UX INSIGHTS: AI and Addiction — Part of the Problem or the Solution?

“I think of digital media essentially as a drug. It's highly potent, highly reinforcing, highly cognitively inherent, [and it] acts on the same reward pathways as drugs and alcohol,” Dr. Anna Lembke said on a recent episode of the Invisible Machines podcast. “You know the shorter the onset the faster the offset, the more likely it is to be highly reinforcing and addictive because you've got that come up and then that fast come down.”

Author of the New York Times bestseller, Dopamine Nation, and a clinical psychiatrist at Stanford university, Dr. Lembke joined Robb Wilson and Josh Tyson on the Invisible Machines podcast to discuss the nature of addiction, pointing out that digital media addictions require a specific approach because the engines that drive them, namely smartphones, are difficult to live without in daily life. The conversation was a potent reminder that as technology takes the shape of conversational machines, a whole new approach to safety may be required.

Dr. Lembke explained the importance of radical honesty, a concept she learned from working with patients in addiction recovery. The concept sparked an exploration of radically honest AI, and the trio brainstormed around a personal AI agent that could act as a barrier, protecting users from the many competing algorithms trying to capture their attention. The radical honesty might filter social media posts that are damaging to your mental health and deliver uncomfortable truths like, “You’ve spent too much time on your device this morning. It’s time to take a walk outside.”

This kind of direct, honesty-adjusted AI might be used to offset some of the hidden costs associated with being plugged into the digital landscape in the age of AI, which Louis Byrd explored in a recent UXM article, noting that “we’re losing the ability to just be — to be present, to exist fully in the world around us, without distraction, without something artificial pulling us away from what’s real.”

The article explores the ways social media platforms have changed with revenue-hungry algorithms driving interactions, leaving a trail of anxiety and addiction in their wake. “We take our lived experiences, the most personal parts of ourselves, and share them with the world. But instead of those experiences staying true, they’re twisted into something artificial, something that no longer uplifts us.”

In another recent conversation on Invisible Machines, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, author and Google CTO of Technology & Society, put another slant on our relationship with technology. His new book What is Life? explores the origins of life, drawing parallels between the life-building chemical reactions taking place in natural chimneys deep in our oceans and pivotal work done by Alan Turing in the mid-twentieth century, alongside mathematician John von Neumann. According to Blaise, self-reproduction, and hence life, is inherently computational, and rather than being something separate from us, technology is actually an extension of our evolution.

With respect to the concerns that arise from the connections between dopamine and technology, Blaise notes that they often represent only the first half of the story. “It used to be the case that being overweight was a sign of being wealthy and now it’s starting to become the opposite,” he said. “I expect that we'll see a lot of these cycles and countercycles... I don't think it's going to be a simple story."

Stanford’s Dr. Anna Lembke, author of the New York Times bestseller, "Dopamine Nation", joins Robb Wilson and Josh Tyson to explore the perils and promise of AI through a behavioral addiction lens

Dive deep into the hidden downsides of AI-driven connectivity, exploring the significant environmental toll, heightened privacy risks, and the subtle weakening of human relationships

Whether you’re a curious technologist, a philosopher at heart, or someone fascinated by the origins of life, this conversation offers rich insights worth hearing

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