I do think you're slightly over-optimistic/relaxed. Perhaps the adults are better shielded; or if they're not, it's up to them, just like with alcohol, drugs and cigarettes (well...). Another thing is worrisome: it's the kids' and teens' lives that are being rewired and rewritten by the omnipresence of phones and 'algorithm'. Jonathan Haidt & comp had a thing out recently about teens (girls in particular, who live on Instagram and TikTok - boys tend to turn to gaming after a certain age, apparently) reporting disastrously bad mental health, coinciding with the rise of social media presence in their lives... Schools have started banning phones and that's I think a good development. Parents of course are not modeling the desired behaviour at all...
Too relaxed possibly, but I'd never describe myself as a techno-optimist! I do think that having access to a steady, unending stream of junk, delivered by unthinking machines that are choosing based on some arbitrary value or other, has had devastating consequences for the way we conceive of and interact with the world. Lately I've been struck by how many people openly prefer to read summaries of books and movies (and even video games!) rather than read or watch or play them. I just think this results from a combination of our own psychology, tech company leadership obliviousness, and false abundance, rather than the (usually pretty ordinary) inner workings of "the algorithm," which mostly is just chugging along.
Yes! The AI pessimists in publishing that I hang out with are fairly certain that the cheap AI-powered summaries of the latest from Stephen King or JKR or Ian Rankin that you'd get off Amazon will destroy even the only earning category of book today, the best-seller. But we shall see... The last death of the book foretelling didn't pan out.
More tech-demystifying posts like this please!
I do think you're slightly over-optimistic/relaxed. Perhaps the adults are better shielded; or if they're not, it's up to them, just like with alcohol, drugs and cigarettes (well...). Another thing is worrisome: it's the kids' and teens' lives that are being rewired and rewritten by the omnipresence of phones and 'algorithm'. Jonathan Haidt & comp had a thing out recently about teens (girls in particular, who live on Instagram and TikTok - boys tend to turn to gaming after a certain age, apparently) reporting disastrously bad mental health, coinciding with the rise of social media presence in their lives... Schools have started banning phones and that's I think a good development. Parents of course are not modeling the desired behaviour at all...
Too relaxed possibly, but I'd never describe myself as a techno-optimist! I do think that having access to a steady, unending stream of junk, delivered by unthinking machines that are choosing based on some arbitrary value or other, has had devastating consequences for the way we conceive of and interact with the world. Lately I've been struck by how many people openly prefer to read summaries of books and movies (and even video games!) rather than read or watch or play them. I just think this results from a combination of our own psychology, tech company leadership obliviousness, and false abundance, rather than the (usually pretty ordinary) inner workings of "the algorithm," which mostly is just chugging along.
Yes! The AI pessimists in publishing that I hang out with are fairly certain that the cheap AI-powered summaries of the latest from Stephen King or JKR or Ian Rankin that you'd get off Amazon will destroy even the only earning category of book today, the best-seller. But we shall see... The last death of the book foretelling didn't pan out.