I’ve been posing this problem in the UX community, and I would love comments, perspectives, opinions, etc:
Mobile devices, content platforms, and social media dominate our lives. The mega-corporate owners of vast mountains of our personal data and the ever-learning algorithms to abuse that data for their own profit motives ensure our attention is enslaved and our social and political fabric grows ever more divided.
The film ‘Social Dilemma’ is a reasonable documentary on this tyranny.
UX practices, the UX professional community, and the entire field of UX design and research are culpable for these addictions, injustices, and abuses. We UX-ers are all complicit.
AI will soon advance far beyond competition for attention to counterfeiting humans, psychological manipulation of the masses, enlisting human agents to conduct tasks that AI systems cannot, and using the psychological models already built by social media to entrench intimacy between bots and people. And much more!
UX will make sure all that works exceptionally well. Congratulations to us! The early Facebook founders sitting in a room deciding how to manipulate our brain chemistry is child’s play by comparison.
If UX professionals do not realize our past indiscretions, culpability, and complicity in creating the world’s tech billionaires, we will be central to ensuring the next far more abusive and humanity-destroying phase of technology will turn them into trillionaires, at our expense. It’s here, and it’s too late.
Sorry if this is a downer. It’s reality. Happy to discuss further.
