Reflection 58 – Algorithms, AI, and HYPER-COMPARISONS!

We live in a world defined by the explosion of IDEAS! Not ever before has humanity experienced so many diverse ideas and contradicting thoughts and values like what we see today. Fake news and completely fabricated material are all over the Internet. In essence, it is quite hard now to know the TRUTH about anything we see. The spurt of artificial intelligence and the quick pace it’s growing with is unimaginable and honestly SCARY! Algorithms are “spitting out” for us consistently recommendations or suggestions based on our browsing history, device models, where we live and other scarier stuff. Most of us are bombarded with all of this without even being aware of what is going on . The extreme hype in social media has produced a variety of both positive and negative outcomes. I’m here to tell you about one SCARY one: HYPER-COMPARISON! But before going further, let me take you back 600 years ago.
Imagine it’s the year 1423. You live in a remote village in Southeast Asia, and for most of your life you have only dealt with the people around you in the same village. Shipbuilding and the advancement in navigation are still to appear within a couple of decades. You live in a family of six people and you‘re all engaged in farming. Your neighbor next door is doing exactly the same . To a large extent, majority of your village is in the same business and therefore most people have a relatively similar income. Your knowledge of the ENTIRE world is largely based on what you get to see in your village. People don‘t get to compare a lot because they live a very similar life. Now fast forward again almost 600 years.
It’s the year 2012. I’m finally done with my coursework in my PhD and now exploring topics for my dissertation. Bear in mind we are just a few months or maybe a year since the beginning of the Arab Spring. The whole region is now on the radar for academics, thinkers, activists and PhD students like me. What the HECK is going on in the Middle East everyone was asking. Various topics of social and economic justice are at the forefront of many of those discussions. For some reason, I am totally impressed by the topic of income inequality and decide to pursue it further in my dissertation. As I explore this new topic, I come across an interesting piece of research with regards the consequences of increasing income inequalities between people. As a quick backdrop, it turns out that most of us are interested more in relative income more than absolute income. In simple terms, we care about what we have COMPARED to others MORE than what we have in absolute terms. Moreover, this relative income discrepancy turns out to have negative physiological and psychological effects on people. Now (for the last time) fast forward 11 years to 2023.
More and more research is documenting high correlations between depression rates and the rise of social media for teenagers. In short, people are NEVER satisfied! They are always comparing themselves with others. Now people are taking pictures for their burgers, chicken sandwiches, coffee and every other thing you can think of! Since you only get to see a quick snapshot of other people’s lives, you and I ASSUME they are always having great times eating, drinking, traveling and so on. This continuous flow of images and videos of others makes people UNSATISFIED with what they have and keeps this HYPER-COMPARISONS always on the go! For parents nowadays, it’s quite a challenge raising their kids and trying to teach them to be content with what they have.
But for now, you can just close your eyes and imagine that nice peaceful village you used to live in in 1423 .