From behavior design to addiction - The Stanford course that trained the Silicon Valley developers.
The manipulation of our thoughts and behaviors has developed in social networks in part through the courses of B.J. FOGG (founder and director of the Stanford Behavior Design Lab)
To explore the different “Trusted Third Party” concepts discussed in Roger McNamee's latest book ZUCKED, and understand why the author concludes that business models based on manipulation and addiction technology should be banned, let's look at the influence of Professor FOGG, Stanford PhD and “Behavior Design” Guru.
As a behavior scientist and with more than 500 million data points of usages, Dr. FOGG confirms that emotion creates habits provided that
it is easy,
we are motivated,
and that there is a trigger, a "prompt". (Example: the bell in the Hamster's cage)
He presents his theory in a cool TED talk on "positive thinking" with a simple example: to start the day off on the right foot, all you have to do is create a new little habit: every day, as soon as you step on the ground (the prompt)... you say to yourself: "It is going to be a wonderful day.'' It is easy to do and if you believe in "positive thinking" you can be motivated. So it works, no problem, it puts you in a good state of mind; it's wonderful!
Other new habits may be created for hidden and less acceptable purposes. To illustrate this in his ethics course at Stanford, he asked his students to design a persuasive technology that is as unethical as possible... so that he could then reflect on it and anchor the right ethical principles in the minds of these future developers. One of the brilliant students of the course launched at the end of the year his persuasive anti-ethics new technology Instagram ... which he later sold $ 1 billion to Facebook.
So how does Facebook addiction work?
It starts with a notification, a harmless alert like a vibration in our pocket. By reaction, our heart rate increases and our body secretes dopamine. It is a reptilian reflex buried deep in our neocortex. At the time of hunter-gatherer Homo-sapiens, this reflex contributes to the survival of the species; a signal in the forest alerts us to danger or opportunity. Our body, with this dopamine and a high heart rate, is ready to react.
Today, the huge number of signals received by the brain through alerts on our smartphone begins to have disastrous consequences:
on sleep,
secondly on the level of stress, the life in community,
and then causes depressions
Doctors point to a new disease called Nomophobia: "no mobile phobia" where we are afraid of having lost our mobile. We are no longer capable to live without our mobile next to us. We have seen many times by ourselves two adults at the restaurant each immersed in his mobile. The Smartphone breaks the social relationship.
The ability to manipulate our behaviours and emotions becomes particularly worrying with the contribution of Artificial Intelligence. Why?
Nowadays, all networks are competing to get our attention through "growth hacking": more users, more time, more engagement.
As Cambridge Analytica has shown, with 300 likes, a network knows an individual better than his or her spouse.
To borrow the theory of BJ FOGG, the AI will be able to detect in everyone the "sweet spot" in the 3 dimensions space formed by the facility, the motivation and the "prompt", the trigger which will make us react. And there, whether it is this Stanford professor with 500 million data points or Facebook with 2.3 billion monthly visitors, we all become potentially hamsters in a cage with each our little personalized bell to make us react. Facebook then sells this to whoever wants to exploit it, our favorite brand or an extremist group.
Until now in our societies, products that create such a phenomenon of addiction and behavior modification like alcohol, gambling or nicotine have been regulated or even banned by the legislator. Roger McNamee proposes that business models based on mental manipulation and addiction should simply be banned.
There is moreover an aggravating phenomenon. When you're 100% stuck on your phone, you're 100% techno dependent to get all the info and signals you're addicted to you're eliminating all the social signs of the physical world, those feedback loops that could temper your belief and counter a suicidal tendency.
So, as Tristan HARRIS and Eli PARISER explain in 2 excellent TED talks, we end up living in a bubble of filters where we receive only the signals chosen by an algorithm, that go in the same direction, without any feedback loop or opening for different views which could moderate our opinion.
In addition, in a digital world where everything is free, where the video once finished triggers the next video ... there is no end. We hook you because it's free! It's not like in the casino where when you run out of money, you're thrown out! Youtube, Netflix or other Facebook hold you prisoner in that bubble to develop new behavior and manipulate you as they please in a world 100% free … where we could become 100% alienated.
To conclude, BJ FOGG says he is a techno-optimist and denies that he was teaching how to manipulate people. On the contrary, he wants "to help people be healthier and happier," as mentioned on his official website. To try to repair the misdeeds of some of his students, he is now putting all his energy into a new campaign to get us out of the screens, leave this addiction, etc. But the harm is there, the techniques of mental and behavioral manipulation are deeply anchored in Machine Learning algorithms that decide for us, at least 60% of the time, which video or news info we should see.
Bertrand PETIT - President InnoCherche and Organizer of TEDx Issylesmoulineaux (Oct 2019)