Humanity in the Age of AI
The issue is NOT if humans can relate to a deceptive social machine — of course they can. The issue is “Do we recognize that humans and machines are different categories?” or “Will we respect human dignity, by designing effective machines that enhance human self efficacy and responsibility?” The 2M+ apps in the Apple Store are mostly based on direc... See more
On AI Anthropomorphism
Ben Shneiderman talks about this in a way that suggests AI (and the way it’s rolling out) is going to be a “failure.” He means a “failure” in the sense that people will not like and use it. But my fear is people WILL like and use it… and the outcome will be a “failure” because using it will be harmful to humanity.
You might also be aware that all this is delivered by means of “persuasive design”—an umbrella term for an armory of psychological techniques borrowed directly from the designers of casino slot machines, for the express purpose of encouraging compulsive behavior. One example among hundreds is the ubiquitous drag-down-to-refresh gesture, which keeps... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Shared view of the problem and the path forward
Incentives and penalties
Monitoring and enforcement (transparency)
Governance that can keep up with the tech
Coordination at all levels
Misalignment between our interest and our incentives.
Built tools that undermined our capacity to alter our incentive structures in healthy ways
Phillips et al. (2016) were using human-animal relationships to think about human-AI relationships. I think that, as with animals, there are degrees of sociality, or degrees of social presence, that may be applicable to computational things.
On AI Anthropomorphism
But animals are living beings. And they aren’t manipulative or persuasive.
Abundance of content created fierce competition. Competition bred audience impatience. Impatience rewarded whoever could hook viewers fastest. And hooking audiences consistently for extended periods requires exceptional storytelling talent - which is rare.
The result? Short-form content dominates because most creators can only hold attention for bri... See more
The result? Short-form content dominates because most creators can only hold attention for bri... See more
Jon • Are Attention Spans Actually Shrinking? (Pt 1)
Did it make sense to treat unclaimed time as a problem? We’ve solved it algorithmically, and now have none.
New iPhones just stay lit up all the time???