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The Future of Identity

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The Future of Identity THE FUTURE OF IDENTITY (2011) Report, Commissioned bby the UK’s Government Office for Science Nick Bostrom Annders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Faculty of Philosoophy & Oxford Martin School Oxford University www.nickbostrom.com 1 1 “See something or say something: London” by Eric Fischer. A map derived from online photoographs (orange) and Twitter tweets (blue).. 1 Table of Contents Executive summary ................................................................................................................................................................. 4 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................... 7 The concepts of identity ..................................................................................................................................................... 7 2. Information and communication technologies ........................................................................................................... 10 Online identities ................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Identity metasystems ................................................................................................................................................... 12 Control over social spaces and identities ................................................................................................................ 14 The globalized identity ............................................................................................................................................... 17 The virtual worlds ............................................................................................................................................................ 18 The augmented world ...................................................................................................................................................... 19 Identity technology ...................................................................................................................................................... 22 3. Automation and robotics ................................................................................................................................................. 24 Automation and robotic technology ............................................................................................................................. 25 Home automation ......................................................................................................................................................... 25 Autonomous cars.......................................................................................................................................................... 25 Unmanned aerial vehicles .......................................................................................................................................... 26 Professional obsolescence and changing nature of work ........................................................................................ 27 Fluid careers and continuing education .................................................................................................................. 28 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................... 28 4. Biotechnology and medicine .......................................................................................................................................... 30 Medicine ............................................................................................................................................................................. 30 Personalised health ........................................................................................................................................................... 30 Genomics ............................................................................................................................................................................ 31 The medicalization of conception ................................................................................................................................. 33 Genetically modified humans ........................................................................................................................................ 34 Biohacking and biosecurity ............................................................................................................................................ 35 Life extension .................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Human enhancement........................................................................................................................................................ 37 Implanted identity chips ............................................................................................................................................. 39 Brain-computer interfaces and other implants ........................................................................................................... 40 Invasive BCI ................................................................................................................................................................. 40 Non-invasive BCI ........................................................................................................................................................ 43 Cognitive technology, neural privacy, and neurohype ........................................................................................ 45 5. Wildcards ........................................................................................................................................................................... 47 2 6. Some general issues ......................................................................................................................................................... 49 Generational issues ...................................................................................................................................................... 49 The vulnerable .............................................................................................................................................................. 49 The future of identity .................................................................................................................................................. 50 7. Concluding remarks ......................................................................................................................................................... 52 Personal reflections by Anders Sandberg ............................................................................................................... 52 Personal reflections by Nick Bostrom ..................................................................................................................... 52 Appendix: Potential challenges to public policy from to identity-affecting technologies (summarized from the text) .................................................................................................................................................................................... 54 3 Executive summary This paper reviews some of the possible impacts on identity from three broad fields of technological advancement: biotechnology; automation and robotics; and information and communications technologies. It considers a time horizon of 15 years. Identity is central in human activities. Having a functioning psychological and social identity is essential for wellbeing. Threats to identity are serious threats and often evoke strong reactions. Yet we have multiple, changing identities. Shifting between different social identities in different contexts (jobs, family, friends, etc.) is a necessary part of everyday life. Legal identities are essential for the functioning of modern societies. Increasingly, online identities serve not only to give us access to different resources but also to help us link our different social identities. Technologies that affect how our identities function can have important effects on the individual and on society. Online identities will be growing rapidly in importance and will raise a plethora of issues. They are sometimes formalizations of social identities but are fundamentally more rigid. This (and the large number of online services) leads to people using multiple identities. Linking multiple identities to a legal identity and across time and domains can cause problems, in the form of breaches of privacy, risks of identity theft, damage to reputations, and reprisals. Gathering identities into identity metasystems can solve some of these problems but at the expense of posing new challenges such as border-crossing identity systems of unclear jurisdiction, massive data breaches, and expanding the power of identity providers over the identified and their social interactions. Virtual worlds – be they online games, social spaces or teleconferencing, will grow in reach and use. Users feel strongly
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