AI Risks
So we’ve talked here quite a bit about how artificial intelligence may be a risk to you, taking your job or infiltrating your industry. But maybe one of the more insidious risks to civilization from AI, or to consumers, is not so much the employment part but the lifestyle part. There’s a great article written about what’s called addictive intelligence — not artificial intelligence, but addictive intelligence. What that entails is AI being deployed on all the platforms we use, whether it’s social media or news or anything online.

Addictive Intelligence in Advertising
Or anything electronic, or even offline — billboards, print advertising — to use psychological techniques to entice viewers to stay engaged with the platform. In the same way that over the last four or five decades, food producers have tweaked recipes on everything from cereal to bread to even fruit and vegetables to change the makeup of these to have them become more addictive. That’s why people just crave certain foods and crave certain candy and crave certain dishes because the scientists have figured out how to hack the brain.

The Science Behind Food Cravings
To get that dopamine hit from certain foods, that’s why you go back to it. That’s why certain foods are very, very popular. For example, what is the chance that some colored sugar water, like Coca-Cola, would be as ubiquitous as it is? People buy it all the time because it’s designed to really please your senses. So, what happens if that same type of mentality is used to please the other senses — visual, audio? Maybe there are things with AI — podcasts or even video on YouTube, like this video. What if there’s AI used to create the right words, the right type of language, the right type of inflections to get people to be more attracted to certain things?

The Potential Impact of AI on Engagement
And that may create, at the low end, a mild addiction, and at the high end, just an infatuation with it. Now, this article talks about AI companions — virtual dating, virtual friendships, virtual colleagues. But it may not even have to rise to that level. It may be something where people just go on a website, they read some news, they read some information, they read a blog, they read an article, and the way that it’s written kind of mesmerizes you. It’s kind of like a Jedi mind trick to keep you engaged.

How Scammers Manipulate Victims
Now, how is proof that that could work? Well, in one of our divisions, we do a lot of fraud investigation. In our investigative division, that website is active intel.com, and in that fraud investigation division, we get a lot of people who have fallen victim to some online scam. They’ve sent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to some scammer with a promise of some investment, a promise of some employment, a promise of something. And a lot of these victims wake up and say, “How did they fall for this? I’m not stupid, how did this happen? How did they send money?” And a lot of the victims are very sophisticated people — they’re college graduates, they’re doctors, they’re attorneys, they’re accountants — and they’ve fallen victim to these scams.

The Power of Psychological Manipulation
The reason why is these scammers use very sophisticated psychological techniques to know exactly what to say and how to push your buttons to get you to send the money. So, it’s not really your fault — you’re almost helpless against it. Now, these aren’t normally done with AI. They’re done using some psychiatrist or psychologist writing this by hand. But what happens when AI gets involved? What can it make you do that you may not be immune to?

The Rise of Addictive Intelligence
So, like the article says, be prepared for this addictive intelligence where it uses AI to craft visuals, to craft audio, to craft videos or words on paper to get you to be enthralled, entranced by whatever it is you’re seeing, or reading, or even hearing, to want to stay connected to it. Now, the harm from it may not be that bad — it might just be you staying online and reading for an extra half an hour than you would. Maybe there’s advertising that benefits from it, or it could be something more destructive and more harmful that gets people to do things that are more dangerous than just staring at your phone for an extra 20 minutes.