Comment by DaveZale

This is very insightful, well thought out writing, thank you (this is coming from someone who has scored over 100k essays).

Well, how long did it take for tobacco companies to be held accountable for the harm caused by cigarettes? One answer would be that enough harm on a vast enough scale had to occur first, which could be directly attributable to smoking, and enough evidence that the tobacco companies were knowingly engineering a more addictive product, while knowing the dangers of the product.

And if you look at the UCSF repository on tobacco, you can see this evidence yourself.

Hundreds of years of evidence of damage by the use of tobacco products accumulated before action was taken. But even doctors weren't fully aware of it all until just several decades ago.

I've personally seen a few cases of really delusional behavior related to friends and family over the past year, who had been manipulated by social media to "shit post" by the "like" button validation of frequent posting. In one case the behavior was very extreme. Is AI to blame? Sure, if the algorithms that certain very large companies use to trap users into incessant posting can be called AI.

I sense an element of danger in tech companies that are motivated by profit-first behavioral manipulation. Humans are already falling victim to the greed of tech companies, and I've seen enough already.