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AI technology has revolutionized the way we engage with the internet. With increasing accuracy, AI predicts what will keep us scrolling, and we have every single day in AI to thank for this simple yet powerful technology. But what happens when the same technology confers power–the power to manipulate your attention? An AI arms race for your attention has already begun and some experts in the field posit that governments, the tech industry, and citizen representatives must coordinate on policy or the race, with ever more powerful AI ability could end in tragedy. My next few articles will explore some of the potential pitfalls of ai technology. In this article, I will explore the benefits and challenges of using AI to increase online engagement, as well as potential pitfalls and ways to avoid them.
Recent contact between humanity and AI occurred through social media. As we open up facebook or youtube or Netflix or TikTok and scrolled through our feeds, we activate an AI supercomputer that calculates and predicts the perfect information that will keep us scrolling. Although this technology seemed innocuous at first, in many cases, it has led to information overload, addiction, doom-scrolling, sexualization of kids, attention spans polarization, fake news, and breakdowns in democracy. No one intended these things to happen, and we had a bunch of engineers who were just trying to maximize engagement.
The paradigm from which we were seeing what social media was about was that it was giving people a voice, a platform, and connecting them with their friends. We thought we were enabling small and medium-sized businesses to reach their customers. These things were all true and actual benefits, but behind this friendly face, there were other problems. We had an addiction problem, a disinformation problem, a mental health problem, and a free speech versus censorship problem. But even behind all of these problems, there was an even deeper thing: an arms race for attention.
Maximizing engagement wasn’t just rewriting the rules of our society, it was also about integrating these other core aspects of our society with social media and then finding any number of ways to make that information so compelling to users that it became difficult for them to stop engaging with it. Journalism today can’t exist outside of being on Twitter and promoting oneself on social media. National security now happens through social media and information warfare, and politics and elections are now run through the engagement economy and entertainment does not happen without social media. These are just a few critical societal components that have become entangled with social media, and it’s challenging to disentangle them.
However, AI technology also has many benefits. It can help businesses reach their customers more effectively and efficiently, and it can provide more personalized experiences for users. For example, Netflix uses AI to recommend movies and TV shows based on our viewing habits. AI can also help detect fake news and disinformation, and it can be used to improve mental health by providing personalized therapy and I have no doubt that many of these changes are on the way.
The challenge is finding a balance between the benefits and potential pitfalls of AI. One way to do this is to focus on human-centered design, where the technology is designed to serve human needs rather than the other way around. Another way is to ensure that the technology is transparent and that users understand how it works. This can help build trust between users and technology, which is essential for its long-term success.
