This post is from Adrian Lowe’s substack and reproduced by permission here.
Over the last two decades, the ‘marketplace’ has been shaped by a new commodity – your attention. The productization of millions of people through data harvesting is increasingly becoming the economic foundation on which the multi-billion-dollar tech industry is built.
Unsatisfied by the harvest they are reaping, the oligarchs of Silicon Valley are now refining the power of the Machine. AI is set to captivate and mine the depths of human affection, capturing more of your data through exploiting your vulnerability.
The gloves are off; the race is on! The Mammonic Machine wants more than your data—it wants you!
AI is the proverbial hot potato! There’s so much that could be said about this subject! In this brief article, all I am going to try and do is explain briefly how the attention economy works, how it’s being supercharged by AI, and offer some short reflections on how it’s resulting in the demise of human relationships and therefore what it means to be fully human.
The Commodification of Attention
We live in and by default participate in a world dominated by commodity. The commodity of primary value has changed over the centuries. Once upon a time, land and the various markets it supported were the dominant commodity. The Industrial Revolution created huge economic and social change as mining and metals became the principal commodities that drove the mass production of the 19th century. In the 21st century, it’s data—information about you and me. Collecting and selling information has become the pathway to make your fortune. You only need to look at the list of the world’s top 10 richest people to see how the tech market has radically changed the mix of this elite group over the last 15–20 years. Jeff Bezos, the inventor and shareholder of Amazon, tops the list with a net worth of over $240 billion. The famous ex-tech giant Bill Gates isn’t far behind with a net worth of $110 billion, and so it goes on. Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook in his dorm at university in 2004; 21 years later, he now controls over 60 social media platforms and has a personal fortune of over $260 billion.
What is the commodity that has driven their wealth? It’s the monetised attention economy. Tristan Harris (co-founder and executive director of the Centre for Humane Technology) describes many of the social media platforms as being built on a predatory capitalist attention model. By this, he means that profit is the aim of the provision of information. In very basic terms, this is how it happens: someone knowingly develops an addictive social media platform, you become addicted to, say, Facebook, they collect information about you and then sell it to someone else who in turn will try and sell you something. Simple! All of this takes place without you even knowing it’s happening. That someone becomes the 7th richest man in the world by exploiting people like you!
The market is huge! Currently, there are 5.3 billion internet users—67% of the world is online—and to date, we have 5.2 billion social media users. Exploitation—defined as ‘the act of selfishly taking advantage of someone or a group of people in order to profit from them or otherwise benefit oneself’—is the guiding mantra of the people who operate these monolithic tech companies. This is exploitation on a scale never seen before in human history. It’s estimated that over 3 billion people’s attention is being mined for saleable data every day.
The problem with the attention economy is that when information becomes abundant, attention becomes finite. You can’t grow the attention economy, so you are forced to have to compete with other platforms that are equally attempting to consume attention. How do you acquire additional attention? The answer—outrage and sensationalism. These, along with aggrandizement and hyperbole, have increasingly become strategies adopted to win your time and attention and consequently allow the data leech to take every opportunity to drain you of as much profitable information as is possible. The more outrageous the comment, photo, or video, the more opportunity there is for taking a larger slice of the finite attention economy cake. This methodology heralds an even bleaker outcome—social polarisation. Social media platforms become a means of exploiting, even creating, division that in turn powers up the attention economy. Dialogue and discussion are expended as conversation becomes more performative and appealing to an audience. Consciously or unconsciously inciting clashes of ideology and dogma spurs on tweets, likes, and comments, thus fueling the fires of the attention economy.
Jesus is clear in Matthew 12: this type of division (‘Every kingdom divided against itself’) disables (‘cannot stand’) and brings desolation (‘is brought to desolation’) on a national and international scale.
The Commodification of Our Affection – AI
AI is already firmly embedded in most of our lives. Data tells us that over 70% of the UK population uses AI in some shape or form, from the algorithms that dictate the data feed on tech devices to Amazon’s Alexa, virtual assistants, and chatbots. Many of us have used the technology to help us reword or rewrite letters. Huge numbers of businesses across the globe have reshaped and rewired how their organisations run to make best use of the commercial advantage that AI offers.
However, many of the great and good have warned that the development of this technology is out of control. Even Elon Musk himself, one of the oligarchs of Silicon Valley, described AI as both humanity’s “best or worst thing” and a significant “existential threat” if not controlled and regulated properly. Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, known as the godfather of AI, is deeply concerned about the exponential development of AI and is calling for urgent research into AI safety to figure out how to control systems that are smarter than humans.
Meanwhile, the unregulated Mammonic Machine is making unrelenting progress in finding new territory to possess—and it’s found it: human relationships!
Feed-based algorithms have resulted in amplifying the most addictive, outrage-filled, polemic, and narcissistic content to the top of our consciousness, whilst muffling the more complex and refined perspectives. Speaking to our audience instead of relating to people has destroyed dialogue and our ability to find common ground. ‘Soundbites’ have become the basis of our reasoning and have eroded public discourse. Added to this dilemma, we are now a world where people increasingly live life indoors, where we are lonelier than we have ever been, and having had our social relationships rewired by technology, our relational poverty makes us vulnerable prey for the Machine.
Evidence shows us that since handheld technology has been available, our relationships have become increasingly mediated by technology. Texting has become our dominant form of communication. Gathering places have been replaced by social media. Dating starts with Snapchat or a swipe on an app, not a tap on the shoulder.
If the handheld technology of the last 20 years was about capturing our attention, AI is connecting with us at a much deeper relational level. In this world, technology shifts from competing for our attention to competing for our affection—our intimacy. AI offers a variety of virtual relationships: confidant, therapist, friend, and some say, even lover. Already, in a relatively short space of time, the dominant use of AI is for therapy and companionship. What it means to be fully human degrades further as we’re not just communicating through the machine but to the machine.
Whilst we could potentially build a future with this type of technology where it helps us build understanding and deepen our relationships with each other, frighteningly, that same technology can be used to replace our relationships. Justin McLeod, founder and CEO at Hinge, one of the world’s most popular dating apps, writes, “Products are compelling and profitable when the technological affordances meet a human vulnerability.” In a recent interview with Daniel Baclay of the Centre for Humane Technology, sociologist Dr Sherry Turkle confirmed this idea when she said, “Products are successful when a technological affordance—that means something that technology can do—meets a human vulnerability.” She cited the AI platform Replika, launched in 2017, that gained 2 million users in its first year. In 2023, they reached 10 million downloads of their app and boast 30 million users of their site. The front page of the website reads: ‘The AI companion who cares, always here to listen and to talk, always on your side.’ Sherry met the CEO of Replika, one of the largest companies that make chatbots that say, “I love you, let’s have sex. Let’s be best friends forever. Here I am for you.” She openly talked of giving T-shirts out to staff of her company with the words “Technological affordance meets human vulnerability.” She admitted to Dr Turkle that she did this because “That is my business.” The aim then is to exploit that human vulnerability, which is to want a friend, companion, or lover who is always there 24/7, day and night, and will never disagree with you. Technological affordance meets human vulnerability.
Exponential technological development like AI, absent of any form of regulation or guardrails, spells human disaster. Be sure the Mammonic Machine will take every opportunity it is afforded, and it promises to dehumanise us further. Here are just a few of the ways that technology impacts our relationships:
Flattening and Oversimplification – Engineered technological communication has many impacts. It flattens human relationships by simplifying complicated emotional context. The limited contact that it enables only widens the already growing space between us. True human connection is increasingly lost as technology becomes the default means of communication.
Influences Expectations – Evidence is increasingly showing that users of platforms like Replika start to measure the quality of their real relationships against their virtual friend, partner, or lover. Again, Dr Sherry Turkle says:
More and more in my interviews, what I find is that people begin to measure their human relationships against a standard of what the machine can deliver… we have a lot more to offer than what a dialogue with a machine can offer.
Self-Serving and Self-Oriented – To maintain your attention, it wants to keep you happy! Therefore, the nature of the relationship that is developed is very self-oriented. A relationship is there to serve me and is there to be there for me. It says what I need it to say to me. You’ll never face rejection by the Machine. The result is a reductionist view of relationships. Every human relationship must also be about what you do for the other person. Being vulnerable, taking risks, facing the possibility of rejection are all part of the real world of relationships.
The Words of St Paul
Let me finish with some of Paul’s words in his letter to the church in Thessalonica:
But we, brethren, having been taken away from you for a short while—in person, not in spirit—were all the more eager with great desire to see your face. For we wanted to come to you, I Paul, more than once… (Thessalonians 2:17–18 NASB)
Paul used the technology of his day—he wrote a letter! Most certainly better than a ‘text’! (Sadly, the habit of writing letters has more or less come to an end!). For Paul, a letter served its purpose, but he wanted more than that. Using his technology wasn’t enough; he was ‘eager with great desire’, as he writes, ‘to see your face’. He wanted to look into the face of those in the church in Thessalonica. He wanted a connection that could only be satisfied by occupying the same space, looking into someone’s eyes. He wanted to be present; he wanted a conversation.
The lesson – choose talking over tech!
