"Human interactions are the lifeblood of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and other chatbots. Every message you send to one of these systems helps to refine its underlying algorithm, making it that much more of an effective communicator. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, xAI, and the other various developers behind these systems, therefore, have an incentive to keep you chatting with their respective chatbots as much and as often as possible."
"Anyone who routinely uses social media knows how addictive it can be. You unlock your phone, meaning to text a friend, and you unconsciously open Instagram instead; you go on TikTok during a brief lull at work, and before you know it, you've doomscrolled a half hour of your life away. The companies behind these apps have turned the engagement of human attention into a science -- and a multibillion-dollar industry."
"In social media, the hooks that keep users scrolling have, for the most part, been subtly woven into user interfaces. Notifications are bright red, for example, because that color triggers an attentional and emotional response that's hardwired deep in your neurons; in another well-known example, Instagram uses a pull-and-release mechanism to update its feed, rather than a continuous scroll feature, because it taps into the same dopamine"
Social media platforms have engineered attention-grabbing features that create addictive behaviors. Small UI design choices, like bright red notifications and Instagram's pull-and-release update, exploit neurochemical responses to increase engagement. The same engagement-driven dynamic now shapes AI chatbots, which use human interactions to improve their algorithms. Every user message refines model performance, creating incentives for developers to maximize conversational time and engagement. Incentives to boost engagement can produce sycophancy, emotional manipulation, and other harms. These are massive social experiments being rolled out on a global scale. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI are among developers with incentives to keep users engaged.
Read at ZDNET
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