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by sensanaty·3y ago·view on hn ↗
This is going to be a somewhat disjointed and nonsensical comment as I'm finding it difficult to find the proper words to put down regarding this whole issue.

Never in my life did I expect myself to become somewhat of a luddite when it comes to AI, especially considering how much I love the concept in general. Something about the way it seems to be working out in the real world has me questioning my opinions, though.

I think more than anything I'm fearful for the future and what advanced versions of these tools will mean for everyone. Will the world simply become overflooded with these A"I"s for every little thing imaginable? Will every billboard I see and every sound that comes out of a speaker be some weird, uncanny computer-generated thing engineered for the maximum possible user engagement? Will anything anyone ever touches be examined by a dozen different AIs, all looking for ways to cheaply and efficiently replicate it en-masse? Will we all just become a meat shell of fried dopamine receptors, with various AIs and algorithms dictating every facet of our lives?

A lot of people call the recent and probably future AI explosion some sort of progress, but from where I'm sitting it barely feels like progress at all, considering it's already being used in the ways I've just described albeit at a less effective scale. Seeing my partner use TikTok to my dismay, and the efficacy of its algorithms and just how good it is at sucking countless hours out is just going to get worse once every single platform we interact with starts doing similar things.

It's strange, because AI could truly go in any number of possible directions, but so far what I'm seeing is it's going to lead us to ruin, and a lot of people seem to dismiss it or are even accepting of it (even in this very thread) simply in the name of so-called "progress".

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> Will we all just become a meat shell of fried dopamine receptors, with various AIs and algorithms dictating every facet of our lives?

I've been thinking about this lately, in terms of dopaminergic activities like advertising, drugs, sex, gambling, bright colors, etc. When someone is too susceptible to addiction by one of these, their life is destroyed by it.

Pursuing dopamine, purely for the feeling of dopamine, results in this evolutionary dead end. So, every time modern society optimizes a product to produce more dopamine response, anyone susceptible is selected against, evolutionarily.

Your description is poignant. I can only see this going a couple of ways: 1. A society of people with fried dopamine receptors, too uninterested in food to grow it or eat it (Idiocracy). This collapses, and less dopamine-advanced people inherit the earth (until they do the same thing). Or 2. a society of people who can control, by whatever means, their dopamine urges.