Unintended Consequences

Introduction

Human ingenuity has not only changed our world, it has changed, or, perhaps, is changing us. As humans evolved, we developed technologies to control, master and modify our environment. The ability to communicate, accumulate knowledge and build on previous innovations has enabled us to change nature. However, these innovations increasingly affect our biology, behaviour, society and nature (e.g. wildlife and climate). Rarely do we pause to consider the longer-term costs of innovation (Gluckman and Hanson, 2019). Examples follow:

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  To provide nourishment for a growing population, humans have developed methods to process and preserve food. Alternatively, easy access to energy-dense foods results in obesity (Thomson, 2017).

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  To protect ourselves from dangerous pathogens (‘superbugs’), we embraced cleanliness and invented antibiotics, which has led to rising rates of autoimmune diseases and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (Ventola, 2015).

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  Our growing dependence on the internet and social media has been linked to mental-health concerns and declining social cohesion (Vaknin, 2015).

Presently, we at the beginning of a digital transformation that is increasingly powered by artificial intelligence (AI), which is bound to influence every part of our existence. Although technology is agnostic, AI is influenced by our innate human biases. If we acknowledge these drawbacks, the question remains ‘how do we integrate AI and emerging technology into our world positively’? Answering this sincerely will empower us for good over evil, like how splitting the atom generated useful energy, but it also resulted in a devastating bomb.

Every emerging technology comes with two things: promise and unintended consequences. It is the latter that we expand upon in this chapter.

Every time society introduces an emerging technology, it is typically accompanied by targeted marketing campaigns overflowing with promises of improved lifestyles, autonomy and, ultimately, more time for ourselves to do whatever it is we would prefer to be doing. However, in all cases, there are unintended consequences that go unnoticed until something negative manifests that impacts our culture and society. Consider, for example, social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest) which promised to bring us together and support social cohesion. The unintended consequences include anti-social behaviours, cyber-bullying, depression and addiction. When using social media, one should assume what one posts will be public forever and may have far-reaching consequences.

The spread of information, whether true or false, has been made easier in recent years because of social media. ‘Fake news’ flies around the internet every day, and forums on all topics make it easy for people to share whatever information they wish without any form of screening or vetting. However, social-media platforms are beginning to take responsibility and are seeking ways to remediate these issues. For example, Facebook announced new steps in its ‘Remove, Reduce, Inform’ initiative (Rosen and Lyons, 2019) to manage difficult content. YouTube also unveiled a new ‘fact-check alert’ (Beck, 2019) to help users understand misinformation. Other social-media platforms (e.g. Pinterest) are also following suite.