The Loop

The most philosophical of my recommendations, I found this book wonderfully heartening because it places the responsibility for understanding and responding to the negative impacts of our internet-driven era firmly in our own hands.

Ward made me realize that I am (along with the multitudes!) a victim of “the Loop, “ which is when our unconscious tendencies feed into the business and cultural forces working hard and happily “to convince us we’re making independent choices when we’re doing the opposite.”

I was grateful for Ward's suggestions for becoming self-aware and freeing ourselves—and our futures—from the “shrinking choices” imposed by the… show more.

I have always been fascinated by feedback loops, so even though the positive feedbacks discussed in this book have a very negative impact on society, they stir my technical curiosity.

More importantly, Ward highlights a very real problem with AI technology and its deployment: the potential for automated recommendations and other nudges to move us, as a population, toward conformity and predictability. 

Ward actually writes about 3 nested loops: 1) our evolved human tendencies, 2) the exploitation of those tendencies by human-based enterprises, such as capitalism and marketing, and 3) exploitation of those same tendencies by AI tools.