Services are becoming more addicting and there isn’t much an individual can do about it. While we are all still debating the ethical implications of this technology, the algorithms keep getting better. In the meeting of these two concerns, of commercial interests and ethical conduct, the recent AI boom has me concerned. I wrote about this phenomenon last May, arguing that “addiction is becoming the blood sacrifice required of consumers to allow businesses to win.” In the war zone of the internet, the most time spent wins. They are battling head to head, formula to formula, vying for dominance in the market for eyeballs. These algorithms don’t operate in a vacuum. The same scientific advances powering products like ChatGPT or autonomous vehicles are also telling you to watch the new trailer for a Marvel movie. Anywhere there is more information than the eye can scan, algorithms are at work surfacing results.ĪI has made that math far more potent. They permeate e-commerce sites and travel websites. Whether Gmail put this in your “main” inbox, spam, or social tab, the destination was determined by some type of recommendation engine. The tech is responsible for you reading this very article. Recommendation engines, sometimes called recommendation algorithms, have been blamed for Trump’s election, Biden’s election, mass shootings, the proliferation of vegan restaurants, and TikTok’s dominance. And the beating heart of its success is a recommendation engine. It is the second most visited website in the world. Over 70% of the videos consumed are surfaced by algorithmic feeds. Over one billion hours of video are consumed by YouTube’s users every day. This isn’t some mere philosophical debate.
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Ask yourself: What percentage of these two individuals' actions can be credited to the information they received versus their own free will? To what degree do you believe in individual agency? To further muddy the waters, how much good is even attributable to YouTube is debatable. Other stakeholders-like society at large, content producers, governments, or advertisers-may have different perspectives on the relative good of YouTube’s AI-powered conversions. In either case, YouTube finds both outcomes good because the two consumed dozens of hours of ad-supported videos before making this decision. If you’re a committed atheist, Megan was a fool, suckered into a cult. If you’re a devout Mormon, Jake’s choice was bad, potentially dooming his soul. The challenge is that “good” is stakeholder dependent.
And, still, neither person would’ve made the change they did without YouTube’s recommendation engine surfacing just the right video at just the right time. To the best of my knowledge, neither person regrets the choice they made. What matters is this: Did the AI recommendation do good? The emotional outcome was identical for the individuals. You may or may not like religion, but that is irrelevant. When I asked him how he felt after leaving, he reported, “Hopeful and free for the first time in a long time.” Note: Both names have been changed to protect privacy. After several years of questioning and doubting, he left the LDS church. From there, Google directed him to various blogs where people questioned the tenets of the faith he had just spent two years preaching. The system then recommended a new series: “ I’m an Ex-Mormon.” Jake was sucked in-dozens of hours of videos were consumed. He had recently returned home from a mission to a far-off country and was watching the same “I’m a Mormon” videos. Jake escaped the grips of the same organization through YouTube. On that day, she reported feeling “hopeful and free for the first time in a long time.” Shortly thereafter, she got dunked in a baptismal font (not metaphorically speaking) and joined the LDS Church. I would know, I was the zitty 20-year-old missionary YouTube put on her doorstep to deliver it.
Eventually, she requested a Book of Mormon to be dropped off at her house.
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Her investigation into their personal lives surfaced a video series entitled “ I’m a Mormon.” She dove into the deep end of the baptismal font (metaphorically speaking), watching dozens of hours of sermons on YouTube. She started with mommy bloggers who had, as she described it, a “really positive energy.” From there, she noticed that they frequented the same Targets and drank Diet Coke from the same drive-throughs and had the same bleached blonde hair and went to the same church-i.e., they were all from Utah. Megan was brought into the embrace of the good lord Jesus Christ through the power of YouTube.
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