I’ve famous this up to now, but it surely looks like we’ve realized nothing from the damaging impacts attributable to the rise of social media, and we’re now set to copy the identical errors once more within the roll-out of generative AI.
As a result of whereas generative AI has the capability to offer a variety of advantages, in a variety of how, there are additionally potential damaging implications of accelerating our reliance on digital characters for relationships, recommendation, companionship, and extra.
And but, large tech corporations are racing forward, desirous to win out within the AI race, regardless of the potential price.
Or extra seemingly, it’s with out consideration of the impacts. As a result of they haven’t occurred but, and till they do, we will plausibly assume that the whole lot’s going to be fantastic. Which, once more, is what occurred with social media, with Fb, for instance, capable of “transfer quick and break issues” until a decade later, when its execs have been being hauled earlier than congress to elucidate the damaging impacts of its methods on folks’s psychological well being.
This concern got here up for me once more this week once I noticed this publish from my buddy Lia Haberman:
Amid Meta’s push to get extra folks utilizing its generative AI instruments, it’s now seemingly prompting customers to talk with its customized AI bots, together with “homosexual bestie” and “therapist”.
I’m unsure that entrusting your psychological well being to an unpredictable AI bot is a secure strategy to go, and Meta actively selling such in-stream looks as if a big threat, particularly contemplating Meta’s large viewers attain.
However once more, Meta’s tremendous eager to get folks interacting with its AI instruments, for any cause:
I’m unsure why folks can be eager to generate pretend photographs of themselves like this, however Meta’s investing its billions of customers to make use of its generative AI processes, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemingly satisfied that this would be the subsequent section of social media interplay.
Certainly, in a current interview, Zuckerberg defined that:
“Each a part of what we do goes to get modified indirectly [by AI]. [For example] feeds are going to go from – you already know, it was already buddy content material, and now it’s largely creators. Sooner or later, lots of it’s going to be AI generated.”
So Zuckerberg’s view is that we’re more and more going to be interacting with AI bots, versus actual people, which Meta bolstered this month by hiring Michael Sayman, the developer of a social platform solely populated by AI bots.
Certain, there’s seemingly some profit to this, in utilizing AI bots to logic test your considering, or to immediate you with alternate angles that you just won’t have thought of. However counting on AI bots for social engagement appears very problematic, and doubtlessly dangerous, in some ways.
This New York Occasions reported this week, for instance, that the mom of a 14-year-old boy who dedicated suicide after months of growing a relationship with an AI chatbot has now launched authorized motion towards AI chatbot developer Chanacter.ai, accusing the corporate of being accountable for her son’s loss of life.
The teenager, who was infatuated with a chatbot styled after Daenerys Targaryen from Sport of Thrones, appeared to have indifferent himself from actuality, in favor of this synthetic relationship. That more and more alienated him from the actual world, and will have led to his loss of life.
Some will counsel that is an excessive case, with a variety of variables at play. However I’d hazard a guess that it received’t be the final, whereas it’s additionally reflective of the broader concern of shifting too quick with AI growth, and pushing folks to construct relationships with non-existent beings, which goes to have expanded psychological well being impacts.
And but, the AI race is shifting forward at warp velocity.
The event of VR, too, poses an exponential improve in psychological well being threat, given that folks will likely be interacting in much more immersive environments than social media apps. And on that entrance, Meta’s additionally pushing to get extra folks concerned, whereas reducing the age limits for entry.
On the similar time, senators are proposing age restrictions on social media apps, primarily based on years of proof of problematic developments.
Will we’ve to attend for a similar earlier than regulators take a look at the potential risks of those new applied sciences, then search to impose restrictions looking back?
If that’s the case, then lots of injury goes to come back from the subsequent tech push. And whereas shifting quick is necessary for technological growth, it’s not like we don’t perceive the potential risks that may end result.
