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The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

thefrailestthing.com

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Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#21

Post by api »

21 wrote: post #15
api wrote: post #5

The Borg may turn out to be prophetic. We could turn into a hive mind of sorts. I've already been calling Internet fads, echo chambers, and meme outbreaks "Borgsongs." I seem to recall this term from STTNG for the omnipresent hive signal experienced by Borg.

Imagine a neural network who could design memes/songs by directly measuring a bunch of test subject brains. Kind of like a focus group. A short story even asked the question, could you engineer a meme/song so powerful that it could literally make you go insane? We know this stuff exists (brainwashing, cults, ...), but can you super concentrate it?

That stuff is kind of like adversarial examples for human brains, and it probably is possible to deeply study the brain and create super indoctrination techniques.

At some point we are going to be forced to start regulating persuasion.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#22

Post by calvertdw »

dranoel0226 wrote: post #3

I have nothing to hide and why wouldn't I want ads that better reflect my preferences?

This makes me shudder. Companies with powerful AI and enough data could control the population in ways indiscernible to an individual. By organizing goods in stores and placing the right ads at the right time it could be possible to lead users on a treasure hunt to a political or economic opinion.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#23

Post by dkersten »

21 wrote: post #12
inherentFloyd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want ads at all?

Because the alternative is paying. Do you want to pay for all the hundred sites you visit in a year?

No, I would more carefully pick and choose which sites I care to visit since I have to pay for them. I can, of course, pick and choose the sites now based on how bad the advertisement is, but because advertisement is so prevalent, I don’t really get a choice because most sites use advertisement. Ironically, the sites I’d be most willing to pay for (like HN) are also the ones with few or no adverts.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#24

Post by skymuse »

I read some of google's patent mentioned in the text and thought it was interesting. They basically want a connected network of devices that communicate with each other and with google. Most of the devices follow the following algorithm: watch -> think -> act -> report. What is interesting is the 'report' phase of the algorithm.

I think there is a battle between two competing AI philosophies. One philosophy thinks AI should be central: all devices need to talk to the overmind for learning. The other philosophy thinks AI should be local: the device should learn on its own, kind of like a biological agent. I think the 'biological agent' form of AI is interesting when it comes to privacy of information. Only you and the device have the data.

The future of AI should be interesting with these two philosophies in mind.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#26

Post by titzer »

quotemstr wrote: post #10
posix_me_less wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are an outlier, most people like their privacy and do not want to be manipulated by advertisers.

Is that so? If you look at people's behavior , most people seem to accept targeted advertising. Every bit of evidence I've seen indicates that the outrage against the practice comes from a small minority with a disproportionate voice --- much like many other sources of chronic public outrage today. Regular people, to the best of my knowledge, don't care.

I think most people have no idea what is going on and literally would not be able to understand it even if it were laid out in black and white. Even then, most people "understand" that smoking causes cancer. Behavior is not always a good predictor of people's internal mental states. Addiction is real. Damn that dopamine. Is smoking somehow fine because lots of people do it and it kills you slow? (I say that as someone who can't help but have a cig now and then).

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#27

Post by dpark »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #11
posix_me_less wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are an outlier, most people like their privacy and do not want to be manipulated by advertisers.

Disagree. I think the last fifty years proves that the vast majority of people will almost always go with convenience over some abstract ideal of "privacy".

People don't care about privacy in the abstract but do care once it becomes concrete. If you ask someone if they are willing to let an impersonal algorithm analyze their data in exchange for a free service, the answer is generally yes. If you ask them if you can read their email and peruse their browsing history, the answer is almost always no.

The problem privacy advocates have is forging a link between the abstract and the concrete. I don't really care that Experian compiles a list of my credit data. I really do care when they fuck up and leak it publicly. The tricky thing is that the former is a prerequisite for the latter, so I should care about that, too.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#29

Post by ajmurmann »

api wrote: post #5

The Borg may turn out to be prophetic. We could turn into a hive mind of sorts. I've already been calling Internet fads, echo chambers, and meme outbreaks "Borgsongs." I seem to recall this term from STTNG for the omnipresent hive signal experienced by Borg.

I've been wanting to write a SciFi short story about this for years now. I expect that human-to-human communication will get faster and faster, especially once we get brain-to-computer implants. At that point at least from the outside making will be indistinguishable from a hive mind or even single lifeform made up of cells. On the other hand are we really that different from ants already? Maybe ants think of them last themselves as highly individualistic.

Re: The World Will Be Our Skinner Box

#30

Post by mauld »

This is scary, but it is important we recognize that we can be controlled and have our behaviour modified by altering our environment - and that is can be a good things.

Who hasn't delete Steam from their computer for a few weeks, thrown out junk food or set up a good workspace in order to promote a behavior in ourselves we want to cultivate, to be more like the person we want to be?

The important thing is that in those situations our environment remained under our control and conscious, and we need to ensure our personal and digital environment remain under our control, and its goals are transparent - and I am not sure companies like Google do or will always agree.

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