Why is this surprising? These systems are doing what we programmed them to do: maximize engagement with media by selecting and prioritizing the most engaging co

Why is this surprising? These systems are doing what we programmed them to do: maximize engagement with media by selecting and prioritizing the most engaging content. (That happens to be the craziest, most divisive, most triggering stuff because we are wired that way, but the algorithm doesn’t care. It just followed gradient descent and found a local minimum and gave us Qanon and cancel mobs.) This comes at the expense of friendships, relationships, hobbies, and self care. It has to because people have only so much attention and time. So it’s ruining our minds and destroying society, but at least people click ads. Acting like this is a surprise is like “this machine gun perforates things with bullets when I point it at things! How is this happening?!?!” Well, it’s because that there gun was… uhh… designed to do that… People don’t want to admit that this was a deliberate choice.