Silicon Valley legend Kevin Kelly’s latest think piece is about our relationship with omnipresent AI assistants. In Kelly’s view – and remember, Kelly was a pioneer of the quantified self movement – we will soon all be running around with AI companions, which will become an extension of ourselves – hence the term “exoself.” In Kelly’s view, we will be making choices between four types of exoself relationships: Twin/Clone, Tutor/Guardian, Counselor/Assistant, and Hero/Friend.
So far, so dystopian (good or bad – you decide). What Kelly seems to miss, though, is the fact that these exoselves will be operated by commercial entities. And these entities have a history of embarking on infamous “enshittification” journeys (case in point: Meta now charges for essential features of its AR glasses). And as such, the relationship we have with our AI might not be something the user chooses, but platforms – not users – will engineer which of the four types you get, tuned to engagement or subscription revenue rather than your interests.
In which case, Kelly’s little admission at the very end of his piece might be the least of our worries (emphasis mine):
This second self will demand a new kind of relationship, one we haven’t had before — and its immense benefits will arrive bundled with immense problems. Every ailment that afflicts our born self will likely show up in the exoself too, plus novel ones we haven’t seen yet. Learning to use an exoself wisely will be one of the major lessons of a life lived this way. It will take years before society works out anything like best practices — we’re still working on those for social media. There will be multiple models and personality types to choose from. And there will be heart-wrenching stories of people losing their exoself — the worst case being simply that the platform went out of business.
