Publications

@article{shibuya_transforming_2025,

title = {Transforming phenomenological sociology for virtual personalities and virtual worlds},

author = {K. Shibuya},

url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85217199972&doi=10.1007%2fs00146-025-02189-x&partnerID=40&md5=aa9db1cb1f99419b605f1091469eb77c},

doi = {10.1007/s00146-025-02189-x},

issn = {09515666 (ISSN)},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {AI and Society},

volume = {40},

number = {5},

pages = {3317–3331},

abstract = {Are there opportunities to use the plural to express the first person (“I”) of “the same person” in English? It means that the self is an entity that guarantees uniqueness and is at the core of identity. Recently, radical and rapid innovations in AI technologies have made it possible to alter our existential fundamentals. Principally, we are now interacting with “virtual personalities” generated by generative AI. Thus, there is an inevitability to explore the relationship between AI and society, and the problem domain of phenomenological sociology related to the “virtuality” of personalities and the world. Encountering and interacting with “others without subject” artificially generated by generative AI based on individual big data and attribute data is a situation that mankind has never experienced before from the perspective of sociology and phenomenological sociology related to the ego. The virtual personalities can be perceived as if it were interacting with existing humans in the form of video and audio, and it is also possible to arbitrarily change their attributes (e.g., gender, race, age, physical characteristics) and other settings, as well as to virtually create deceased persons or great figures from the past. Such technological innovation is, so to speak, a virtualization of human existential identity, and advanced technologies such as AI will transform not only the boundary between self and others but also the aspect of human existence itself (Shibuya in Digital transformation of identity in the age of artificial intelligence. Springer, Belrin, 2020). In addition, from a phenomenological viewpoint, the boundary between reality and virtuality is blurring due to technological innovation in the living world itself, and there is a concern that this will lead to an artificial state of detachment. Actually, the use of advanced technologies such as AI, VR in virtual worlds and cyberspace will not only cause people to lose their reality and actuality but will also endanger the very foundations of their existential identity. Therefore, we must ask what it means for us as existences to interact with virtual personalities in a virtually generated world, and what is the nature of the intersubjectivity formation and semantic understanding as well as the modes of existence, facts, and worlds, and what are their evidential natures. In line with what Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, once declared at the beginning of his “Cartesianische Meditationen” (Husserl in CartesianischeMeditationen, e-artnow, 2018), that “we need to begin philosophy radically anew”, as also phenomenological sociology, it can now state that “we need to begin phenomenological sociology radically anew”. Then, this paper reviews and discusses the following issues based on technological trends. Is there an intersubjectivity between the virtual personalities generated by the AI and the human being? How does the virtualization of identity, as well as the difference between self and others, transform the nature of existence? How is a mutual semantic understanding possible between a human being and the virtual personality that is generated by a generative AI and a generative AI? How can we verify discourses and propositions of fact and worldliness in our interactions with generative AIs, and how can we overcome the illusion (i.e., hallucination) that generative AIs create? What does the transformation of the world and its aspect as existence mean? How is it possible to collaborate between a human being and the virtual personality that is generated by a generative AI and a generative AI? © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2025.},

keywords = {Advanced technology, Economic and social effects, Generative adversarial networks, Generative AI, Human being, Identity, Intersubjectivity, Metadata, Phenomenological Sociology, Sociology, Technological innovation, Virtual environments, Virtual Personality, Virtual Reality, Virtual worlds, Virtualization, Virtualizations},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}