[jplusequalt]

A smart phone was just a tool at first, but over time society has become overly depedent on them. Most of us are now addicted to our smart phones in one way or another, and that has consequences that play out across society as a whole.

AI not only provides potential to cause society to become overly dependent on it, but it's being developed by/pushed for by the same fucking people who caused our societies smartphone addiction.

Once you recognize what we've lost already, it's hard to turn off your brain and just compartmentalize this away as a "just a tool". Nothing that is adopted so widely is "just a tool," and thinking of it in those terms eliminates the ability to analyze the potential downstream effects it will cause.

[dvt]

> pushed for by the same fucking people who caused our societies smartphone addiction

Not sure where you live, but I would guess the West (where we have the luxury to be worried about "smartphone addiction"). I assure you that the net positive of smartphones, especially cheap Androids, have had a significantly more positive effect on society than negative, particularly in the developing world.

[pera]

As a person from the developing world I feel obligated to say that I find your assurance quite unconvincing: the negative effects of smartphone at this point in time is invariant globally, and whether they are a net positive or negative is at least debatable.

And in relation to your first comment, most sane people would agree that "tools" don't exist in isolation - neither come into existence out of nowhere.

This reductionist position of treating extremely complex machines with deep social interactions as a tool like any other is objectively wrong, and I believe the reasons are highly obvious but I can expand on this if you disagree.

[jplusequalt]

>But I assure you that the net positive of smartphones, especially cheap Androids, have had a significantly more positive effect on society than negative, particularly in the developing world.

My point is that the tool which was meant to augment one particular aspect of life, has metastasized into being a cancer on many other aspects of our lives, and that has downstream consequences on society as a whole.

Keeping this in mind, being a bullish on AI seems foolish.

edit: Perhaps a better thesis for my reservations with rapid technological progress: smart phones were supposed to help us adjust to society, but society instead adjusted to them. AI is positioned to do the same, and we need to ask ourselves what those changes could look like, and if they're for the better, or for the worse.

>where we have the luxury to be worried about "smartphone addiction"

I reject this, and any similar framing that amounts to "because there are other, greater problems at play, worrying about this relatively lesser problem is worthless."

A problem that impacts people is a problem that deserves attention, especially if an absolute terms the number of people impacted are in the tens/hundreds of millions.

[2snakes]

Social constructivism is tougher and tougher than “just tools.” Could the so-called “addictiveness” consist partly of the many other devices smartphones replaced? Sure, some attention economy but also just turn off the data?

[bit-anarchist]

> My point is that the tool which was meant to augment one particular aspect of life, has metastasized into being a cancer on many other aspects of our lives, and that has downstream consequences on society as a whole.

This is true of all important tools in history. From computers, to electricity, cars, steam, even agriculture. They reshape society and its practices. This has been documented multiple times. One I can remember on top of my head, but is not limited to, is historical materialism.

From an misesian perspective, this seems fairly obvious:

1. smartphones are extremely useful (being miniature computers and all);

2. people tend to optimize their actions with the best tools available (i.e. smartphones in this case);

3. people will see others using smartphone increasing and will try to leverage that for their own goals, thus further adopting smartphones (even if indirectly);

4. the economy is the sum of human action, so this progressive adoption changes the economy and the culture.

> A problem that impacts people is a problem that deserves attention, especially if an absolute terms the number of people impacted are in the tens/hundreds of millions.

The real issue with your post is that you seem to be trying to fix smartphones addiction by getting rid of phones, ignoring the benefits they brought and the previous problems they fixed.

Also, every problem impacts people.

[aleph_minus_one]

> 1. smartphones are extremely useful (being miniature computers and all);

Whether they are extremely useful or just some tool that has its uses depends a lot on your lifestyle.

> 2. people tend to optimize their actions with the best tools available (i.e. smartphones in this case);

What "best (tools)" means for you, depends a lot on your values. For example, if you value privacy, mobile phones and in particular smartphones are incredibly bad tool choices.

[bit-anarchist]

> Whether they are extremely useful or just some tool that has its uses depends a lot on your lifestyle.

The "useful" then didn't refer to the individual value judgments of all individuals, but the presence of material affordances that a sufficiently big mass of people would find useful. I admit this was not the best wording, but I forgot (and can't find it right now) the formal term that encapsulates the material qualities that others may see usefulness.

> What "best (tools)" means for you, depends a lot on your values. For example, if you value privacy, mobile phones and in particular smartphones are incredibly bad tool choices.

Agreed, but this misses the point. I didn't mean to imply that the value of things are objective (this is a misesian perspective, SToV is implied), but that some people would find smartphones useful, adopting themselves, and that would further expand the opportunities smartphones are useful to others, creating a positive feedback loop.

[jplusequalt]

>The real issue with your post is that you seem to be trying to fix smartphones addiction by getting rid of phones, ignoring the benefits they brought and the previous problems they fixed.

No, my post is decidedly not that. I'm saying maybe we should stop and think about the consequences and plan accordingly.

[bit-anarchist]

My bad, then. If I may suggest something, give a small acknowledgement and avoid words such as "cancer", which is pretty loaded.

Still, people (as in most individuals in the economy) can't simply be stopped, even less so to plan, specially in a free system such as enjoyed by most of the west. That requires a high degree of coordination and coersion that I think only Cuba and NK are currently capable of, slightly. Otherwise, people will just do their own thing, leading to a technological revolution again, given the material means.

A more practical approach is to continuously nudge the direction of change towards a better direction, constantly reevaluating approach, but avoiding having to stop everyone else.

[ForgotIdAgain]

I come from a developping country, and this whole schtick about "being concerned by tech addiction is a western luxury" is tiring.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

I'm not the person you were responding to, but I could've written the same as they did, so here's my reply:

I don't dispute that in aggregate the effect was positive. But I spend more time thinking about things which impact me directly, and I assure you that in my personal life it used to be a problem, and fixing it was an improvement.

[breezybottom]

That's an extremely broad statement to make "assuredly". I'd wager you haven't figured environmental consequences into your calculation. All the toxic waste from production is being routed to the developing world.

[witx]

These fking website sure loves to pull statistics out of the rear end