AI taking us to social doom? Raskin and Harris weigh in

Greetings, intelligists!

I hope you are having a lovely holiday season so far, especially as 2023 goes barrelling towards its end!

Today’s email is a bit on the negative side. Sadly, not everything about AI is roses. In the coming days, we’ll have more useful news and highlights for you, so stay tuned!

Happy Boxing Day from the intelligist!

Joaquin

The inventor of infinite scroll admits his invention resulted in tragedy, warns of AI danger

Aza Raskin is a computer interface designer. He is best known for inventing “infinite scroll.” In case you didn’t recall, in the “old days” of the internet, before 2006, a web user would inevitably reach the end of a list of search results and have to click the “next” button to see more. Infinite scroll allows users to continue scrolling down the page without end, with new results or posts automatically loading.

This technology makes apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and others possible. It also enables addictive behaviors that social media companies have taken advantage of. Often, these behaviors are designated “doomscrolling” due to their evident negative effects and simultaneously hard-to-resist nature.

Raskin has stated in the past that he regrets releasing this invention. Appearing as a guest on the JRE podcast, along with his collaborator Tristan Harris, he admitted that infinite scroll has resulted in tragedy via the mechanisms of mass manipulation it enabled.

When addressing the booming AI industry, Raskin and Harris were not very optimistic. They used their Three Laws of Technology to highlight the danger that AI poses to society. The first law is that the discovery or invention of a new technology reveals a new class of responsibilities. An example is the emergence of social media revealing the need for privacy and data protection. The second law is that if a technology creates power, it will create a race. Case in point: the ongoing boom in creating addictive social media platforms. The third law is that, if there is no coordination, the technology will result in tragedy. An example is the social tragedy that results from these addictive technologies, which may be harming millions of people, especially youth, through manipulating attention spans and neurological reward systems.

Both Raskin and Harris warn that an unrestricted AI race could end in unforeseen tragedy. They emphasized how the OpenAI crisis showed just how willing AI companies are to throw caution out the window and focus on development without constraints. Their viewpoint is that this race to create AI and AGI could have unintended consequences and dangers. Some examples include:

• The use of AI to develop dangerous weapons.

• Malicious actors hacking powerful AIs and using them for harm (making chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons).

• The use of AI to harm or manipulate people.

Unfortunately, Raskin and Harris’s vision of the future is not exactly inspiring. Rather, it is rather tragic. They even view open-source AI as presenting threats. In their opinion, the only way to protect humanity is for there to be consensus on how to develop AI and a prioritization of beneficial AI technologies.

Ultimately, they view the race to the top in AI as a race to destruction unless there is collaboration in making AI that can defend democracy and strengthen society. Otherwise, Raskin and Harris predict, we might be facing a world with new, ultra-elite superpowers who will use AI for their profit and power.

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