Reading Jaron Lanier's book "Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now" was one of the reasons why I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago.
I was interested to see an interview with him in the Guardian last week as a lot has changed, especially with Musks takeover of Twitter and the rise of AI language models such as Chat GPT.
In the article Lanier argues that the current trend of AI being used to manipulate and control human behavior, such as in social media algorithms, is already causing harm to individuals and society.
According to Lanier, the issue is not AI itself, but the way it is being designed and used by companies that prioritise profit over human well-being. He suggests that AI should be designed to work in the service of humans, rather than the other way around.
Lanier also discusses the need for greater regulation of AI and tech companies, as well as the importance of recognising and respecting the complexity and value of human experience. Overall, he calls for a more human-centered approach to technology development and use, in order to avoid the potential harm that AI could cause.
From my perspective,” he says, “the danger isn’t that a new alien entity will speak through our technology and take over and destroy us. To me the danger is that we’ll use our technology to become mutually unintelligible or to become insane if you like, in a way that we aren’t acting with enough understanding and self-interest to survive, and we die through insanity, essentially.”
Lanier believes it has made us lazy and incurious. Beforehand, we would sift through stacks in a record shop or browse in bookshops. “We were directly connected to a choice base that was actually larger instead of being fed this thing through this funnel that somebody else controls.”