Social media algorithms—primitive AIs—changed the world by being tasked with the narrow goal of maximizing user engagement, and discovered that the easiest way to grab human attention is to press the hate, fear, or greed button in the human mind, leading them to spread hate, fear, and greed in huge quantities, which has been a major reason for the current epidemic of conspiracy theories, fake news, and social disturbances.

causalpending

Speaker

Yuval Noah Harari

Evidence Quote

these primitive AIs made an important discovery. They experimented on billions of human guinea pigs and learned that uh the easiest way to grab the attention of the human being and glue that human to the screen is to press the hate or fear or greed button in the human mind.

Source

AI has hacked the code of human civilization | Yuval Noah HarariYuval Noah Harari
Created: 7/7/2026, 4:14:44 AM

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