NEW TECHNOLOGY, FAMILIAR THREATS
Guardrails in opposition to digital media dependancy could tackle new urgency with the rise of synthetic intelligence chatbots. The highest use of generative AI in 2025 was not writing or coding, however remedy and companionship, in keeping with analysis reported on within the Harvard Enterprise Overview.
Eyeing an IPO later this yr, OpenAI introduced it should show advertisements on the free and lower-tier subscription ranges of ChatGPT.
Although OpenAI has said it doesn’t intention to maximise the time customers spend on ChatGPT, the enterprise incentive is obvious. Extra time spent on a platform means extra time to current advertisements. Chatbots seem poised to comply with the social media enterprise mannequin of monetising person engagement.
The lesson from social media is that engagement-driven enterprise fashions result in predictable hurt to some customers. AI corporations are already going through lawsuits for harming customers who developed emotional bonds with chatbots, together with these from family members of users who died by suicide. Platforms have had little incentive to repair what’s working as designed, to maintain us engaged.
Kaley’s verdict and the rising EU strategy increase potentialities that Singapore may contemplate. Your late-night doomscrolling or chats with AI aren’t simply failures of your willpower. They’re the results of platform design decisions.
The questions now are whether or not social media platforms and AI chatbots will assist customers make knowledgeable decisions and the way impactful new security options can be.
Dr Mark Cenite is Affiliate Dean (Undergraduate Schooling) at Nanyang Technological College’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and teaches media regulation and synthetic intelligence regulation on the Wee Kim Wee Faculty of Communication and Info.
