AI Recommendation Algorithms Can Worsen Loneliness
人工智能推荐算法会加剧孤独感
New research suggests that artificial intelligence AI-powered algorithms like personalized searches, recommendation systems, and AI-powered curation can make us more isolated and polarized, or worsen one's mood.
One of the most common applications of AI is algorithms that provide recommended posts on online platforms, including social media. These AI algorithms automatically filter out information and are built to serve users individualized content based on past engagement and preferences.
This results in a phenomenon of "information cocoons," "filter bubbles," or "echo chambers" in which people are less likely to encounter content that is different from their own preferences and beliefs.
In the 2006 book Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, legal scholar Cass Sunstein argued that people focus on topics that interest them and effectively create a "personal daily newspaper" that enables them to exclude or ignore other viewpoints and content.
These "information cocoons" create insular environments or "echo chambers" in which one's own opinions become stronger and more entrenched, AI algorithms reinforce these personalized echo chambers since frequently these algorithms are built to maximize user engagement rather than information diversity.
The psychological impact of these individualized echo chambers can lead to social isolation, polarization, and reinforcement of a rigid mindset.
Information cocoons can worsen depression or anxiety by reinforcing negative schemas or core beliefs, early life experiences combined with genetic and epigenetic modifications can create these negative automatic beliefs or schemas, and user-generated data will be biased to reflect these schemas.
AI algorithms then lead to the proliferation this negative bias, creating information cocoons that constantly provide more "validating evidence" or data that reinforces one's negative beliefs about oneself, others, and the world.
Leaving the information cocoon is possible by empowering oneself to seek out and interact with new information and content that directly counters negative beliefs and instead promotes self-care, healing, and growth.
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