Experiencing, investigating, writing, reporting the impact of AI on human creativity, creative people, and human-computer interactions. I’m the primary subject. I’m a user experience, e-learning, leadership, and professional development speaker, researcher, author, consultant, developer, and teacher.
So far, the impact of UX on civilization has been child’s play — with AI, that’s about to change
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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 is now advancing 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. |
Bob Berry
Experiencing, investigating, writing, reporting the impact of AI on human creativity, creative people, and human-computer interactions. I’m the primary subject. I’m a user experience, e-learning, leadership, and professional development speaker, researcher, author, consultant, developer, and teacher.
The user experience professions and practice have always fundamentally been about usability and ease of use. The two players in that story, the users and the experiences they’re trying to figure out, have both always presented shortcomings in that human-machine relationship. Either the user is not very competent or experienced or is otherwise compromised in their ability to figure out the interface. Or, the interface has not been well designed, does not use commonly accepted human factors,...
Our lives and my life become consumed by virtual experiences. The digital, simulated, artificial, streamed, and recorded consume our attention. Our devices create their own brand of madness. I need solitude, off the grid, with no wifi and no cell signal. These times and places are like private personal treasures and activities that I keep to myself, like an imaginary friend when I was a child. No one can intrude upon those moments and their silent, contemplative atmosphere. So I disappear...
Photo by Yosh Ginsu on Unsplash Today, in early 2024, new AI platforms and capabilities are causing shockwaves through the creator economy and creators’ lives. But creators can outsmart ChatGPT with a powerful advantage. Platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, as well as a number of A.I. graphics engines, are demonstrating their clear and present threat to the work of many creators. The quality, depth, and speed of AI-generated text and images are amazing and alarming. These AI...