Thanks Tony, really good article and thanks for the technical suggestions which are bit above my head, but will look at them. These are surely the sort of things that have to be the default. I have just got the Apple Intelligence upgrade and was wondering what will happen when I sink into the ease of letting it do things for me.

I was thinking of booking a holiday at the weekend, and fondly remembering ringing the Thomas Cook lady and asking about holidays and she did all the work, and helped me out with other suggestions. Then we had, pretty much what we have now, where we do all the work to look and book, but there are so many more choices I can find than when it was all going through a few brokers, both great and tedious. And so soon we will ask ‘our’ AI assistant. We are thinking of two weeks in Crete, half tennis, half hiking. Today I have to look up the hiking parts and get hotels. A bit of a faff, but enjoyableish, time consuming and tricky to make the right decision, lots of looking at Trip Advisor & comments etc. The thought of asking AI to do that and, most importantly, I can trust to give me really good answers and a nice selection of links to hotels and hikes to look at feels like an improvement on the Thomas Cook lady and me trawling the internet and pretty much leaves my brain intact, I think. But don’t trust Chat et al for that as yet. (But I will be followed around the internet with ‘have you booked your holiday yet, here’s another hotel’ reminders, very annoying)

This is the bit to be worried about as you say. “The thing about personalisation is that, well done, it makes a product seem a natural fit. The mind does not resist it. But of course, it also changes the mind to which it is a fit.”

This is the same with all Addiction Economy companies. In certain circumstances, particularly regular use + stress, the use of the product changes the structure of the brain so that the product seems like the a good thing to do, and then becomes the default thing to do - ‘Self-care gone wrong’ we call it.

Arguably we didn’t really ‘choose’ it in the first place, because of relentless promo, and things like this insertion into ordinary life. But then it really goes beyond choosing and the chemical structure of the brain in relation to this and potentially other dopamine enhancing products is changed (until it is changed again, to unaddiction). This chemical manipulation is known and manufactured for and promoted and then lobbied for and sued if governments want to curtail it.

So as you are saying, we need to look for the manipulations & hooks which work for companies, but not us and disable them. Making them less ‘sticky’ and manipulative is a bit like minimum price for alcohol and sugar tax, etc, important to respond to identified harms to restore real choice and agency. Identifying the harms and the hooks when they are so indistinct and happen at a population level is the tricky bit.

Sorry long, but a nice little meander for a Monday morning. Thanks!