Technology can be hacked, but can you? Be hacked that is. Ever thought about whether or not your thoughts are really your own? That’s what I’m going to look at today. Where is technology trying to take us next? How far will AI (Artificial Intelligence) go?
I wanted to touch on this subject now because the sooner you know what’s going on the sooner you can free yourself from it’s grip….maybe. What would you do if you didn’t have your smart phone? Would you survive?
Think about how often you instinctively check your messages on social media a day. Thirty years ago, heck even twenty years ago this was NOT instinctual. Heck we didn’t even have cell phones and desktop computers weren’t portable, laptops were relatively new but cumbersome.
Things have changed and so has our brain. It is amazing to see how far we’ve come as a species but are we “prisoners of our own device”? The words from Hotel California by the Eagles keeps coming back to my mind. “You can check out but you can never leave”…the song plays on.
Technology knows us better than we know ourselves. Artificial Intelligence does not have the wisdom, the emotions or the empathy that humans do. Our existence will be enhanced with social coherence and not more apps for this or that.
We’re narrowing the human experience. The big question we’re going to have is: can we go back and treat this as something safer?
— Tristan Harris, From ‘Can Truth Survive Big Tech?’
Did we make a mistake and misunderstand or confuse the difference between pleasure and happiness? The extremes of pleasure leads to addiction. Pleasure is dopamine and happiness is serotonin. Two chemicals that the brain makes to communicate between one brain cell and another.
What is dopamine? Dopamine hits the neurons and with a constant influx of dopamine in the brain, it will reduce the number of receptors to be excited (down regulation) to avoid the over stimulation that is occurring. Eventually the receptors need more and more and more…this is addiction. Did you know that you don’t get high from cocaine but rather than the increase in dopamine that the cocaine causes in the body?
Every time you get a like on social media or you are rewarded in games you get another hit of dopamine. Just checking your messages can provide hits of dopamine. People’s receptors are being down regulated for dopamine causing addictions to cell phones and social media and the internet. Big Tech knows this and they have designed algorithms to keep you “hooked” on their programs.
How to Boost Your Serotonin: The Happy Hormone
Tryptophan (converts to serotonin)
Exercise
Sun/Vitamin D
Probiotics (good gut health)
Massage (increases serotonin and decreases cortisol)
Fasting
The marketing departments in corporations have peddle their wares to you and convinced you to buy, buy, buy and be “good consumers” by confusing the words pleasure and happiness. Their manipulation and modification of the way we perceive these words has given them access to your bank account. We have been programmed.
HOW HUMAN CAN BE HACKED –Yuval Noah Harari
Imagine in a few years where an algorithm can tell any teenager exactly where he or she is on the gay/straight spectrum. Just by collecting and analyzing data about you. One way to do it is to track eye movements…to analyze what my eyes do. Where do my eyes focus? Where do they linger? — Yuval Noah Harari
Now the plan is to have the algorithms tell your teenager if they are gay or not? This is insanity. Get your kids off these so called “smart devices”. They are reprogramming them with these things before they are old enough to know what they really want. Don’t believe me? They’re doing it to you and your kids…right under your nose. Let them be kids while they still can.
Now before AI (Artificial Intelligence) can take over the humans jobs the computers/robots will need to be program to understand the emotions, feelings and wisdom that only a human has the capacity to understand. The human will need to reinvent themselves every 10 years in order to keep up with the computers and soon robots. When you get older it will be more difficult to keep up with the technology. The learning curve will not stop. No wonder my father used to tell me the way to stay young was to learn something new every day. I never thought it would come to his computers (he was a programmer for IBM) vs. me as a human! I was a programmer too but left it twenty years ago to pursue my passion…books, writing and arts.
I already see AI art being pushed and I don’t like it. Writers are talking about AI and copyrights. At first AI art seemed fun and no one thinks it will amount to much. Or perhaps some say they can save money by using AI instead of hiring a book cover designer. You might save a dime but will it be worth the cost in the long run? Be careful what you wish for or YOU might be out of a job before you know it.
Go ahead and laugh at me for refusing to use self checkout. I hope to make a difference in every little way I can. I dare to be different. I saw this day coming.
Today’s feature photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash