lot has been laid at the feet of social media. Exceptions were set about its ability to help us interact, thereby becoming a more social society. Promises about its ability to keep us informed about the latest news and information. Then, we were told that Artificial Intelligence would improve social media, making it both easier to use and more accurate. Sadly, those promises have not come true. More and more studies are finding that social media can be harmful, especially when people overindulge. The question we should be asking is, if social media needs to be regulated, who should be doing it?
It seems all of the promises that systems like Facebook and Twitter would make us more social have turned out to be a lie. The various social media products have made us more anti-social than ever. It seems their developers forgot one very important point in their design plan… human nature.
Having seen what social media has done to us, the American people seem to be looking to artificial intelligence to pick up the slack in their thinking. Don’t write that article or create that art; ask a computer to do it for you. I wonder, if social media helped us become more anti-social, will artificial intelligence help us to become more unintelligent?
What do these two topics have in common? It’s the American people looking for someone else to do the work for them. When social media tells you what you need to know and artificial intelligence thinks for you, can we still call ourselves “We the People”?
The Constitution Study with Paul Engel on America Out Loud Talk Radio can be heard on weekdays at 4 pm ET. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free Apple, Android, or Alexa apps. Listen to other episodes of The Constitution Study, available on podcast.
