Sam Altman on 2017: Merge

To me the most important thing is that we equalize the relationship. Right now as Altman correctly describes we are taking a subservient relationship to attention hacking bots. This is being driven by the ad industry (and governments, etc.) desire to use these bots to control us on behalf of other humans, but it's setting up a situation where soon the AIs can take the place of the advertisers. That's what an "AI takeover" looks like.

We desperately need to educate people about the addictive nature of social media and how it manipulates them. As we've seen with cigarettes and other addictive drugs, people can resist once they understand what's happening. People need to understand that these systems are not harmless. They steal your attention, fragment your mind, and distract you from actually being effective in the real world. They are an attack against your consciousness in much the same way that addictive drugs can be. They can even have real adverse health effects due to the ill health effects of social alienation, elevated cortisol, sleep deprivation, etc.