A new study shows that kids will take riskier actions when urged onward by a robot, even if they know they’ll lose money, and if the droid gave them previous bad advice. Can peer pressure from our robot overlords get us to take helpful risks, or avoid dangerous actions?
SOURCE: Goaded by a Robot, Students Took Great Risk Than They Otherwise Would [The Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2021]
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25 replies on “Peer Pressure from Our Robot Overlords: Study Shows Droids Can Inspire Riskier Actions”
So now we need to be really concerned that Antifa will show up at one of their protests with a black plastic version of Pepper? Encouraging everyone to “blow stuff up”!
So reminiscent of the Milgram experiments– just swapping robots for “authority figures”… I guess ‘Robot Overlords’ captures it FTW!
Apple and all the other big tech are making bank on people’s data.
Smart phone=personal listening/tracking device
Apple watch/Fit Bit= even smaller tracking device
Crazy thing is, we pay them to collect our data and sell it to the highest bidder.
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, I will point out that it was a bloody droid that, with a little help from a kindly old man, prompted Like Skywalker to eventually attack a death Star and later kill his own Dad. Droids are evil!
I suppose one could argue that his dad was rather self-absorbed and tyrannical; however, he was apparently reformed in the end.
I think the phrase which is needed is ‘independent thinking’. Are kids raised and taught in school to develop the thinking skills necessary to make good decisions on their own or to simply obey, in this case, robots? One hopes for the former.
At first, I was thinking, “how is this any different from basic hypnotherapy?” You get a recording from the hypnotherapist telling you what to do. You do it, whether it’s quitting smoking or whatever. It works.
But you have to trust your hypnotherapist.
Or maybe you don’t. Because then Scott started talking about his watch. I expected him to say that after two days of being annoyed, he figured out how to disable the thing.
Instead he succumbed to it. And Apple (?) is collecting his data and using it to figure out how to get people to exercise more, eat less, and get healthier. All to the “good,” right?
I find this truly appalling. This is Exhibit “A” in how Big Tech is figuring out how to alter our behaviours to conform to their priorities, not ours, as Bill has discussed several times over the last year or so. This is not some uneducated, stupid young college student they’re manipulating. This is Scott. And he willingly submitted to their manipulation without any resistance.
We’re doomed.
I think there is a difference between suggestion and positive reinforcement. Scott already wanted to get out walking, and its reminders helped him do that.
It it was telling him to do something he did not already want to do, I would like to believe that he would ignore it or find a way to turn it off. He has already spoken about getting outside with his wife and doing a little fishing.
On the flip side, combining news brainwashing by pushing stories about things we should be doing with tech reminding us to do those things we think we want to do would be doom.
And in just a few short years, Scott’s watch be like. . .
Scot: the plus side of using college students over chimps is they are cheaper.
Downsides of using college students over chimps:
1 they are dumber;
2 they smell worse;
3 they are more likely to hurl feces.
It’s not necessarily true that college students are dumber than chimps, rather they are mode desperate for food. regarding the smell, I think you’ve met my children.
The simple fact is, you can get people to accept/do just about anything. If you just make small incremental changes. You can get people to exercise, buy products, and generally end up choosing/doing whatever the overlords tell them to do. Incremental brainwashing is still, BRAINWASHING!!!! You may consider it helpful now, but wait until you are buying that timeshare in China…and voting for AOC….
Pepper’s kinda cute. I’d be really curious to know if that has any bearing on the outcome… https://us.softbankrobotics.com/pepper
“I Always Do What Teddy Says” — Harry Harrison
That was a curiously terrifying offering from Harry. I really enjoyed it.
Might be time to dig out my HH compendium and re-read…
Robot? Blow-up?
Make Pepper an AI-driven modern sex robot and most of us will do just about anything it asks.
Boom!
First, “The Truman Show”, and then …… “The Scott Ott Show”….coming to Apple TV!
Just be careful when that watch tells you to cut the Blue wire instead of the Red one you were about to cut.
“Hey Guys, watch this!”
Well, simple prediction for 2024, @Scott talks about the elections like “of course I went, my watch told me. Of course I voted democrats like everyone around me with the same brand.”
I thought the mind rot is mostly put on the upcoming generations for the last decades from schools, now I see it found the workaround for oldsters too.
Goodbye, blue sky.
Run, Forrest! Run!
If Scott is not careful, his wife may be lonely for the next couple of years as he runs from coast to coast to coast while destroying his new sneakers.
Congratulations! You are nine videos away from posting your goal for the week! Would you guys like to shoot another Right Angle?
BB, are you thinking of changing your handle to Siri?
Surely you are serious?
I am serious.
And don’t call me Shirley.