How AI Futures, Authoritarianism, & Behavioral Science Fit Together - Jacob Ward | #55
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Behavioral economics
1 min read
Central to Jacob Ward's work and his PBS series 'Hacking Your Mind' - understanding cognitive biases and how they're exploited by technology and politics is the core thesis of his research
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Nudge theory
1 min read
Directly relevant to Ward's exploration of 'decision-shaping technologies' and how AI systems can manipulate human choices without explicit coercion - a key concept from behavioral science applied to tech
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Filter bubble
14 min read
Ward's book 'The Loop' examines how AI creates 'a world without choices' - filter bubbles are the mechanism by which algorithmic curation narrows information exposure and reinforces existing beliefs, directly relevant to his warnings about AI psychosis
Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.
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My guest this week is Jacob Ward.
Jacob Ward is a veteran journalist covering the intersection of technology, human behavior, and social change. He’s currently reporter-in-residence at The Omidyar Network, writing about cutting-edge innovation and pioneering forms of restraint, and a strategic advisor on the deployment of A.I. for companies large and small. From 2018 to 2024 he was technology correspondent for NBC News, reporting for Nightly News, The TODAY Show, and MSNBC. He is the former editor-in-chief of Popular Science magazine, and was Al Jazeera’s science and technology correspondent from 2013 to 2018. Ward is a lecturer at the Stanford d.school, and was a 2018-2019 Berggruen Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where he began writing The Loop: How AI is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, out now from Hachette Book Group. The book explores how artificial intelligence and other decision-shaping technologies will amplify good and bad human instincts, and predicted the AI psychosis in which society is currently mired. Ward has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and many other publications. In addition to hosting documentaries for Nat Geo and Discovery, he’s the host and co-writer of the landmark four-hour PBS television series, “Hacking Your Mind,” about human decision-making, behavioral economics, and political manipulation. His weekly podcast The Rip Current covers the big, hidden forces at work in our lives, and he speaks to an audience of more than 250,000 viewers on TikTok, on podcast appearances, and on This Week in Tech, where he’s a regular co-host.
Buy The Loop: How AI is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back here.
Where to begin with this conversation? First I’ll say, it’s an absolute pleasure to speak with polymaths. I try to do it as much as I can on the show, and Jake is an exemplar, able to dance across topics with depth and nuance. As such, you’ll
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