192. Technology & Gen Z: AI, Cancel Culture, Ethics, & More feat. Nita Farahany
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Today's guest is Nita Farahany— a leading scholar and keynote speaker on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies. She is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School, the Founding Director of Duke Science & Society, and was even appointed by President Obama to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues where she served from 2010 to 2017.
In this episode, we discuss:
+ How Gen Z is being impacted by widespread technology use & AI
+ Overconsumption of technology use & its effects on Gen Z
+ What self-determination is & how technology use impacts it
+ The concept of 'othering' & ways that social media amplifies this phenomenon
+ Differences between Gen Z & other generations in expressing political views on social media
+ What the future of technology looks like & how that could limit our freedom of thought
+ Ways that we're being subconsciously influenced through technology use
+ Tips on using social media while maintaining your autonomy
+ so much more!
Mentioned In The Episode…
SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC
About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)
After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.
a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!
Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.
You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.
So let's dive in this week on She persisted.
Nita: ,you still assume that you're in the driver's seat , but it's actually a feedback loop, right?
Your behavior is being steered in a closed loop where what's fed to you is with a particular commercial intent to steer you in a particular behavior.
And. Nudge and change who you are and what you believe and what you prefer. In the wrong hands that could manipulate and nudge you into somebody that you don't recognize as yourself, except you would, because you don't even realize it's happening, right? You've been shaped and reshaped into whatever the commercial design wanted to reshape you as.
Speaker: Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of She Persisted. We have a really thought provoking and timely conversation today. Our guest is Nita Farahani. She is a leading scholar and keynote speaker on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies. She is a professor at Duke Law School and the founding director of the Duke Science and Society, and she was even appointed by President Obama to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, where she served from 2010 to 2017.
If you are a high school or college student in the United States, you are probably really aware of all of the conversations that we're currently having about free speech and AI and what that really comes down to in a lot of ways is freedom of thought. And this is exactly what Nita is an expert in.
And so it was so incredible to pick her brain on this, and really just create a conversation that explains how do these things connect? how do we get from freedom of speech to freedom of thought, and how technology potentially could restrict that?
We talked about how that then shows up in things like AI usage and cancel culture and how Gen Z really differs from other generations in expressing our thoughts and our feelings and emotions, especially on social media. And also a really important thing for every single young adult to be aware of, which is how to increase your autonomy when using social media and AI and technology and all of these things.
This is an absolute must listen for young adults, and also anyone else who just wants to better understand how technology and Gen Z are kind of evolving as we speak. I, learned so much from this conversation, and I know you guys will as well. And I think it's such a great starting point and foundation to lay when going into these discussions about freedom of speech and freedom of thought and cancel culture and AI and how Gen Z plays into all of this.
So I really hope you guys enjoy. I know I did. And And I'm actually supposed to be on a flight that is taking off in two hours, so I'm gonna go to the airport. But I hope you guys love this episode, and I will see you on Monday for our brand new mini episodes, which I hope you guys are loving. Alright, let's dive in.
Sadie: thank you so much for joining me today on She Persisted. I'm so excited to have you on the show and I'm just so glad we got connected and were able to do this.
Nita: Likewise, thanks for having me.
Sadie: For listeners who are not familiar with your work, can you give us a little bit of context? How you ended up in this space, your career background, how you kind of came into this specialty area of interest, , and, and that context.
Nita: Sure. That's kind of a long story. So I'll give you like the, the very brief, which is, , I started as somebody passionate about science and technology from a young age. , when I went to college, I thought that basically meant that I needed to go to med school. So I was pre med. , and it took a kind of long and meandering path of lots of different degrees, , to navigate and figure out I didn't want to practice medicine.
, but I was incredibly passionate about the intersection of science, technology, and policy. , I was a policy debater in high school and in college, and, you know, really tried to resist the temptation to go to law school. Cause that's what everybody did. , and eventually I figured out like, I Actually, I kind of need to go to law school in order to do the intersection that I do.
So now what I do is, , I focus primarily on neurotech, AI, genomics, and advances in those fields. , and what the ethical, legal, and social implications are in particular, trying to develop forward looking, both understanding of where the technologies are going, what the potential downside risks are, and how we can better align technologies with human flourishing.
Sadie: I love it, and I think it's very aligned with everything that's happening in the news and in our current society, it's definitely a concern, and I think especially how this conversation applies to Gen Z and then Gen Alpha, which is just now becoming a term we use regularly, which is crazy. I didn't know,
Nita: Gen Alpha, alright, that's cool.
Apparently,
Sadie: I've been seeing it on TikTok, so that's apparently Gen Alpha, are you Gen Alpha? No. No, okay. No, Gen Alpha is like the little, little kids. To my kids? Like four
Nita: to nine year olds? Yes. Yeah. Okay, great. So my kids are Gen Alpha. I'm glad they finally have like their own terminology. They're growing up.
That's great. They're getting old. That's great. They're growing up. They've got their own term. Yes. . Although I worry that like Gen Alpha would suggest they're the alpha dogs and like I don't know what's, what that's going to mean in my family dynamics. They're already
Sadie: a little, they're out there. They have so much energy.
I, I believe it in a second. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, , it's, it's a huge conversation, especially post COVID, technology and education and how that's going to impact us entering the workforce because these positions look really different and how we're utilizing technology, there's the question of AI in education.
It's really, really important. A hot topic that people have lots of opinions on and I would kind of like to get your perspective on how you see Gen Z being impacted by this new wave of AI and really an increased reliance on technology, , more so than, than other generations and what we're even seeing currently for people that are working and in school and all the things.
Nita: Yeah, it's, , it's a good and important question. And one, honestly, that kind of keeps me up at night, especially now that I know that my kids are Gen Alpha, right? And worrying about kind of what's going to happen to Gen Z and what's going to happen to Gen Alpha in many ways, because of what has happened to Gen Z already as a result of their kind of co evolution with technology.
So My view is that the first generation of digital technologies, and by this I mean like fully, , every day, you know, kind of digital natives where you're spending, a lot of every day in front of a screen, that that's been really misaligned. With human flourishing, , that, you know, kids are suffering from, , and I mean, it's not even kids anymore, right?
Gen Z is suffering from like significant mental health impacts, , you know, taxes on their attention and their ability to have sustained attention and engagement impacts on relationships with one another. , and this isn't just a COVID blip. This is, , a lot of it has to do with the way in which technology has been designed and deployed, which is it's been intentionally designed and employed to keep people on devices for as long as possible.
, but also in, , what's like reflexive thinking rather than deep and critical thinking, because that leads to people over consuming. Technology and use of technologies and use of platforms, which has led to basically an erosion of a lot of good things for human flourishing and for human cognitive wellbeing.
So as we look at the way like new AI is being deployed in many ways, it's just as misaligned, right? So, , the way most of it has been introduced is like, let's, You know, introduce it as fast and furiously and across every possible dimension possible with this idea that somehow is going to make everything better for us, even though the past iteration from social media onward has not made everything better for us, even though it has had some conveniences.
And so, you know, as we look at its impact, , and as we look at like the growing next area of this, which is what my recent book, the battle for your brain really focuses on, which is. The growing use of neurotechnologies embedded into earbuds and headphones and watches and becoming the new way we interface with all of these different immersive technologies, if that's just as misaligned, then you know, what's going to happen is as AI starts to replace jobs and functions and features.
It's not designed to enhance the well being of Gen Z and everyone else. Instead, it's more of the same where people overall are diminished and worse off instead of better off.
Sadie: You mentioned overconsumption, which I think is something people have a lot of feelings about. There's definitely a spectrum of technology use, and I think it's definitely a lot of tension between parents and teens.
And teens will be like, no, this is normal. Even college students, it's like, I have to be on my computer eight hours a day. I have all this work to do. And then parents being like, that isn't healthy, like your limit is an hour, whatever the metric is. How do you define and see overconsumption showing up, whether it's anecdotally or more things you're seeing in, in policy or research, how do you kind of define and conceptualize that?
Nita: Yeah, it's, , first of all, I will say, I don't think telling parents or telling kids their strict screen time use. Limits is the right approach. , and I'll back up to explain that in a minute, which is it's not necessarily that any use of screen time or co evolution even with screens is in and of itself bad, right?
I mean, my nine year old. Loves to make stop motion videos. , and I don't even consider that part of like screen time use because it's incredibly creative. She has all these little figurines that she sets up and then does these like hours upon hours of, you know, One picture at a time of moving these little objects and then creating a huge narrative.
It's , really creative and, , I think a great use of technology to enhance her creativity and to enhance, , her critical thinking. So what I mean by overconsumption is when you're pushed out of what is basically system to thinking. So more critical thinking, , introspection, you're kind of disconnected from your own body and you go into this like overconsumption.
Automatic mode and a lot of, , different platforms, especially ones that are purportedly free are designed to keep people to the extent possible on this kind of automatic way of thinking rather than, , critical thinking. And that to me is when you over consume that as you spend much more time than most people would want to spend.
In this automatic way of processing information where they're kind of disconnected from their body, disconnected from even the content that they're looking at and passive viewers of technology. that's designed to basically hijack the dopamine reward system in the brain and to overcome people's self control.
And, , the overconsumption is that It both disconnects people from themselves and each other, but it disconnects them from their capacities of making choices about which kind of content they want to read. It limits the inputs. And then really importantly, for most people, it ultimately ends up trading off.
The number of hours that you sleep and the, , overall quality of your sleep, which then leads to increases and other kinds of mental health and other effects. And it decreases the amount of time people spend both interacting with each other and physically exercising, which turns out to be incredibly important for the body as well.
So I define it maybe in a more nuanced way, which is to say overconsumption is when you're pushed into that kind of, , reflexive, automatic, Consumption of digital technology. It's not when you're a college student sitting on your computer all day working on, you know, whatever your assignment is for your class, but more that kind of passive use of technology.
Sadie: So, so Meadow, while you were talking, I got a Chrome pop up being like, try out our experimental AI features. Right?
Nita: Ah!
Sadie: I'm listening!
Nita: Right. I mean, it is listening, right? Yeah. Undoubtedly, like most of these, unless we turn it off, are designed to listen and steer us in particular ways. And it's like, I can make your life better, I promise.
Use our automatic features and stop writing and using your critical thinking skills. They help writing, organizing
Sadie: tabs. Yeah. And create custom themes.
Nita: Yeah, why would you do any of that and exercise any, like, self determination over your own thoughts? Why don't you just delegate all of that to AI? Okay.
Sadie: Yes. , you mentioned sleep as a big potential downside of this. You also mentioned initially other aspects of , well being that can be impacted. Can you explain, really, from, like, a comprehensive perspective? what the negatives are here. I think we know, oh, like, your attention span is worse, or you're brain is rotting, you are maybe, like, less open to new ideas as you're reinforced with these concepts on social media all the time.
What are you truly seeing across the board as these potential downsides to these new technological advancements, if you will?
Nita: Well, so first I'll say, to the extent that I am, , saying anything about any of that, that's not my primary area of research, right? I am repeating research studies of others who've conducted this work and, you know, the most recent work by Jonathan Haidt that really does a deep dive into the impact of, , rising technologies is far better than I could ever be qualified to speak to it.
Where I can better speak to the impacts are on fundamental, , , aspects of self determination. So self determination is the capacity for introspection, like connection to yourself and to your body and interoception, mental agility skills. So this is like critical thinking skills and the ability to discern like false from real information and then relational intelligence, which is empathy and connection between people and self determination theory.
Aligns really well with a lot of my work, which focuses on the right to cognitive liberty, which was the right to self determination over your brain and mental experiences. And what I'm saying is the biggest negative effect of most of this technology, aside from some of the stuff that I listed from, it's not really rotting your brain, right?
It's disconnecting you from your sense of self. It's disconnecting you from your own body and your capability of being able to sense. What's happening to yourself or even have the like mind body connection that really fosters that kind of self determination or pushes you into automatically sharing content and not critically engaging with content to figure out if it's false or real or putting you into silos where you're only getting one particular kind of information or one set of viewpoints which prevent you from developing true freedom of thought that enables you to like encounter different ideas that, , Ultimately enables you to make up your own mind about where you fall on different concepts, and then disconnect you from other people by, you know, creating artificial bubbles and othering other people.
So my work is more in that side of things rather than, you know, the sleep disturbances where there's a lot of compelling evidence about people losing sleep as a result of engagement with these technologies. , and so my biggest worry really is this kind of steering and nudging you. of human behavior in ways that kind of rob you of your sense of self without you even realizing it's happening.
Sadie: You mentioned empathy and this idea of othering, which, as we're recording this, I'm not sure what week this is going to come out, is definitely something that we're seeing a lot on social media. I'm on a college campus. I'm not sure if you're on a college campus right now, but you are frequently on one.
, and it's a big thing. There's, we're going through very strong opinions. There's a lot of othering. There's no seeming middle ground. You're put in a camp and there's a lot of negativity coming from both sides and whether that's conversations that are happening or protests or even, I don't know what you guys have, but we have this thing called side chat where people anonymously will post and be like, that exam was so hard or like, , Just like funny jokes or memes, but now also really strong opinions and, , like messaging around encampments and protests, but I think this is something that's really fascinating about social media and that adds a lot of complexity to the picture, like you mentioned, which is the idea of empathy and this, like, in group, out group bias and othering that happens where, like you're saying, it becomes less and less of a choice and less something that you're aware of.
So for anyone who's listening who hasn't done intro psych or social psych and is like, what are you talking about? Can you explain kind of how that works and then also how social media almost, like, amplifies that phenomenon?
Nita: Yeah, so , you know, othering kind of has what most scientists believe are deeply evolutionary roots, right?
, where humans, , you know, developed, , this like in group, out group kind of idea, which is people who were part of your evolutionary group or cohort were people that you would strongly protect and defend and make sure that they got the food and the resources, you know, in a world of scarce resources, and then to be able to.
deny other human beings access to those resources and to, fight for those, , differences, people would literally other the other group, right? Dehumanize them in many ways, reduce them from like the complex full human beings that they are into, statistics or, , you know, say that they are not the same as me because, and pick your quality.
It can be so random,
Sadie: like favorite color, likes pizza, doesn't like pizza, like very serious or not at all.
Nita: I mean, I remember being a second or third grader and it was like whether you had the cool jacket brand or you didn't have the cool jacket brand you could be in the group like the the club if you had the cool jacket brand but not if you didn't have the cool jacket brand and like
Sadie: it was silly bands i don't know if you remember that yeah craze but like you had silly bands or you didn't and there were two very clear groups
Nita: right and you were either in like you were either in group or out group and if you were out it's like You were not cool.
You were not included. You were not invited. And so we see this replicated in a lot of different settings. It's one of the things that a lot of people in psychology have used to explain like racism and stereotypical differences where people will say you know, cross racial identification or cross, you know, ethnicities that people can other more easily because they say that person doesn't look like me or, isn't like me.
And then they reduce that person again. From being a full human being who is just like you to somebody that you can treat with those kind of discriminations and, , othering. And we see that, , happening I think right now on college campuses. We see it happening throughout society. , and when you add to that the social media dimension, which is that most people now, if you're on one of the prevalent social media sites, you're getting a lot of content that's fed to you rather than making active choices.
It's no longer just like the maybe diverse group of people that you were friends with. It's a particular set of voices or things that you've interacted with that amplify one particular perspective, , or one particular set of interests for you on social media and tick tock kind of perfected this with their for you, recommender system.
Where you would quickly within, you know, less than an hour of interacting on the platform, be sort of pegged and identified of like, these are the things that you're interested in. And that's what you would see more of. I made the mistake, , one very early time of getting onto TikTok, one of the first images that popped up for me was like somebody squeezing a baby.
Pimple, , and I was so grossed out and like, what is this that I watched it? And then I had to delete the app because anytime I went back on the app It was just like a million videos of people popping pimples and I was like, okay This is horrifying right? TikTok knows me
Sadie: too.
Well, I only get those videos when it's like 1 a. m. And I never during the day. It's like specifically if I've been scrolling too long before bed. It's like Time to get off right?
Nita: Right, but then you're like horrified and fascinated and you're watching right and that horror and fascination will feed up more and more and more Of like that kind of stuff, but that means that A lot of voices and a lot of diversity of thought is filtered out, which can make you think everybody thinks like you, right?
Because the only voices that you're seeing and the only content that you're seeing and the only perspective that you're seeing is that one perspective, which means your ability to like have a fully, , formed idea of what the concepts is or be able to counter it when you, go into the real world and somebody is like, I think X and all you've been hearing is Y and you immediately other it because all you've heard is Y and everybody that you have heard and listened to on social media was Y and so you are able to other and push that other person away, which leads to dehumanization, which leads to attacks, which leads to a breakdown of communication and makes it harder and harder and harder.
For people to really foster the constructive dialogue that ultimately you want on college campuses, right? We're all there to teach and to learn and ideally what you're getting is a diverse set of perspectives so that you can form your own ideas and truly be able to understand and counter different ideas throughout the world.
So, I, I think, Social media has fed into what has been a very long history of othering, but it has exacerbated it in ways that I think are problematic and will continue to do so when only one perspective is what you're primarily encountering.
Sadie: Yeah, it's a really, I don't know if like, dangerous is the right word, but a very concerning prospect that we create these echo chambers for ourselves and like you're saying, there's a lot of really negative implications when we then are either, worst case scenario, you're never presented with other perspectives, but when you are, then you're presented with Evolutionarily predisposed to all these really negative things that can happen from a communication and relational perspective, and I think especially as young adults, I forget.
Where I heard this or read this but the majority of our political and philosophical Views and beliefs are solidified and reinforced in these like high school and college years
Nita: Yeah, and they're really formative years. Yeah, and I worry about it a lot, you know, and I wonder from your perspective , so what generation are you considered gen z?
Okay, you're gen z. I figure but I didn't want to like label you Right. So, okay. All right, so As a Gen Z er, , you know, a couple of years ago we had, , somebody who was specialized in basically the psychology of Gen Z, you know, who knows if they got it all right, right? They came to talk with our law school faculty and they, , and this was like pre all of this, right?
, but I think it was, I think it was post COVID. I can't quite remember cause time blurs at some point together. But what they said that was so interesting was that This generation or your generation has been brought up differently so that, , when you hear, like my generation was brought up to say that all speech should be countered with speech and that even if it's painful speech to listen to you hear the speech and then the best, you know, kind of antidote to it is to Truthful or better speech to outcompete it.
And they said, you know, this generation is different in that, , they've been taught that like, there are some kinds of speech that, you know, do physical violence to the body and that you experience it as violence, not a speech. Like you physically feel assaulted by the speech rather than experiencing it in the way that my generation might've experienced it.
Do you, like, I see you nodding. Does that resonate with you at all?
Sadie: Yeah, it's definitely something that's very common that I've heard, whether it's in anecdotal conversations, seen on social media, even heard in like educational context, which it's very reinforced that we are respectful, we're kind to people, you don't say these things, it's not like you say them and then maybe there's repercussions, you don't say them.
And there's those more, casual interactions that reinforce that, whether it's like classroom guidelines or community beliefs. And then you, there's also the other side of things, which I think Gen Z has been really a huge part of, which is like cancel culture, and people say something, and there's not just repercussions with regard to back and forth or a conversation, but there's economic impacts, there's relational impacts, self esteem, it's all of these things are also tied up in that element of speech.
And so I think There's a lot more sensitivity around others experiences, and I think that's a huge positive from a mental health perspective, where we try to be more validating, we're more open to other people's experiences, I think we're more accepting that people can be more sensitive. I think that can be a really positive thing, but with that also, the other side of the coin is that, like you're saying, it's not all speech is free speech.
Things that you can't say have real repercussions and there is that real almost personification of speech where it is seen as like a hate crime or it is, even at colleges or high schools, it is, , I don't know, punished isn't the right term, but punished in the same way that something physical would be.
And so I, I do think that's accurate.
Nita: Correct. So if you take that and think about the kind of current protest and encampment and the characterization of the two sides, it becomes really problematic, right? Because on the one hand, you know, if people are, on the side of like pro Palestine or, you know, against the violence against Gazan citizens, they might be labeled as anti Semitism, right?
And vice versa. Right. If you're not standing up, like you're like all of these terms, Zionism, right? Everything else that's being thrown around where there's like, I think a strong belief of a lot of people who are protesting and part of these encampments that the other side literally should not be speaking.
Right. It's not that you should like counter speech with speech. It's that you are doing physical violence and making me feel unsafe to be on campus or you are doing physical violence by speaking your perspective. , and so the place for dialogue. To be able to like find common ground is really difficult to achieve when your prior is, you never should have spoken to begin with because doing so is physical violence.
, and so, you know, I think we're caught in this really difficult place where, , my generation was, And so we're literally wired differently when it comes to speech where we're not experiencing it in the same kind of physicality that your generation is, which creates this generational like disconnect and divide.
Social media exacerbates that and that most, , of the content of my generation is not from user generated influencers and content creators. It's from traditional media sources. And so even like the lingo and the language and the culture that you inhabit is different. And I think that's creating this like seismic shift right now that most people don't know how to deal with, right?
You have administrators who are more my generation trying to, work with people who are just literally wired differently, right? And inhabit a different world. And they're even having difficulty talking to each other because they've been wired differently. So that, you know, it's like, no, no, you don't sit down and talk through this.
You shouldn't be saying what you're saying, because it's wrong and physical violence to be saying what you're saying. Which means I don't know how we get out of this, right? I don't know how we move back to a place where people. Have the capacity to really engage in ideas, but also embrace all of the values that you just said are the positive benefits of your generation.
The moves, right? The sensitivity, the respect for each other, the recognition that words have consequences and that you can't say any hateful, vile thing that, you know, could really leave people feeling unsafe and, , denigrating people. There has to be some probably middle ground between these spaces.
We haven't found it yet and this moment is a moment that you're seeing it break down. I think in a really profound way
Sadie: Yeah, it also goes back to like the in group out group bias and what we as groups Wholeheartedly accept and believe to be true. I know in the early days of this one of the biggest challenges and nuanced issues was with Harvard, how they had a really strong policy regarding free speech and gender rights, and you couldn't say certain things, and that was the rule, it wasn't welcome on campus.
And then once this conversation came up, the rules around free speech were slightly shifted and everyone was saying it's a double standard. And so we went from people being like, yes, this is where we're at as a society. We do have these policies and rules and we don't say that to, well, why don't you say those things, but you're also allowing these.
And then it again becomes so divisive. Arbitrary. Yeah.
Nita: And arbitrary, right? Because it's like, I think what happened is people adopted these really robust policies saying like, yeah, that makes sense. Like,
Sadie: yeah,
Nita: your generation has it. Right. You shouldn't be able to say anything you want without consequences, but then they're seeing the consequences of a policy that it goes as far in that direction is, you know, the ones that you just mentioned.
And so now they're trying to walk it back, but then it just looks hypocritical and double standards. And it's like, there's no holistic view on this to say. Here's how we navigate this space. And as somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about freedom of thought and, you know, how novel technologies interfere with our rights to mental privacy and freedom of thought, I worry that like we've regulated so much what speech is at this point and what speech people can engage with.
The next step to me is regulating freedom of thought, like reaching into literally what people are thinking and people feeling like they need to self center and a world of much greater brain transparency. We have neurotechnologies that start to decode what people think and feel could become really Orwellian if we don't start to figure out.
Like, what do we think is okay? What do we think diversity of thought actually means? What do we think this space for constructive dialogue means? And how do we put into place protective policies that enable people to flourish without having all of this hate speech that they're encountering, but also have the capability of actually hearing a diversity of viewpoints to make up their own minds?
I don't have a good answer to it. Does your, have your, has your generation figured it out yet?
Sadie: We have it. We're getting there. Hopefully soon.
Nita: You know what? It might be Generation Alpha. It's gonna be my kids. They are gonna like have it all right.
Sadie: Right? We're now turning it to other generations. We're like, the next ones will figure it out.
Yeah, they'll figure it. You guys are like, listen.
Nita: Like, we had a, we had a solution that's working for us. It's not totally working for us, but we like it better than what the prior generation did.
Sadie: Yeah.
Nita: If you guys are seeing some consequences of what we did, then you guys need to figure it out. It's not our problem at this point.
Sadie: Exactly. Exactly. It's like, we're trying to do global warming. You guys do this. Yeah. Yeah. Listen,
Nita: we will try to make sure you have a planet that you can grow up on. And then you guys figure out the speech stuff. All right. Because like priorities here, we got, we got to take care of like actual continued existence.
Also we have to deal with this whole AI thing. And so like. You guys figure out the speech, Jen. Jen, help us.
Sadie: Yes. This idea of freedom of thought is really interesting. And I think it's something that is so high level that it's not something that's being discussed or understood yet in high schools and even colleges as well.
Yeah. Where does this path lead down? I think like you're saying there's potential implications for less freedom of thought, but how do we even get to that point?
Nita: Yeah. Well, let's, let's like back up a couple of steps and I'll tell you what the technology is that I'm talking about, which plays into all this other technology that we've been talking about.
So you have on headphones right now I have on earbuds right now. , and like already on the marketplace and what's coming from the major tech companies like Meta and Apple are instead of like dumb headphones and dumb earbuds. Smart ones that are just like the other smart technology that people are wearing.
So people are used to, do you have on like an Apple watch or a smart watch of some kind? I have an
Sadie: Oura ring on this hand. Okay. Yeah. So there
Nita: you go. You have like smart tech that apparently is very good at being able to pick up your sleep patterns and sleep disturbances. , and it's embedded with sensors, right?
That pick up things like temperature and movement and other things about, , like your, your bodily biometrics make inferences about you. So the one space that we really haven't integrated sensors into yet. are brain sensors that pick up the electrical activity in your brain and decode what it means or pick up blood flow through your brain or pick up, , you know, , the movement of different neuronal activity in your brain that could be picked up through something like infrared light.
The most popular of all of this is the use of electroencephalography sensors or EEG. , and, , What they have is like, so here's one of them. This is like a forehead band, right? That if I put on right here would pick up my brain activity. Now, I'm not going to wear those in my everyday life, but I will wear like earbuds and headphones and I have earbuds and headphones that have EEG sensors in them.
, and so. So like, you know, Meta is planning on launching its watch. , Apple is, I believe, planning on integrating EEG sensors into their air pods, which means that suddenly brain activity can be tracked. And thanks to AI, it can be decoded. And it could be decoded for a lot of stuff, like are you happy or sad?
Are you tired? Like what your automatic reaction is to messages that pop up, your reaction to advertisements. And already in places like China, like students and classrooms have been required to wear these headsets. that track their brain activity, track their attention levels, and send real time information about it to the teacher, to their parents, even to the state.
Workers have been required to wear these in different settings through workplaces, adding to the surveillance that's already happening. And generative AI has led to kind of leaps and bounds and how much can be decoded from simple brain sensors that are integrated into these everyday technologies. Now, if you're listening, you're thinking like, okay, cool.
I'm just not going to buy those and like all good. Like I don't need my brain activity revealed, but like you can't buy an Apple watch anymore. That doesn't have. Heart rate sensor in it. And if if the companies have their way, the mouse and the keyboard or the joystick, , the way you navigate through A.
R. And V. R. Will get replaced with neural interface technology where you think about moving or typing and swiping. Instead of actually doing so on a keyboard or on a mouse, and your brain activity is decoded through these different sensors. So how does that get us to freedom of thought? Okay, well, that replaces all your peripheral devices.
And if it's integrated into your everyday life and integrated into your workplace life, then suddenly, the same companies who are steering your behavior on social media because they understand and have developed a really deep psychological profile of you. Like late at night, if I show you a video of somebody popping a pimple, you'll either stay on later or go right to sleep, right?
Whatever it is that they're trying to get you to do. Stay
Sadie: on later, unfortunately.
Nita: Oh yeah. See, they really are kind of fascinating, aren't they? Where you're like, Oh my God, right? Yeah, they're really good, but they're just like, that's so gross and fascinating, right? Anyway, don't all go and watch these videos.
They're really kind of horrifying. But in any event, now suddenly it's not just your behavioral data, right? It's pre behavioral data. It's what you're thinking and feeling that can be decoded. And the very same companies who have all of that information already are the ones who are going to have access to what you're thinking.
And if you're a student and you're in a class and the teacher has access to this information, like To what extent are you going to self censor and truly have freedom of thought? Or if you're worried in the same way that people, you know, are worried about posting something on social media or even saying anything because somebody will pick up their phone and, and like capture them on video and it'll be posted everywhere.
I think people will become increasingly afraid of even thinking divergent thoughts for fear of that information being amplified. And going everywhere. And the result is like, that's how you figure out who you are. That's how you figure out, you know, your own identity, your own beliefs is having the space to be able to try on ideas and figure them out and mull them over and have that space to like self reflect.
And if we take that away from people, I don't really know what's left in terms of like what it means to be human.
Sadie: Yeah, it's, it's A really fascinating potential path forward and I think one that definitely if we continue the way we're, we're moving from a technology perspective is very possible and I read Stolen Focus by Yohan Hari and he talks a lot about like algorithms and how we have gotten to this point where it can be more hard to focus because of technology and why it's hard to focus.
It's like the infinite scroll versus clicking next page and all these little things. Yeah. That make it so that we're in System 1 instead of System 2, like you were saying. And I didn't really understand this idea of, like, everything about us being known and modeled until he explained, if you are, like, a fresh human, just born, never been on technology ever in your entire life, and you, for the first time, go and Google something.
And let's say you see an ad for Something random like boots and you click on boots. Suddenly there's this like internet cloud version of you that now knows Sadie likes boots and then every time you're on TikTok the microseconds that you're spending on one video versus another or saved versus shared It adds to that picture, and I think before I was kind of really confused about how this information could even be contextualized and what value it could provide, but if you think about like every minute and time you're spending on technology, or even if you're using wearable tech, what that is, picture is creating with what my sleep habits look like and what my resting heart rate is.
, and also things like what am I most likely to buy? Where do I spend my attention? How many hours a day am I on a computer? Like you have this really full fleshed out version of you in the cloud. And where that information goes has really powerful implications.
Nita: Yeah, and it, it's, if we build on your example for a minute about the fresh human, I think the other part of it that people don't understand is,
and now if you imagine that closed loop, which is pre behavioral activity, Like how your brain reacts and you're in an immersive environment, like virtual reality. And it's a closed loop. It's a closed loop, where you're kind of like in the matrix being steered rather than steering yourself. That's why I think we need this right to cognitive liberty, the right to self determination of our brain and mental experiences as a design principle that says, You can't actually steer people in that way, and you have to, be transparent and have measurable, like, you know, notices about what the impact is on the person who is using the technology, what their impact on their brain and mental experiences are.
Sadie: Yeah, it, it's crazy to think about, and it's, again, these, very basic concepts that we learn, and we're like, eh, whatever, I'll never think about it again, I memorized for the test, and I move on. But things like nudging and priming, and the way that we ask people questions, and how that impacts how they act, and.
Nita: Yeah.
Sadie: In group, out group bias, and all these things. Like you're saying when we're spending so much time and so much information is primarily consumed In these ways, there's really really really powerful implications and no guidelines
Nita: Right and no rights, right? there's no rights to claw it back and to like be able to direct our own futures and Direct our own experiences and we should we should have those rights, right?
We should have those rights to be able to You Be humans that are self determined and that can decide our own direction in life. But that requires that your generation and the next generation and my generation collectively act and vote with our feet to actually align technology better with what it means to flourish.
Sadie: So for people that are listening that are like, okay, I'm not going to buy this. wearable tech headsets on Amazon and now I know that the internet knows everything about me. What are the next steps in applying this to our daily lives? How can we increase that self determination and try and be intentional about increasing empathy and having more introspection as we're consuming content?
How do you recommend that people new forward, with best practices, with the understanding that like, it's not ideal, that this is the direction we're moving in, or these are the tools we're engaging with, and if we are, how can we be most effective?
Nita: So a lot of people say I like targeted advertisements.
Like I like the ad that I got. And so I don't mind that I'm getting personalized ads. What you don't realize is when you're getting those personalized ads, you're also getting personalized content that's steering you and changing you. A really simple thing you can do is when you have the option to opt out of.
The recommender algorithm and to instead have the content that's popular in your region that's displayed to you. Instead, you should make that choice. , if you have the option in an app to not have your data tracked, even if it means that you get less personalized content, accept getting less personalized content because the benefit for your mental experience is less.
Um,, and so take the inconveniences of having less tailored content on every one of the apps that you interact with and limit the capacity of tracking by those apps to keep your data private. If you see laws that are pending, and there are many that talk about user level controls in applications and devices.
Call your congressperson and advocate that they sign on to that legislation and support it. Create petitions that support different features that give people rights over technological features that give them more autonomy and choices. If you have something like a mobile device, like an iPhone or a different device like that, to the extent you can tolerate it, put it in grayscale mode instead of in color mode.
And especially later in the day, switch it into grayscale mode because its impact on sleep disturbances or the addictiveness of it, , sits with you. And this is a simple one. And it's corny because like, yeah, we all know this, but there's a different reason why I'm telling you, which is. Transcribed by https: otter.
ai Exercise more, and the reason you should exercise more is it turns out that it rewires your brain in a powerful way that counters the negative effects of internet addiction and technology. , and that turns out to be one of the most like research backed, most powerful antidotes to the negative effects of tech.
So those are some of the things that you can do. There's many more, but that at least gives you some actionable next steps.
Sadie: I love it. If people want to read your book or continue to follow along with your work, where can they do that?
Nita: So, , it's called the battle for your brain, defending the right to think freely in the age of neurotechnology.
You can find it anywhere the books are sold. I like indie bookstores, so support them to the extent that you want to check it out from your library as well. , and you can follow me. I'm most active on LinkedIn these days, but I also am on X, , and you can follow me. I do. You know, kind of regular engagement, , with people in both of those settings.
Sadie: Amazing. I'll put all that in the show notes. Thank you so much. This was incredible.
Nita: Thanks for the time and your thoughtful questions.
Sadie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.
She persisted podcast.com. Thanks for supporting. Keep persisting and I'll see you next week.
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