Loneliness, overconsumption and AI

We can be solitary or isolated without being lonely. Loneliness is when there is a need or a want to not be alone, but we are anyway. This feeling isn’t necessarily easy to identify. And this is in part because digital technologies such like social media create the illusion that we’re ‘connected’ to society, when it in fact increases feelings of loneliness. But it’s also because we can satiate the feeling of loneliness by purchasing things. And in an age where buying and consuming is a highly optimized and perfected seamless process (soon to be delivered by drone), it’s very easy to habit to develop.

This is similar, as Bell Hooks writes in All About Love, to how drugs can be abused in place of love. They can allow us to experience the pleasure and satisfaction we seek. But in both cases, drugs and consumerism, it’s a temporary relief. The pinnacle of this behaviour is buying pets. This is quite literally buying a companion.

Hooks observes that “youth culture today is cynical about love”. They feel that love cannot be found, or that it pertains to an antiquated societal function to which they resist. In my opinion this is strongly tied to radical individualism, which was itself born out of free market capitalism as a mechanism to deal with post WW2 industrial capacity.

This creates a feedback loop, and one that is having catastrophic consequences, both in terms of our environment and our societies.

Now with digital technologies becoming increasingly intrusive and pervasive, we find ourselves in what’s sometimes referred to as “the race to the bottom of the brain stem”. This is the advertising business model. Its task is to predict what we want, trigger our nervous system in some way (fear, arousal, elation, anger, etc) and in doing so, bypass our rational minds to sell us something. This is called a “conversion”.

And as I watch the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence and virtual reality in tandem with a completely broken mass media and news industry (who got caught up in this business model), I see a perfect storm for society to recede one layer further backwards. Where we search in virtual reality for a solution to our loneliness, accompanied by our AI generated pets.

The case of a teenager commiting suicide to join his AI lover is evidence enough of how there is barely any layer remaining between our perception of our physical world, and our digital world. They are both, more or less, on equal footing. They’re just as important as each other, for many, the digital world is more important — and more controllable. It’s a space where the user can construct their own world. A world where they can estrange their senses from that which disturbs them in any way shape or form. In other words, an echo chamber.

But the problem is, that the technology is now too good at making us believe that we’re controlling that world, that we have agency in it, when we’re just really just following the dangling carrot.

It’s a dark post for the end of a year. I didn’t start writing it with this intention. But perhaps that’s why it came out like this. My partner and I are considering having children in the coming years. And I’m genuinely worried, as are many about the technology landscape, and in particular, how no one is able to reign in the juggernaut of big tech and their fierce momentum towards artificial general intelligence.

I hope we can improve on this in 2025.

P.S If you’re interested to stay in the loop with the work being done to slow down the rate of AI development and steer it in a safer direction, then you should most definitely check out the work the Center for Humane Technology are doing. They also have great podcast, Your Undivided Attention.