ChatGPTEvery illustration.

AI Can Fix Social Media’s Original Sin

You are what you say you are—not just what you click

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Oshyan Greene 3 months ago

Taking explicit preference into account was always possible, media companies (social and otherwise) just chose not to because it was more profitable to orient to the extremes and play our limbic systems like a fiddle. Remember the glory days of the internet before it was taken over by big companies and advertising? That's AI right now: we just haven't figured out how to best insert ads and other monetization into it yet. The flat monthly fees are working for now, but certainly 1000s of "innovators" are working on how they can wring more money out of AI users as we speak.

If we don't get to AGI first, we're very likely to just get a repeat of the commodification of our attention we already have outside of AI that you describe in such damning terms. Only with AI it could be supercharged to be even more effective at holding our attention because it understands us better, at least in some respect, for some definition of "understand". Imagine custom advertising that knows you well enough to manipulate *you specifically*, in direct ways customized to what it knows about you, e.g. "Don't let little Jimmy sleep without a custom plushy tonight, his nightmares have been getting worse!". Dystopian but plausible. I see little reason for optimism that capitalism will drive AI companies in a different way than it did for social media and the internet economy at large.

Also isn't AI Alignment largely about avoiding true harms, like helping terrorists build bombs, or helping hackers and scammers, or causing mental health issues, etc? I don't think much of that research and intent is oriented toward "Don't put profit over user preference". Though I wish it were!

Paul D'Arcy 3 months ago

Enlightening and a delight to read. Thank you, Dan.

Kathryn Felten 3 months ago

Such a great analogy, Dan — it really brings to light the dynamic we're all caught in. We don't intend to be drawn toward the wreck on the side of the road, but attention gets hijacked before we even realize it. Social media has been engineered around that impulse — the irresistible glance — instead of genuine intent.
If AI can help recalibrate us back toward what we actually want to build, learn, and become... that's a game-changer. I think you're tapping into something essential here — the shift we've been needing.

Philipp Götza 3 months ago

Lovely analogy and I enjoyed reading it a lot. Great choice of words that made it feel like I was right there, especially at the start of the essay.

That said, I feel like there is a slight shortcoming in the logic. The argument goes from social media as revealed preference to AI which takes in our stated preference. This argument works if we were all not on social media anymore and instead mainly used AI chatbots for everything.

The truth, from my point of view, is that we say "AI is so much better at understanding what I want than social", yet we will still continue using social – despite the fact that it makes us feel outraged and envious.

AI reflects our higher selves. Social media panders to our lower selves. Both are now options and we often choose the latter, even when we know it's worse.