Technology, AI, And A Crisis Of Authenticity
If you’ve ever watched a “Black Mirror” episode, you’ve seen the dystopian technology — the know-it-all tech companies, the AI, the simulated worlds.
The real life version wasn’t going to be as heavy-handed as, say, the Miley Cyrus AI doll becoming a lonely teen girl’s best friend. But as social media companies hone in on dopamine rushes and doom-scrolling, and as media companies dabble in Generative AI, I can’t help but think we’re heading down a worrying path.
Take the sad, slow demise of Twitter. The issues that afflict Elon Musk’s pet app are myriad, but none are more symbolic of the wider internet than the bots. Blue check bots dominate the app now and have robbed it of the personality that it used to have.
There was a time in the not-so-distant past that going on Twitter meant interacting with actual people, or at least reading things that actual people sat down and typed — about stuff you’re interested in! I don’t mean to say everything was perfect, but it was possible to form connections with other humans there.
Not the case anymore. Many of the tweets promoted by the algorithm are posted by the same old nameless, faceless accounts. Go the replies of viral tweets and you see a parade of dry, repetitive sentences from accounts with blue checks. In the past, the replies to viral tweets were often funnier than the tweet itself.
The experience is the same as Instagram and Tiktok. You don’t go on those apps to interact with others that you know anymore. The apps’ creators have made the conscious decision to prioritize algorithmic doomscrolling — the cascade of videos that give you a quick dopamine hit. There’s a distinctly inhuman feel to those videos, at least to me, because nothing that I see there sticks in my mind. I forget it all instantly.
The big apps are well down the path toward eliminating what had been a central feature of the internet: the small tents of websites and blogs that served niche interests. People, especially younger people, don’t type websites they like into Google anymore. They just go look at what today’s algorithm has cooked up for them.
There’s something quietly nefarious to me about the whole thing. It reminds me of what Ted Chiang wrote in The New Yorker about AI. Chiang wrote that large-language models “reduce the amount of intention in the world.” If art is about lots of individual choices, he says, then an AI algorithm creating its own essays or paintings eliminates all those little human choices.
AI will hopefully not overtake our great writers and artists any time soon. But it has already, subtly, overtaken our experience of going online. The algorithms hold our hand through our time on our phones, and that time goes up all the time. Our agency — our intention — is dissipating.
This way of life has already played a large part in the lives of young people, who know no other way. It’s harder for kids and teens to see the internet as a place to get the sort of news and entertainment that they desire, or as a place to form mini-communities — that is, interact with real people.
It’s easy to get tricked into thinking you’re getting an authentic experience, too. Consider the TikToks and Instagram Reels of people who document every hour of their day, recommending their supposedly ideal habits. Or the parents who conveniently have video of their kids doing something that gets them to go viral. Is there not something deeply unnatural about these well-produced, jump-cut videos? Is it not a little bit odd that people have their phone set up to record these shots?
It’s a cover for real human interaction. The tech companies do not profit from people responding to each other’s comments or keeping tabs on their friends’ posts. They want you to soak up as much screen time as possible swiping through new videos. The point is addiction.
What’s worrying is that younger people will get used to this way of being. We thrive on our connections with others around us, and the big social media apps only detract from that.
Just as AI attempts to pull us away from creativity, the new social media landscape warps how we perceive and pursue relationships. By sinking us back toward an algorithmic cesspool, it limits our authentic interactions with the world around us. It dictates how we live more than anyone would like to admit.