Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier

(One might wonder if AI engineers believe that manipulating people will be AI’s purpose.)

Who is to say what counts as intelligence in a program?

People who translate between languages are being told they’re becoming obsolete.

They are needed because without their manually created data, there would be no “automatic” translation service.

it is degrading the dignity, stature, and rights of real humans.

Don’t reject the internet; embrace it! The internet itself is not the problem.

Email your friends instead of using social media,

Read news websites directly (instead of getting news through personalized feeds),

Instagram and WhatsApp are still Facebook and still scoop your data and snoop on you.

“If artificial intelligence is going to surpass people in our lifetimes, if we won’t have jobs, if the future doesn’t need us, why did our parents have us? Why are we here?”

AI isn’t what it seems to be. It’s just a way of people helping people, like any other technology.

We’re driving for Uber for only a short while until the cars drive themselves.

the social media companies perceive themselves to be in an AI race above all else,

The algorithms invoke fight-or-flight emotions and play on infantile needs for attention.

If the most lucrative business of the world is the AI race, which gives machines meaning at the expense of people, then that is a recipe for global authoritarianism.

There is no actual threat to the continued existence of a vast “white” or Caucasian-appearing population.

people no longer vote for anything, but against other groups of people;

Believing in AI is the thing that could kill us.

deleters remain a minority. The addiction wave dominates.

there’s no reason to accept that the business model can’t change.

Remember, BUMMER is an automatic system that has been set in motion to optimize itself.

“empathy” to mean an ability to understand what other people are experiencing and why; to imagine one being in another’s place.