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Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media
(www.technologyreview.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Social media is just another scapegoat like Russian bots.
The truth is much worse: most people are, and have always been awful, bloodthirsty ghoulish pieces of shit and they were so before social media, you just know it now.
2024 Edit: Told ya.
No friend, no, I'm sorry, but the whole world just wouldn't work if that were actually the case. Humanity is inherently altruistic. The issue is that people struggle to be that and survive. We just have to ramp down the me:first and push more for society. EU is starting to make those in-roads, so stay positive!
I'd say it's that we all have these elements within us.
We're all born as selfish idiots, how can we be otherwise? We're helpless at birth, thrust from perfect comfort and safety into discomfort, utterly ignorant and wholly dependent, with no knowledge there are others, who are just as dependent when they're born.
There's the variability in personality, but by and large we have to learn to see others as the same as ourselves.
So while we may not all actively try to be assholes, it takes conscious effort to be better than our base nature.
And, I tend to think we all get to be assholes now and again. We all have moments we can look back on and say "oh, yea, I was the asshole that time".
Social media just reflects humanity, though the algorithms are certainly designed to increase engagement via the simplest mechanisms - emotional engagement. And which are the easiest to target? Yep - the most basic, they have the broadest appeal, because we all share those base emotions.
Another way to look at this: if we didn't share these base emotions, would the algorithms have any effect?
World Hunger is literally a problem of corruption. The vast majority of problems are "we could solve this, but it costs money and we'd rather have another mega yacht". If humans were truly altruistic, homelessness and hunger wouldn't be issues at all. Are we savages? Maybe not. But overall altruistic? Bullshit.
There's a reason we idolize heros instead of treating them as mundane. They are exceptional, not the norm.
Technology and policy matter. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-refugee-attacks-germany.html
Most people are empathetic and decent. This sounds like apologia or projection. Evil people think everyone else is just as evil and that's how they rationalize it.
So many people on Lemmy are pessimistic as shit, makes it hard to read the comments sometimes
It is one side of us humans. You don't become top of the food chain by petting the lions.
However, the other side is: We can team up and watch each others backs.