For years, technology giants Meta Platforms and Google have insisted they are mere platforms with no control or responsibility for how people use them. This is not true, according to a United States jury decision last week.
The jurors found Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and Google, owner of YouTube, liable for the harm suffered by a young user who became addicted to their platforms. This unprecedented ruling is expected to encourage more legal action against tech giants before courts in the US and elsewhere, including the Philippines.
That may be the most immediate impact of this social media addiction ruling. Another could be its implications for demands for accountability in other technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI).
While social media has been about getting our attention, AI is about shaping how we think, doing complex tasks for us sometimes at the risk of our relying on AI.
AI systems answer questions, give advice, provide information and even have conversations that can sound human. The more we use them, the more they adapt. The more they adapt, the more useful and potentially more influential they become.
In the court case against Meta and Google, the platforms were found not to be passive spaces but designed to encourage repeated use through features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, likes and notifications. Anyone who has spent hours on social media knows this. One video leads to another. One notification leads to more content.
With AI, it goes beyond how long people stay online. It extends to how much they begin to rely on the machines. AI can be really helpful in many tasks such as summarizing and interpreting information and helping you make decisions.
And like social media before it, AI is being developed to be appealing, indispensable and perhaps addicting, as well.
Technology is now judged by its effects on people, like reduced human interaction and AI dependence, not just by what it enables, like connections and access to information.
Technology will always keep advancing. The question is, will we be able to recognize the risks early enough?
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As we end International Women’s Month this March, STET – Women in Cebu Media marked the occasion with a forum yesterday, March 28, on reshaping public perceptions of women’s roles. The forum was in response to the results of a recent Social Weather Stations survey showing that 83 percent of Filipinos still believe a woman’s primary role is to look after the home and family.
The survey results surprised me. Seeing women in positions of power, I thought we had already broken the glass ceiling. Apparently, not.
The STET forum, held with the support of Nustar Resort and Casino, Fili Hotel and Nickel Asia Corp., became a venue to promote a different narrative, that women can be equal to men in opportunity, work and responsibility that may go beyond the home setting.