Center for Humane Technology, AI Dilemma and UBI

How Technology is "Downgrading Humans" (Tristan Harris X Capgemini)

Key insights

🌎 "We need a movement to change the culture of technology, similar to the movement for climate change."
💻 The interconnected system of harms caused by technology includes information overload, shortening attention spans, social isolation, teen depression, suicide, and a post-truth world.
🌐 "Human downgrading is the climate change of culture, a system that's degrading our sense making and our choice making at a moment when we need that the most."
💭 The deepest way to intervene in the system is to change the paradigm from which all assumptions, beliefs, and design choices come from.
💻 The minimization of responsibility and commodification of human experience are fundamental flaws in the paradigm of technologists.
💻 Technology companies have a responsibility to design for enhancing people's own capacity for greater sense making and more omni-considerate choice making, rather than narrowing their experience like a sheep.
🤯 The worst case scenario of polarization is constructing a wiring diagram where everyone who feels one way about a topic is exposed day after day to those who feel maximally on the other side, but we can nurture awareness and strengthen existing brilliance to combat this.
🌍 Our problems are getting more complex and our capacity to respond to them is decreasing, making it urgent for us to reverse human downgrading and upgrade our sense-making and choice-making capacity.

The combination of ancient emotions, outdated institutions, and advanced technology requires unprecedented wisdom to guide its power and address the harms caused by attention and surveillance capitalism.

The combination of ancient emotions, outdated institutions, and advanced technology requires unprecedented wisdom to guide its power.
- The problem of the global cultural change caused by technology is complex and requires a movement, with only a small number of people in Silicon Valley having the potential to make a significant impact.
- The core problem of humanity is the combination of paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology, which requires unprecedented wisdom to guide the power, and technology doesn't have to be smarter than humans to cause significant impact.
The diagnosis of overwhelming weaknesses explains the interconnected system of harms caused by information overload, addiction, and fake news, which require a systemic solution to end attention and surveillance capitalism.
- The diagnosis of overwhelming weaknesses explains why important problems arise, such as information overload, addictive use, mass narcissism culture, confirmation bias, polarization, and deep fakes and bots.
- The interconnected system of harms caused by information overload includes shortening of attention span, social isolation, teen depression, suicide, and a post-truth world.
- The addiction problem and fake news problem are connected and part of a larger system called human downgrading, which requires a systemic solution to end attention and surveillance capitalism.
Long-term regulation is needed to address the inflated subprime attention economy and change the paradigm of technology design choices.
- The inflated subprime attention economy is a core problem that needs long-term regulation to address the selling of fake clicks, fake attention, and fake reporting to advertisers, as exemplified by Facebook's 900% inflation in one report.
- To change how technology is built, external and internal pressure from policymakers, governments, media, public, parents, teachers, employees, and aspirational pressure is needed.
- To address the biggest problems with technology, we need to change the paradigm from which all assumptions, beliefs, and design choices come from.
- Facebook's goal was to give users what they want, disrupt everything, grow at all costs, and obsess over metrics and engagement.
Technologists' commodification of human experience has led to issues like information overload and mass narcissism, but we should focus on enhancing face-to-face conversations with technology rather than disrupting them.
- Technologists' mindset of minimizing responsibility and commodifying human experience has led to issues such as information overload, mass narcissism, and addictive use.
- Instead of giving people what they want, we should understand their vulnerabilities and strengthen what we're already good at as human beings.
- Face-to-face conversations are effective in building trust and empathy, and we should focus on enhancing this existing brilliance with technology rather than disrupting it.
Urban planners must prioritize enhancing people's sense making and choice making abilities over metrics and narrow experiences, shifting from capturing attention to nurturing awareness and embodying responsibility to enhance wisdom in the attention economy.
- As urban planners for the social fabric, we must be conscious of the values we promote and design for enhancing people's capacity for greater sense making and choice making instead of obsessing over metrics and narrow experiences.
- Shift from capturing attention to nurturing awareness and embodying responsibility to enhance wisdom in the attention economy.
- Information overload is a problem caused by technology's growth at all costs, reinforcing click bait and moral outrage.
Strengthen human brilliance to combat information overload and distraction, and address issues like false urgency and polarization through social wiring and awareness.
- The speaker discusses the problem of information overload and suggests exploring a new paradigm to find ways to strengthen existing human brilliance in dealing with it.
- Design strategies to strengthen people's natural centeredness and prevent information overload by focusing on human-level solutions and wiring up relationships in a way that supports existing brilliance.
- The talk discusses distraction and how to strengthen existing brilliance and nurture awareness, using the example of two people named Nancy and John.
- John needs to get a document from Nancy, but he's focused, so we need to manage the global flows of attention in a social way to get it off his mind and not burden Nancy.
- False urgency is a cognitive bias that can make people vulnerable, and problems like polarization arise when companies prioritize growth and user satisfaction over truth and responsibility.
- To solve polarization, we should identify triggers and vulnerabilities, construct social wiring diagrams differently, and nurture awareness through small group conversations like those facilitated by Living Room Conversations.
Correspondence allows for nuanced discussions, public intellectuals need a better system to avoid trolling, and we must empower individuals to address climate change.
- Correspondence between individuals allows for more complex and nuanced discussions compared to social media, which can lead to context collapse and chilling effects.
- Public intellectuals engage in respectful, long-form conversations in public, but the current system can be designed differently to avoid trolling and learned helplessness from being bombarded with news feeds.
- The constant reinforcement of negative news about climate change through clickbait is not the best way to raise awareness and we should consider providing different news to break the cycle.
- Identify vulnerability points where people feel lack of agency and are susceptible to learned helplessness.
- To address the urgent and complex problems of climate change, we must empower individuals to make wise choices and engage in collective action, while also reversing human downgrading and upgrading our capacity for sense-making and choice-making.
Public awareness has sparked conversations about fixing cognitive biases and distraction in technology, leading to calls for Facebook to be broken up and Apple's release of screen time features.
- Public awareness and carefully crafted phrases like "attention economy" and "time well spent" have led to deep conversations and advocacy for fixing issues related to cognitive biases and distraction in technology.
- The co-founder of Facebook suggests breaking up the company due to the rapid rate of change and the "time well spent" debate arose after Mark Zuckerberg's goal for the company in 2018 was to ensure people spent time meaningfully on the platform.
- Apple released screen time features on all their devices, while some Facebook employees are standing up for the company's values.
- Free speech and paid speech are not the same, and the conversation should focus on how much can change when everyone speaks in a higher language about what that change looks like.

@9393bakus

This presentation really says it all. Amazing explanation. Greatly done. Awesome vision that we all humans should work on achieving. It is really needed. Keep it up u guys.

This is very well constructed and presented. His ability to break down individually the eight issues we must address and work on is absolutely brilliant. Tristan's initial point that electronic technology is tapping into our primordial instincts is so important to recognize. Our prefrontal-cortex, brain activity (developed thru language) is diminishing at an alarming rate. Of course all of these ideas from Tristan were outlined by Canadian Marshall McLuhan 60 years ago (a true genius) but it is people like Tristan and CHT that is bringing all of McLuhan's ideas to light.