Great technology should improve life, not distract from it

Re:Great technology should improve life, not distract from it by spuz on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @05:08PM (#17025123)

My hope is that eventually they will build in app limits into an AI system that will learn what kind of prompts work on the user and which don't. For example, is "Hey, you used YouTube 3 hours, 5 minutes already today, would you like to take a break for a while?" more or less effective than "You used YouTube more than 99.9% other people today. Maybe time to take a break?". There is so much potential here for smart behaviour nudges here that actually work. Hopefully Apple and Google will compete in this area to be the most effective.

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Re:Great technology should improve life, not distract from it by Yetanfou on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @05:37PM (#17025413)

No, I hope they don't do this. I hope the concept of personal responsibility gets cleaned up a bit and served in a new, cool jacket which makes it the thing to do for those who want to be part of the new wave. Not just as a fad but for real, the idea that the individual is responsible for his or her approach to all those life & love & happiness-sucking lures out there on the wild, wild net.

Most people will be able to learn, some will not and they'll get hooked, just like most people learn to handle alcohol or marijuana or exercise or food or... well, all those other things which - when taken to extremes - can ruin lives.

The scenario of the AI-equipped device which tells you it is time for bed reminds me of the space ship in the WALL-E movie where humanoid slugs zipped around on powered chairs from entertainment to entertainment. This is not a future I want to be part of.

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Re:Great technology should improve life, not distract from it by rashkov on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @06:03PM (#17025654)

I suspect that the more we learn about self control, the more it will come to resemble what we know about intelligence. It's heritable environmentally, genetically, and it's a learned habit. It's not evenly distributed among the population.

So with that said, we already use technology to enhance our intelligence -- reading and writing, for example, or more recently things like wikipedia and google maps. Why not use intelligence to enhance our self control as well, if it leads to more fulfilling lives?

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Re:Great technology should improve life, not distract from it by Yetanfou on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @06:35PM (#17025930)

Because it won't be self-control anymore if someone else - be it a sentient algorithm or a person - is at the controls. Mankind also used intelligence to create self-propelled carriages which most certainly enhance our mobility. That does not mean we need to give up on walking or cycling under our own power as that is proven to be disastrous for our well-being. I think - no, I am convinced - that the same goes for giving up control over (ab)use of technology to that same technology.

It might work for that part of the population which lacks sufficient self control just like insulin pumps work for that part of the population which lacks functional thyroid glands.

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Re:Great technology should improve life, not distract from it by civilitty on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @09:44PM (#17026860)

We haven't given up on walking or cycling but what about horseback riding? A tiny fraction of the population even interact with horses on an annual basis, let alone use them for anything but entertainment.

In this case, walking and cycling are like the basic functions of self discipline that almost everyone does like eating and going to the restroom. However, there are a significant number of people who need technological and human assistance with both of those things - whether it be because of age or genetics or poor life choices. All of those people are massively helped by technology.

Just because most people can walk on their own doesn't mean that we should force paraplegic to do so.

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