What worries me about AI

The article's conclusion:

Not only does social media know enough about us to build powerful psychological models of both individuals and groups, it is also increasingly in control of our information diet. It has access to a set of extremely effective psychological exploits to manipulate what we believe, how we feel, and what we do.

A sufficiently advanced AI algorithm with access to both perception of our mental state, and action over our mental state, in a continuous loop, can be used to effectively hijack our beliefs and behavior.

Using AI as our interface to information isn’t the problem per se. Such AI interfaces, if well-designed, have the potential to be tremendously beneficial and empowering for all of us. The key factor: the user should stay fully in control of the algorithm’s objectives, using it as a tool to pursue their own goals (in the same way that you would use a search engine).

As technologists, we have a responsibility to push back against products that take away control, and dedicate our efforts to building information interfaces that place the user in charge. Don’t use AI as a tool to manipulate your users; instead, give AI to your users as a tool to gain greater agency over their circumstances.

That'd be interesting if I could tell Facebook (or whatever social media) I want to be closer to my family (so it surfaces family posts) or local community (so it surfaces geographically close posts) or that I want to lose weight (so it surfaces motivational/dieting posts) or I am training for a marathon (so it surfaces running/training posts) or I went through a bad breakup recently (so it surfaces pictures of puppies and my single friends living fun bachelor lifestyles), or that I want to learn programming (so it surfaces programming things). Or like a button for "Only show me positive, happy stuff".

I mean, I guess you can achieve all of that with a carefully curated Newsfeed / friends list, but it's different than having the dials for what you want to feel/accomplish (how you want to be psychologically manipulated) and the AI could periodically check in ("Am I making you happier?" or "Do you feel inspired to run more often?") and adjust how the content is being surfaced.

This blog post appears to be the followup to a very good tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/976563870322999296

Honestly, I’m not afraid of AI.

Instead, I’m terrified of that step before - which does not yet have a name - in which sophisticated bots generate a news bubble (whether real or fake may not even matter that much) that leads us to destroy ourselves.

Think about it - the riots shortly after the election, the cries of fake news (on both sides of he political spectrum), the growing gap between the left and right, etc.

That’s enough to get us off the rails in the US. Now imagine what that would do in a country with a much more fragile democracy, or a split religious population.

Truly, that is more frightening. If you’ve ever seen what one person can do to another under strained circumstances, you know what I mean.

Medium's "Pardon the interruption" pop up is starting to pissing me off. This is the last article I will read on Medium until I've heard they removed it.