Zak Stein is a researcher focused on child development, education, and existential risk. He joins the podcast to discuss the psychological harms of anthropomorphic AI. We examine attention and attachment hacking, AI companions for kids, loneliness, and cognitive atrophy. Our conversation also covers how we can preserve human relationships, redesign education, and build cognitive security tools that keep AI from undermining our humanity.
LINKS:
- AI Psychological Harms Research Coalition: https://aiphrc.org/
- Zak Stein official website: https://www.zakstein.org/
It’s usually the case at least with scientific knowledge that it takes around 15 to 30 years for any given stance to become accepted or rejected and into the mainstream, where society starts to take measures with it into account. For example, paleontologists were arguing about some dinosaurs being feathered since the 80’s, but the idea was challenged for a long time until more evidence surfaced. By the 2000’s it was gaining traction and by 2015 or so you would be hard pressed to find reconstructions that didn’t include feathers.
I don’t know the timeframes for the drugs I mentioned though, but I would be expecting something similar. You mentioned issues with social media being known since 2010-2016 and we’re now starting to see a pushback from the general public, with demands about banning infinite scrolling, whether or not teenagers are allowed to use social media, etc. So maybe in another ten years… But AI moves so fast I wonder if we’ll ever catch up