to be here and I'm excited to have a chat with you.

Fantastic. Well, before we dive into your book and how you look at science fiction, can you share a bit about your background and about the book you've written and what are sort of the common themes in your work?

Yeah, so I am a speculative fiction writer and that can really vary from writer to writer. But for me, I write a lot of science fiction, both near future science fiction and far future science fiction. So it's a lot of fun. I write both short fiction and I have published one novel. Apart from being a writer, I also wear a different hat. I am a psychiatrist as well. So during, during my medical training I became quite fascinated by the brain and the mind and I sort of knew that I really wanted to specialize in either neurology or psychiatry. And so psychiatry was the specialty that sort of grabbed me and didn't let go. So I divide my time between my writing and my psychiatry practice.

Nice. I can imagine that gives you a lot of insights. The psychiatry part of your work is very valuable in your writing. I can imagine.

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of overlap between the medical training, the psychiatry work, the thinking about the brain and the mind, and the stories that we sort of tell ourselves to to figure out who we are. And there's a sort of two way conversation between the medical part of my brain and the, the writing part of my brain that sparks ideas from, you know, one side to the other. So they both sort of. I think both are necessary to my sort of fulfilled life. And the creativity is a. Is a really wonderful. You know, I think in many ways the creativity also makes me a better, better doctor. A better, better psychiatrist. Yeah, great.

Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

The novel. So I've just published one that is every version of you.

Nice.

Thank you. Yeah. It's quite an evocative cover. I think I'm really grateful to the artist, the COVID artist. So this is my debut novel in a tongue in cheek way. I've described it to people as. It's a book about staying in love after mind uploading into virtual reality.

Wow.

But in more complex, more complex description is that it's a near future science fiction book where most of us are transitioning into digital beings. We're leaving our bodies behind for a digital world with increasingly advanced iterations of technology. So people begin to immerse themselves in this neuroactive gel that allows access to a virtual world called Gaia. And so they're relinquishing our climate ravaged physical world because this new technology is so convenient and attractive. And this sort of leads to the ultimate decision. Would you upload your mind into Gaia when the technology arrives and essentially leave behind and destroy your physical body? And so the novel focuses on a couple. It's quite a. It's quite an intimate novel. There's a romance, there's a relationship that sort of centers the novel. Tao Yi and Naveen are the couple and they're pulled in different directions by their relationships to technology. And it's mostly from taoyi's point of view that I explore identity, love, loss and sort of what our societies might look like in the future and try to grapple with what it means to be human.

Very, very big questions that you cover in that book. And one question that immediately comes to my mind is, would you upload yourself?

Well, you've thrown me in the deep end right at the start, Mark. You know what, Mike? Every time someone asks me this, I have to think about it again because I feel like I. My answer shifts a little bit. And it certainly. It was something that I thought about as I wrote the book. I think in many ways I would want to resist because of some of the ideas that I explore in the book about, you know, how we sort of mindlessly embrace new technologies. We embrace it for the sake of convenience or gratification or without really thinking about the consequences it has for Ourselves and our relationships and for the environment and. And the society, you know, broader society. So I really think I would try to resist, but I think also I'm. I'm human. And if all of my loved ones, if everything that was important to me was shifting into a virtual space, it's hard to say that I wouldn't say no and, you know, be, you know, go along with, you know, a decision that everyone was making. So I think I would try to hold out, but I think I might actually upload if in this hypothetical future where everyone is uploading. Yeah.

Wow. It's certainly an interesting question. I was moderating a panel last week in the Middle east where we talked about digital consciousness, which is, I think, is sort of linked to mind uploading, where you could create, in this case, machines or AI becoming sentient. So it's slightly different, but I think there are so many interesting aspects to talk about when it comes to mind uploading or digital consciousness. The implications for society, the implications of what it means to be human. And you obviously cover that in your book, every version of you. What do you think? If we were to have mind uploading now? What are the implications of what it means to be human? What are the implications of society?

I think, given that you mentioned digital consciousness, I would say that there is a lot of overlap between the idea of digital consciousness and the idea of mind uploading. Both quite hypothetical ideas at this point in our trajectories, but certainly the way I conceived of it in every version of you. I wanted the idea of mind uploading to sound scientifically plausible, even though our current science is leagues and leagues away from actual mind uploading. But really what happens in my book, and this is a very mild spoiler, but essentially the physical body and the physical brain needs to be replicated. And so in a way, I imagined the dynamic neural circuitry of our brains, the neural network and the connectomes that make up our dynamic minds being replicated by an extremely advanced sort of AI computing model that could essentially transpose our minds, which are based on organic circuitry, into equivalent minds based on digital circuitry. So there's no sort of. I mean, this goes into. If you want to think about the philosophical implications of this, you know, is there a transposition of the soul, the essence of the person, into the virtual space? My own sentiment is that, no, there isn't. You know, there has to be the end of one and the recreation of the digital person in, in the digital space. And there is a. There's. There's a Loss of, you know, there's not a direct continuity between the two. It is a, it is a copy is. Is essentially what I'm trying to say. So you, it is the sort of digital consciousness that you are creating in, in that virtual world. And I suppose the state of our technology at the moment and the state of our medical understanding and our understanding of the mind and the brain, I think realistically it remains a very hypothetical technology, which is, I think it's actually a good thing because I think there's a lot of ethical considerations before we, you know, incorporate something like mind uploading into our society. But, you know, the hard problem of consciousness is still very much a hard problem. We don't really understand how consciousness arises. And so I think we're quite far off from mind uploading will remain a thing of science fiction books and movies for a while. And I think the AI that we have now is quite a different beast, as I'm sure we'll get into.

Yeah, well, one final thing I wanted to say, I'd like to say about the digital consciousness. One of the things that we covered was that, you know, more and more research starts to indicate that potentially there might be some quantum entanglement going on into our brains. So I guess, you know, it might become, at some point in the future possible if we see the convergence of quantum computing and AI, which no doubt will, will happen sometime in the future. Did you, did you look into that research as well while, while writing your book, or did you take into consideration, or was it something outside of it?

Yeah, when I started drafting and writing this book, it was sort of 2018, 2019, and I didn't come across sort of quantum computing at the time. It was around the time that I was sort of thinking quite a fair bit about the brain and the mind and coming across research around the human Connectome project and how, how the mind is sort of seems to be housed more in these dynamic circuitry rather than any sort of static neuroanatomy. So I think the next step as a science fiction writer is to imagine that if it is this dynamic circuitry based on first principles, what's to stop us from replicating that in a digital space? So, yeah, that's the sort of artistic liberty that being. Being a science fiction writer grants you.

Very good. Yes. And so if we look at sort of the roadmap to, to digital consciousness, which of course is a very, very long roadmap. So. But let's start sort of today where you sort of see, you know, the, the advances in AI, the advances in virtual reality, or the metaverse for that, for that matter, how would you see, how could it reshape what it means to be human? And I'm not talking about digital consciousness. I'm talking about having, like, I have, like a digital twin of myself, but then maybe one that's more advanced than the one that I currently have, and that could actually be almost an AI agent within the digital world. How would it impact what it means to be human? How would it impact our identity?

Yeah, I think when I certainly, when people sort of think about my novel, there's a focus on the mind uploading aspect of it. But as I was imagining and creating the world of every version of you, I was trying to think about how these technologies might progress throughout the 21st century. So I suppose for me, I was thinking a fair bit about how we sort of integrate these technologies quite insidiously into our lives. And essentially in the book, there's more and more advanced iterations of wearable technology and then brain computer interfaces. So I do feel that is something that we're going to see advancements in over the course of the next few decades. So, for example, in the book, there's a technology called the Revision, which is like a little node that attaches to your temple and it interfaces with your auditory and visual cortexes, so it can project directly into your brain and. And you can also interact directly using your mind with the computer interface.

Seems very useful.

It is very useful, isn't it? You can sort of see the allure. You don't have to use a keyboard or a mouse, those clunky, you know, outdated ways for us to communicate with computers. I think there's a lot of allure about being able to communicate with the digital world.

Absolutely.

Thought makes you feel quite omnipotent. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think we're realistically. We're too far away from these sorts of technologies. Right. There's already brain computer interfaces in a way. There's a lot of devices that can already monitor us, our bodily markers, you know, brainwaves, muscle movements. Those are. Those are already being researched and developed at the moment. Then in the book, the next step is cap that people wear and they sort of monitor their neural activity. So that's the next level of sort of the whole brain interacting with the virtual world. And then eventually in the book, we progress to these pods that are filled with something I've called new gel, which is a gel that essentially allows for a very direct and immersive whole body Whole brain interaction with the virtual world. So essentially people become more and more immersed in a virtual world. And I do think this is sort of, perhaps I was wanting to explore and extrapolate the kind of interactions that we have with technology nowadays. You know, and I think with VR now we, there's certainly good and bad aspects like we have. I think identity has become much more fluid in many ways. We can explore identity in online spaces. And perhaps the downside is people might be more concerned with how they present themselves online than in the real world, perhaps more focused on a false presentation of themselves. And this is something that I play with in the book as well. But I think there are, there are allures of the virtual world, but we also have to think about the things that we give up, you know, and I think we give up so much even in the ways we use technology nowadays. You know, we give up our intimate personal data, our autonomy and choices. I think we give up a lot of our relationship with our bodies and our physical world as we move more into virtual, into virtual spaces. And there's a cost to that. You know, relationships that were once slower and deeper and more grounded in perhaps the physical world. I think we leave that behind for this sort of more hyper connected world that perhaps has more connections, but they're somewhat more superficial. I think what, I suppose what concerns me about virtual spaces is that a lot of these online spaces are very much designed and controlled by corporations and algorithms that perhaps we don't fully understand. And certainly these corporations that for example, design our social media spaces, they don't really have our best interests at heart, not really. They see us more as commodities, a.

Big bag of money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I, I think it's quite, quite fascinating because if you, if you think about what life is, and it is, it's very much so that everything, every, all your senses is basically happening in your brain. If I touch myself or if I touch the table, that's an interaction with energy that's translated into my, in my brain as being a touch or, you know, I feel or what I hear or what I see or. So theoretically you should be able to mimic all that into the digital world. So theoretically you should be able to still feel the sense, still have the sensation of touch, still have the sensation of smell, still have the sensation of taste, even if there would be fully digitally. So maybe we are in a simulation already, who knows, that's a different story. But I think that's quite fascinating if you think about that. And then, and also to your Point what you mentioned, you know, let's say that hypothetically, if that were the case and we would be uploaded, we would think a lot faster at the speed of light because that's how the digital world works. What would that mean to us being human? I think it's a fascinating. If you compare it to our lives, we are very slow. It's like snow pace. Compared to what, how we could evolve in a digital world. I think, yeah. What's the upper limit? And that's I think also a link to artificial intelligence. What we see now happening that there's a lot of developments in AI and what's the upper limit of artificial intelligence? Is there an upper limit of intelligence? And I think that combination is quite fascinating. Where do you see that going? Also the link of artificial intelligence? Do you think there's an upper limit or is it whatever we can come up with?

I think the hypothetical uploaded consciousness that is explored in science fiction and although it's quite hypothetical at the moment, it is worthwhile thinking about it in terms of what changes and what we give up. If we were to become digital beings, and I completely agree with you, we wouldn't be the same sort of humans that we are now. And one of the main characters in my book uploads and they become, well, everyone who uploads really changes. They no longer need to sleep, they become faster and faster. They can multitask to an unimaginable degree. They can do things instantaneously. And so I suppose these sorts of the questions around uploaded intelligence and other kinds of intelligence, it's. It's sort of fun and interesting to think about because it. And also challenging to think about because it forces us to kind of confront what is it that makes us human? And would this sort of. Would this sort of being, this sort of intelligence be human in the way that we are? And so what? Or would they be a new iteration of human? And so what are the things that really give value to us as humans? And that answer, I think is going to be different for each person, right? It's going to be, you know, it might be something about their identity, their connection to their family, heritage, culture, their relationships, their relationships with the environment and the, the nature physical, the physical world. And so this is something that Tau Yi grapples with in, in the novel. Your other question around the AI and the advancement of AI. I think that the AI that we have right now is quite a different thing from intelligence. So, I mean, you know, I'm no technologist and I'm no futurist. But my understanding of sort of the deep learning machines and the large language models that we have now, they learn very. They learn on these huge banks of data. Right. And they learn through millions of iterations of being trained on these banks of data. So I feel that the way they think, if they do think, or the way they generate outputs and they simulate language, I think, although it might mimic human language in many ways, the way they come to these outputs is quite different. And so they're nothing like human minds. So I feel like there will be a limit perhaps to. Not quite a limit. I do think that the work, the, like, the things like, you know, chatgpt and the large language models that we have right now, I do think they, right now they're terrible at, you know, producing, you know, creative writing a novel, for example.

Yeah, yeah.

Fortunately they make it. What's that?

Sorry, fortunately for you?

Exactly. Fortunately they still write very bland, generic works. But I do think they could get much more good at replicating certain human tasks. But they are quite task specific. Right. And they do have to be trained in a very specific way. They can't sort of acquire new skills in the way that we can. So I feel like they're nothing, nothing quite like human or even animal minds. But I wonder about other forms of technology, you know, particularly, you know, I've mentioned brain computer interfaces and us becoming more cyborgian and sort of interacting directly with computers. I wonder how that will change us as a, as a society. And I wonder as well about how.

Do you think it will change?

Yeah, quite. I do think it will change. You know, I think it will have an impact on identities if we can instantaneously connect to virtual worlds and access vast troves of knowledge and be somewhat omnipotent in a digital space. Not to mention like transposing us somewhat out of our physical bodies into digital avatars and interacting in virtual spaces. I think it will change what it means to be human in a constellation of ways.

Yeah. It reminds me of an article that I read long time, eight, nine years ago from Tim Urban from the blog. Wait, but why are you familiar with him?

Tim Irving?

Did you say Tim Urban? Yeah, he's an American blogger, quite well known, and he writes these very, very long, long form, 40, $50,000, sorry, 40, 50,000 words articles. And I remember the one in particular where he really dove into artificial intelligence. And one of the things that he was exploring is that in the future it becomes possible to literally have brain to brain communication. And I can see, hear and smell and feel what you hear, smell and feel and feel, which theoretically it's possible. You know, it's just energy in your brain. I could capture that, I could send it to you, I could input it into your brain and then you should be able to see and hear exactly what I see, which is kind of freaky, but also something that I think is, at some point in the future would be realized. Obviously that's still very, very far away. Well, let's. Well, hope so. I don't say if hope is a good word because it's also quite fascinating, I'd say, but also really frightening if it becomes possible. But that's still far away. How do you already see AI changing what it means to be humans? How do you already see AI changing society? What's your perspective?

Yeah, that's such an interesting. Sorry, I'm just hung up on the idea of being transposed into another, another human's perspective or even, you know, for example, if someone couldn't see if they could be able to be transposed into, you know, have the vision of another person or someone who had lost function in their limbs or their body could be, could manipulate a robotic body around this. It sort of makes me think about how technology is often designed for a certain purpose, but then there's a whole lot of unintended and expanded uses of a certain technology that spring out of that. That's an exciting, that's an exciting kind of technology that you've mentioned.

There maybe a topic for a new book at some point.

Yeah. In terms of how I see AI, your question was around how I see AI changing society now? Yeah, absolutely. I think I sort of touched on the idea of the insidiousness of AI and technology in our present day lives. Right. And I think a lot of this thought was brewing in the back of my mind as I, as I wrote the novel. So I feel like we already accept so much technology into our lives now and give up so much of ourselves to these techno giants, you know, And I think one thing that happens is that we begin to live inside sort of these bubbles almost of AI curated online content. Just thinking, just think about, you know, when you log onto YouTube or Spotify or Netflix and what you see is completely different from the next user. Right. Because it's been generated by algorithms that are trained on the data that you've previously inputted to them. And so we almost become, we almost live in our own little echo chambers and live in a universe of one in, in many ways that we see this online world that Seems to be the world, but it's actually content that's hyper curated to us and our own preferences customized according to all the data that you've previously handed over to the Internet. And so I think that is worrying in a way that we all sort of see this own different version of reality and it can lead to, I fear that it can lead to divisions of thought and more extreme thought. And other people have looked at this much more, much more academic research settings than I have and those sort of echo chambers of thought. So that is one thing that I see happening, I suppose another thing that I see happening with AI and its current and near future developments is that intrusion into autonomy and privacy. Right. It's like how much of ourselves and our choices are we handing over to these intelligences that we don't fully understand? So it's, you know, I've stopped, I've stopped wearing my wearable tech and there's just something about thinking about, you know, your, your heart rate data, your sleep data, all of that, you know, just thinking, maybe thinking for another second about how much data you give about yourself to.

I'm still wearing mine. I'm still wearing my aura ring. So I'm a bit. It's a fair point. You know, it collects all my intimate data. It is that I do trust OURA to take care of my data. I would not necessarily wear an OURA ring from Facebook or from Meta because I don't trust Meta how they would use my data. I think it's a very fair point. What's the relationship that we have as individuals with the companies that provide us the services? And that's a very, on the one hand, very balanced and very delicate relationship, but often also a relationship where trust doesn't really exist because big tech just have a different perspective than we have, which is especially if you think in the long term or if we have brain computer interfaces, our thoughts are the last bastion of privacy. What if our thoughts end up in the hands of big tech? I think that would be pretty scary.

Yeah. And I think absolutely quite a frightening prospect. And I think already with the data that technology corporations have from what we already do, we spent, you know, our locations, what we do online, our wearable tech. They can already make so many inferences about who we are and that it's only going to increase, I think the amount of information that that is the intrusions perhaps into our privacy. And I think that this is, I'd like to see a world, I think, like you, I'm a. What did you say? You're a optimistic dystopian.

Yes.

Yeah, I think I've used a similar term.

I'm an.

I'm a hopeful pessimist or something like that.

I like that one as well.

Yeah, yeah, that I think I would like. I would like to see AI be much more thoughtful in both its design, how it's built and how it's designed, and ethics is much more incorporated into that and also in its implementation and its effect on society. The consequences are much more thought about.

If you look at organizations, because obviously one of the objectives of the Synthetic Minds podcast is to help organization organizations better understand the future through the lens of science fiction writers. Because I do believe that science fiction writers have the capabilities to imagine the unimaginable, almost just like you did with exploring digital consciousness and digital and mind uploading. What kind of tips would you have then in this regard for organizations to be more conscious about implementing AI to be more ethical when it comes to technology?

Yeah, I mean, people get really excited about, like, the. What I think of as like the three. The three Cs of technology, like the coolness of technology, the convenience of it, and the commercial potential. But I think we don't, you know, as I said, we don't think enough about the consequences, how the technology will actually change us as individuals and, and whether or not we want those changes for society. You know, I was reading a Ted Chiang article in the New Yorker recently. He's written a little bit on Ted Chiang, the science fiction writer. He's written a little bit about large language models. And he made this point that I thought was quite funny. In one of his most recent articles, he said, you know, with the way that large language models are right now, it's not difficult to imagine someone asking ChatGPT to turn a list of bullet points into a. Of a fully fledged document, and then someone else asking ChatGPT to turn that document back into a list of bullet points. And so he was making the point that the amount of meaningless content or content that's not really thought about in the world is just going to increase exponentially. And is this, is this actually a net good for the world? This is something we want in our society. Right?

It's a very good question. And I think, you know, the whole, you know, we're moving to an era where large language models talk to large language models without us really knowing it, because. Because of the reason that John says, you know, that we really are. And, and there's so much. There was already so much noise on social media. Now there's even more noise on social media because everyone is just using AI to write these, these posts that are just all, basically all the same and, and they're not being thought through. And there's nothing wrong with using AI, but I think there should still be, you know, a human component to it or human thought process to it. So it's, it's, it's not the Internet doesn't end up of AI talking to AI, but it's still. Humans are still involved.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about what you just said, but I completely agree. I think the noise that you pointed out is just the noise on the Internet and the amount of thoughtless content, content that's just generated and people haven't put a lot of thought into it. And it just sort of diffuses and distracts, I think, from really intentional, valuable communication, you know, linguistic communication, which is a huge part, I think, of what makes us human.

That's what brought us here. You know, Language is what brought us here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just that sort of AI talking to AI, as you said, it generates a lot of meaningless noise and a lot of content in a world that's already saturated with a lot of. Yeah, a lot of meaningless content. I think you're right that I agree with you as well in that AI. There are many positive uses that I hope for AI. You know, for example, I'm just thinking about, like, in the medical world, AI used in early detection of things like, you know, breast cancers and autism, you know, being able to do that in that, you know, that sort of work, that sort of task that it exceeds, you know, it excels compared to humans. That is the sort of thing that we want AI to do. Or I think in Australia, there's AI. The CSIRO has been using AI alongside indigenous populations to work with, like, I think, restoring wetlands, so sort of sustainability work. And so these are the things I think that we want to use AI for. We want to use AI intentionally and for specific purposes that have a benefit to people and to the environment, rather than, I think, giving tasks or attributes that perhaps should be retained by humans, like writing novels. I'm a little bit biased there. Or making art or communicating in a, in a meaningful way. So that, that's, that's, that's sort of one big thought. I suppose others have written much more about this than, and advocated much more about this and know much more about this than I do. But incorporating ethics and research ethics into AI design and implementation and making sure that ethics does not replicate the exploitative patterns and the colonial economy that is currently existing. You know, I think there's a lot of unseen labor that goes into the AI systems that we have now. And there's an article co authored by Timnit Gebru, who is the ethics researcher and computer scientist who was let go by Google for I think a paper that she wrote around bias in an AI system. And so there's a very eye opening article called the Exploited labor behind Artificial Intelligence, I think that's the title, which talks about how there's sort of marginalized communities all around the world that are used as data labelers and content moderators. And this labor really fuels a lot of the AI systems that we have now. So I think those are probably the most pressing concerns that I feel our hurtling into. The rapid development of AI needs to be tempered by considerations of the ethics.

Of, and in this regard, what could, you know, individuals, organizations, we as society, what can we do today to ensure that, you know, we end up on the good side of history that we, we end up on with, with an AI that is, that is there for us and that eventually, if we decide to mind upload, if that becomes possible 100 years from now, that we have at least built a system where our mind uploading system is not controlled by a large trillionaire, you know, big company, but it's actually, you know, sort of, maybe it's sort of a decentralized approach because I do believe that what we built today will be the foundation of the technology for tomorrow. So we need to think now how we want to create a technology. What are your thoughts on, on how to do that and how can, what role do we individuals play? What role do organizations in society play?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think having a bigger consideration of AI ethics and having like AI ethics incorporate ethics research incorporated into organizational. All organizations who work in this area is really, really important to keep that as a forefront consideration. I think having also corporations having diverse teams, so people from a diverse range of backgrounds, diverse walks of life, and not just having diverse teams, but also including people with diverse backgrounds in positions of authority as well. I think that is crucial in terms of designing ethical technologies. I think just a general sort of more of an understanding that technology really can't be separated from its social, political context. Right? How it's built, who it's made for, who controls it, who has access to it, and how it affects the users, the people. So things like, you know, just simple things like don't, don't take so much data from users we need our privacy protected. We need better privacy. I mean at an end user level we can think about how much information we share online and we can limit how many photos we post and turn off location tracking and check our privacy settings. But in the end it also feels like there's only so much we can do. The design of these systems also needs to protect the end users better. So I don't know, it's hard as a consumer, it's hard as an individual, but I think being thoughtful about how you integrate AI and technology into your everyday life and thinking about privacy and using your power as a consumer to choose and not choose certain products makes a difference. I think things like supporting, supporting creatives and artists, supporting like low income workers and collective action, supporting you know, the regulation of AI and perhaps supporting some of those advocacy organizations that work in these spaces. Like in Australia there's like the Digital Rights Watch and the staff there and in, in I think internationally there's the Algorithmic Justice League and the, the Distributed AI Research Institute. So I do, I think that you know, keeping an eye on their, their advocacy and supporting their work is an important thing.

Yeah. And from just a slightly different perspective, you're also a psychologist, you mentioned, what do you see in your work happening of people becoming addicted to this technology? The whole doom scrolling on TikTok. I just read an article today where research has shown that doom scrolling or going from one short video to another actually increases boredom instead of reduces boredom. And people are spending 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 hours per day on their phone. What do you see as a psychologist that the effect of that is on our mind?

Yeah, I think it's certainly a thing that even, even before it gets to the level of addiction, it's sort of something that we all engage in. Right. And we all sort of struggle with the pull of these systems because they are psychologically designed to keep our attention. And the way that they give us little dopamine hits like the notification, the way notifications are designed, the way the scrolling is designed to refresh, the way the algorithms are designed to present you with more content that is specifically tailored to your. What you probably don't even know you want yet, but the algorithm knows it. It's actually, it actually feels quite impossible to resist these, the allure of these, these technologies because they are so designed to exploit our psychological weaknesses and that's how they are designed, because our attention is the commodity that they are sucking up. I think in terms of the effects on our psychology and our psyches and our relationships it's not great. I do feel that these technologies can be used in a way that becomes a very mindless distraction. As I'm not saying anything that's a surprise. I think it can really be a way to seek a superficial dopamine hit or a superficial connection and it does block us away from more meaningful, say reflection or sitting with our emotions or acknowledging what is perhaps the real issues in our day to day lives. The use of the technology becomes a distraction or a gratification and if that snowballs, I suppose it can become to the point of an addiction.

Yeah. So what advice would you give listener to sort of foster that more balanced relationship with technology and, and to avoid the seven hour per day doom scrolling.

Yeah, I think just acknowledging that like understanding that these technologies perhaps are designed to be quite addictive and to SAP up your attention and they do treat you as a, as a commodity and as. So I think once you kind of acknowledge that then you are a bit more wary and are a bit more aware. That's sort of the first step in being a bit more aware and putting limits in place around how you interact with the technology. So I think if I were to give advice, it would be very practical advice. So things like limit how much technology you carry on your body, limit how much, you know, put. Put limits on how much time you engage with the screen or I'm not going to be a technophobe or a Luddite. I do love technology and I love science. I get very excited about it. But I think my main, the main theme that I explore in my writing is that it's best to think about how it impacts on you. If it's doing you're good, then keep it. If it's not doing you good and you're finding that your use is more excessive than you'd like it to be, put some limits into place, change the way you interact with it and think about what you want and what you value in terms of having technology in your life.

Yeah, yeah, that makes, that makes total sense. I think being more aware and being more digitally aware of the, the impact of technology that it has on you, on your life, on your relationships. I think that would be very valuable. As a final question, we've covered a lot of ground and plenty of ideas and topics for a new book or new short story. What new themes or technologies are you currently exploring in your upcoming work?

Yeah, so at the moment I am working on my second novel. It's quite a different novel from the first. It's not a continuation but it is still science fiction. It's a science fiction set in the far future, and it's set on a migration ship that is carrying humans into a new world. And it focuses on a caregiver who's looking after humans in stasis on this ship. And what happens is she finds a message that is written in a code, and it turns out that only she and her son know this code. However, her son is actually in stasis on another ship. So the mystery becomes, you know, who left this code for her? I think for this novel, I'm really, I've been quite sort of inspired by works like Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Moon, which is that movie starring Sam Rockwell. And just the way that they in a similar vein, using synthetic characters. So those books use clones, but using synthetic characters to explore personhood and what makes us human, and also the experience of being other or seen as lesser or commodified. So it's again using science fiction to explore some of those interesting themes.

Nice. Well, I'm very much looking forward to that when it's being published. Well, thank you very much, Grace, for coming to my show. It's been a fascinating conversation.

Thank you very much, Mark. I enjoyed it very much. Thanks for having me.

This episode brought to light some of the most critical issues facing our digital future. Grace Chan offered deep insights into how technology reshapes not just society, but also our identities. From the ethics of mind uploading to the risks of corporations controlling our virtual selves, we discussed the consequences of technology and how organizations should not only focus on the coolness, commercial application, and convenience of innovation, but also its consequences. One of the key takeaways was the importance of incorporating ethics into AI design and maintaining a human centric approach to technology. Organizations need to Are we prepared to give up our autonomy in exchange for convenience? How do we maintain a balance between technological advancement and preserving our humanity? Thank you for joining me and Grace in this fascinating discussion. Don't forget to subscribe to Synthetic Minds for more conversations that blend speculative fiction and the strategic foresight needed to navigate the exponential future.