The dark side of AI: social media and the optimization of addiction (Ep. 89)

Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook, was giving a talk at Stanford University, when he said this: “I feel tremendous guilt. The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works ”.

He was referring to how social media platforms leverage our neurological build-up in the same way slot machines and cocaine do, to keep us using their products as much as possible. They turn us into addicts.

F: how many times do you check your Facebook in a day?

I am not a fan of Facebook. I do not have it on my phone.  Still, I check it in the morning on my laptop, and maybe twice more per day. I have a trick though: I do not scroll down. I only check the top bar to see if someone has invited me to an event, or contacted me directly. But from time to time, this resolution of mine slips, and I catch myself scrolling down, without even realising it!

F: is it the first thing you check when you wake up?

No because usually I have a message from you!! :) But yes, while I have my coffee I do a sweep on Facebook and twitter and maybe Instagram, plus the news.

F: Check how much time you spend on Facebook

And then sum it up to your email, twitter, reddit, youtube, instagram, etc. (all viable channels for ads to reach you)

We have an answer. More on that later. Clearly in this episode there is some form of addiction we would like to talk about. So let’s start from the beginning: how does addiction work?

Dopamine is a hormone produced by our body, and in the brain it works as a neurotransmitter, a chemical that neurons use to transmit signals to each other. One of the main functions of dopamine is to shape the “reward-motivated behaviour”: this is the way our brain learns through association, positive reinforcement, incentives, and positively-valenced emotions, in particular, pleasure. In other words, it makes our brain desire more of the things that make us feel good. These things can be for example good food, sex, and crucially, good social interactions, like hugging your friends or your baby, or having a laugh together. Because we are evolved to be social animals with complex social structures, successful social interactions are an evolutionary advantage, and therefore they trigger dopamine release in our brain, which makes us feel good, and reinforces the association between the action and the reward. This feeling motivates us to repeat the behaviour.

F: now that you mention reinforcement, I recall that this mechanism is so powerful and effective that in fact we have been inspired by nature and replicated it in-silico with reinforcement learning. The idea is to motivate (and eventually create an addictive pattern) an agent to follow what is called the optimal policy by giving it positive rewards or punishing it when things don’t go the way we planned. 

In our brain, every time an action produces a reward, the connection between action and reward becomes stronger. Through reinforcement, a baby learns to distinguish a cat from a dog, or that fire hurts (that was me).

F: and so this means that all the social interactions people get from social media platforms are in fact doing the same, right? 

Yes, but with a difference: smartphones in our pockets keep us connected to an unlimited reserve of constant social interactions. This constant flux of notifications - the rewards - flood our brain with dopamine. The mechanism of reinforcement can spin out of control. The reward pathways in our brain can malfunction, and this leads to addiction. 

F: you are saying that social media has LITERALLY the effect of a drug? 

Yes. In fact, social media platforms are DESIGNED to exploit the rewards systems in our brain. They are designed to work like a drug. Have you been to a casino and played roulette or the slot machines? 

F: ...maybe?

Why is it fun to play roulette? The fun comes from the WAIT before the reward. You put a chip on a number, you don’t know how it’s goin