Hello and welcome to the Behavioral Design Podcast.
This season we're diving into the intersection of behavioral
science and AI. We want to make sense of the
state of AI, from understanding how humans interact with
intelligent systems to using AI to do behavioral design itself.
I'm Aline Holsworth, a health tech advisor specializing in AI
and product design. Over the past 15 years, I've
been crafting human centered products with behavioral science
at the core. At Apple, I LED Behavioral
Science for Health AI, designing and launching AI powered
features to help users reach their health goals.
And I'm Samuel Sultzer, your second Co host.
I'm a behavioral strategist specializing in hybrid formation
and designing products that drive long term baby change.
I work with leading tech organizations integrating AI to
scale behavioral design for good.
And I'm also the founder of Baby Bites, a dedicated community on
behavioral science and AI. Quick word on Nuance Behavior
where we help organizations build impactful digital products
using behavioral design. We only take on a few clients at
a time to ensure the highest level of quality for our
tailored evidence based solutions.
If you'd like to become one of our special projects, e-mail us
at hello@nuancebehavior.com or we could call directly on our
website, nuancebehavior.com. Hello, Sam.
Hey, happy New Year. Oh, happy New Year.
It's good to see you. Likewise, how are you doing?
Yeah, pretty good. You're pretty good.
Your your energy level seems a little low right now.
I might put it about 23% maybe. It's not that your energy level
seems low right now, but it's just a little bit low in
general. Would you say that you don't
like this? Have you had access to my aura
scores or like what's going on? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm ready to fill in our listeners.
Both Sam and I have taken Sandra Matz's personality test based on
the Big 5. So she included a a personality
test to, to take in her book Mind Masters.
And we decided to play along and really uncover our, our, our
inner, the inner workings of our minds and compare ourselves to
each other. And so I'm referring to, you
know, the, the extroversion score, we actually scored fairly
similarly overall. But if you if you kind of dive
down into the, the details of the the sub traits, you can see
that the energy level of Sam and myself is quite different.
That was very surprising that I had so low energy.
I'm not sure I believe it. I think I might have some beef
with with a few of our results, but like for example,
agreeableness, we we both scored pretty low on agreeableness,
though I scored extremely low on agreeableness.
I don't think I'm quite that bad.
I have, I got a 31% in agreeableness.
What? What do you think about that?
Yeah, I know. I, I think it measures up pretty
well. I think you're for an American,
you're pretty unagreeable. And I would say, wow, Yeah, in
general, I do you actually have less of AB problem than you do
with the test scores. I think they were pretty
accurate in terms of what I expected in terms of what I'd
taken previous Big 5 personality test before.
It kind of tracked pretty closely with that.
And then comparing ourselves, we can maybe go quickly like they
were in open mindedness and consciousness.
We were basically the same. Yeah, both pretty high.
Yeah, I agree. We would probably like to think
they were quite open minded and probably have data to to point
to that kind of direction. Consciousness, I will feel that
you are probably more conscious than I am if I had to predict.
But it's in like I have really high, OK, I have high
organization, you have very low. What does that mean for you?
That's just not true. That's just totally a lie.
I'm so rigid in my organization. I don't know, like I'm I'm not
sure what happened there. I'm too organized reverse for
me, and sometimes I feel like you're the one who's always a
little more prepared. And yeah, then we'll come to
extroversion. You scored super high, like
really high, like almost in the 90th percentile.
And do you feel like that's true?
Like do do you feel like I tracked with your experience?
No, no, not at all. In fact, I feel like there are a
few things about my personality that are, are just like
completely the I don't feel like an extrovert at all.
I don't identify with being an extrovert.
So when I see something like that, I'm, I'm just, you know,
kind of bewildered. Yeah.
I don't feel like a social person.
I I'm fearful of small talk. I think that I don't have an an
external monologue like I see my son, you know, like everything
that he thinks comes out of his mouth.
And I like, I don't have that at all.
Like my thoughts mostly remain inside my head and I don't like
speaking out loud very much so. So I feel like a lot of the
qualities that I would describe myself as are just the opposite
of extroverted. I think it's the assertiveness
that is like pushing me. There is I can be.
I see something that I think like someone needs to be stood
up for or like I see something wrong with the social order and
I'm very, very assertive and I don't know, maybe that's like
what's pulling that? It's not that I'm fun and
social. I think you're very fun and
social, but I do think it's interesting.
I have a theory when it comes to extroversion and introversion
because I feel like so many people, especially people that
are public figures, we're like, we're this kind of introversion
as a proud batch of honor on their like they go on interviews
to do various things and they start like, oh, you know, I'm
such an introvert, Like, oh, I'm such an introvert.
I heard recently from, I think it was Neil Ferguson, I think
the historian, he said that. And I do think there's something
around where we have a little bit of a skewed perception of
what it means to be social. But an extrovert and introvert,
I think there are certainly kind of people that are maybe what we
the finest extroverts, but those are like very close to like the
90th, 95th percentile. I think like we are generally as
human beings, socially uncomfortable in many
situations, not confident, awkward, all of these things.
I'm a homebody too, like I I don't go out.
I spend most of my time at home. And I think a lot of people do
that honestly. But then there's like a few like
the 510% of people that are actually like on the top
extroversion, they are almost casted as like the top 50% of
sort like they're kind of. And so I think that's basically
we have a little bit skewed sense of what it means to be
introverted and extroverted and I think.
That's fair. So.
Yeah. I I also think that with all the
public speaking and podcasting and such and having to like
really be in front of an audience and, and be put on the
spot and all of that, I think become more extroverted over
time. Yet my identity has not
necessarily shifted along with that change.
I still am kind of holding on to what I the the alien that I
think of myself from 1015 years ago or so.
Yeah. And I think that's very common.
And we go back to then agreeableness.
I was kind of average. You were.
Yeah, on the disagreeable side. And when it comes to neuroticism
or negative emotionality as is defined here, I scored quite
low. That has been.
Insanely low, like sociopath low.
I didn't even know you could score.
That do I even have a pulse? Yeah, 6% neuroticism.
Is that like you're just a beam of sunshine?
Well, isn't it just an absence of strong emotional kind of
reactions? It's not so much that I have the
sunshine always like I, I, I think that's the maybe the
misconceptions with this stuff is that I see.
You're right, you're right. I think I'm very unlikely to
have kind of emotional outbursts for good or bad in some ways.
And I think that's, yeah, that's probably part of that, yeah.
I cannot identify with that. I do feel anxious and
emotionally volatile at times. Yeah, well, you were in the
closest to the 50%, so you're like, you're part of the big
masses of most people. But yeah, it was fun to do this
and we did it for a reason. We did it to do a little bit of
an experiment. We've been in times of, you
know, gift giving times. Christmas, I just passed my
birthday is coming up, wink, wink.
So, so yeah, we, we thought we would do a little bit of an
experiment. Yeah, that's right.
So in the spirit of Sandra's psychological targeting and
using AI in order to do this, we decided to kind of put ourselves
up against the machines and compare our skill at gift
giving, especially to someone that we know fairly well to Chat
GPTS gift giving. And so so we took our
personality results, we fed it to the machine and we said, hey,
ChatGPT imagine that you are an amazing gift giver, renowned
across the lands for your talent at giving the optimal gift for
each person. So it's really important that
you find this this single most perfect gift for a person based
on, you know, their unique personality profile, sort of
person psychological targeting at its best.
And so we asked ChatGPT to pick out this optimal gift.
When I asked ChatGPT what to get you Sam feeding in, feeding it
into the machine. Well, I won't tell you my
reaction. I will just tell you what it is
and you can give me your reaction.
And don't, don't. This isn't like you know, when,
when you're opening an actual present from someone where you
have to hide your, your, your displeasure.
You can tell me exactly how you feel.
The. Percent.
And what do you say, Like 00 percent agreeableness, like
turning down the dial? Yeah.
Exactly Exactly 100% honesty OK, so and the machine said the
single most perfect gift for Sam is a membership to a creative Co
working or makerspace that offers workshops in various
crafts design technologies. Or creative pursuits.
OK, that's a little bit creepy. That's a little bit creepy.
Guess what? Guess what I just bought myself
2 days ago? A workshop at a local kind of
crafts to like how to make your own wooden furniture.
No way. You got it for yourself.
You should have let me get it for you.
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Wow. So you like?
It that is kind of, yeah, creepy, But that is a great
gift. It's literally what I was
thinking about over Christmas or in the New Year's.
Like, OK, what is the one thing I want to do this year?
I want to do a little more building with wood, wood, wood
stuff. That's awesome.
Well, I did actually ask a follow up question.
I asked, OK, can you, can you give me a specific makerspace?
And I also, sorry, I gave it your address.
I said make it conveniently located so that Sam can get to
the space and it found one. It's called the very special
name of Stockholm Makerspace. So I don't know if there's a
better one or if the one you found is more interesting or, or
better suited to you. But yeah, if you go to
makerspace dot SE, check it out. I've already been there.
I was there three days ago on that website and.
Yeah. It was my topic, but it's a
little bit further away from my home, so I show us another one
that was a little bit closer by, but that was the place I wanted
to go and and get membership for you.
So wow. OK.
That is actually like really really.
I'm starting to feel threatened by Chat GPT's success right
here. I'm like, I don't know.
I did the same thing for you, obviously.
So we'll see what this, if it had the same impact.
It's a very specific 1. So I will be very surprised if
if you had this same reaction. I have this kind of output
written as a kind of a ad. So I'll read that out for you,
Eileen. Elevate your library with a
personalized X Libra stamp. A touch, a touch of whimsy and
not of modern design. And a whole lot of you actually,
every book that you love for the discerning reader who values
creativity, organization, and a personal connection to their
collection. Because a great book is forever.
And so your mark should be. I this is for stamping my name
in all of my books so that if someone steals.
It like this personalized etching thing that you can kind
of like stamp, I mean, and a whole lot of you your name onto
every book. I love it, you know, my poor
books. I don't know, I'm like, I feel,
I feel a little bit torn because I'm so like, you know, you don't
deface the the books, but I guess this is allowed.
But it's beautiful and it's on the inside of the book.
So it's actually only when you open it, right?
Yeah, Yeah. And it's something you can also
then when your your kids eventually, obviously they're
going to read the books that you loved in the same way as you
love them and they will say mommy's name.
Yeah, I should have the date in there as well so they know when
I read it. Yeah, you.
Can place it into context. OK, so now that we've shared our
ChatGPT gifts, I'm excited to share my the gift that I made
and chose for you. Are you ready?
Yeah. OK, so this this took it's a
little bit elaborate. It took a lot of thought and
passion on my part to put together.
So my gift to you is a semi guided world tour, tour of the
world for you and your fiance to take together.
So yeah, an entire month of curated travel experiences, all
expenses paid because you know, why not?
And it's going to be filled with surprises all along the way.
So let me just let me outline some of your schedules.
So it's it's only partially scheduled.
I want to make sure that you have some, you know, you know,
some, some chances for whimsy, let's say.
So it's so you don't have an overly packed itinerary.
You can have some spontaneity. Yeah, But I've also scheduled
some meetups with my friends in each place, and I might drop in
periodically along the way. My, my Swiss family is gonna
take you on a Steamboat tour of Lake Tune.
Why? My Mexican friend's gonna make
you poblano mole in Oaxaca and occasionally you're gonna have a
surprise activity plan. So you might just come across 2
bikes and someone to guide you through the countryside.
So just like biking from 1 vineyard to another, you don't
even know what's coming. You're just gonna say, oh, what
are these bikes for these? They've just shown up in my
path. You may have to see a movie that
I recommend in a historic theatre.
So it's a movie that's that's very special to me.
I can't tell you what it is not yet.
You may have to strip down in a Turkish bath house while you're
in Turkey. You may need to participate in a
dance competition in Brazil. And to make you feel good about
all of this excess and the luxury that you're experiencing,
I've planted some volunteer activities.
So. I thought you were going to say
a donation to give well, and that I'd actually have to do
some work. I have to actually volunteer.
You do, but it's fun work. It's it's stuff like helping
children build Lego houses, teaching martial arts class.
I think I think you're going to really enjoy the gift of giving.
Wow, that is one heck of a gift. We have our wedding and
honeymoon probably coming up this year.
We haven't fully decided, but the plan is for that to happen
this year. When we're looking at like, what
would the honeymoon potential look like?
And now you know. Sounds like.
No, you've got it planned. I was thinking about that.
And paid, I see. And paid, yeah.
So. Happy honeymoon.
Thank you. Thank you.
It is funny because I took a little bit different approach to
this. Like I misunderstood the
direction and actually bought you gifts.
So like I think I think literally tomorrow or the day
after you should get 2 gifts and one one is from which you now.
Know in this way I actually get to keep the stamp.
You get to keep the stamp and you also get a really silly cute
calendar with great gratitude and pun related stuff in it So.
Thank you, I love it. I'm sorry I didn't actually get
you anything. Well, I, I think it's funny,
like in terms of if you got me, that would be really cool.
But I felt in terms of, you know, speaking about negative
emotionality or neuroticism, I had a peak in neuroticism.
Like trying to figure out like what to actually give you.
Like I was feeling really on the spot.
That was your 3%. That was my Yeah.
I don't know. You peaked at 3%.
I peaked because it was tricky with these things.
Like it's feels like you're upset so much about like how
well you know the other person, how to encompass some person
into some kind of small gift of sort.
It was tricky. It was really hard.
It was high. Pressure.
I totally agree and have it make sure that it's personalized
shows that I know some things about you and that it's not too
generic. And I love that yours both like
has a nod to my sense of humor and love of language.
And also it's sort of a reminder.
So when I see it every day, I'll think, oh, I'll think of Sam.
And it's like, there's a lot of, I don't know, behavioral science
lessons and baked into both of our gifts.
Yeah, but this leads us into the episode, which was really fun
and probably. Yeah, I've said it before, one
of my favorites it's it was really interesting episode
getting into some, I think when it comes to AI, really relevant
and interesting stuff. So yeah.
Do you want to introduce our guest?
Yeah, love to. So our guest, Sandra Matz, I've
been a big fan of for a very long time.
She's a professor at Columbia and computational social
scientists. So you may not have come across
many computational social scientists.
She's pretty special in that regard.
And she's she's known for her work on psychological targeting.
So we talk a ton about psychological targeting in this
episode, essentially how big data can be used to create a
unique profile of individuals and then leverage that profile.
To influence some persons behavior, the person that the
profile is made of of course. And so this is often also
highlighting our focus on AI this season, often using AI
methods to do both of these parts, the creating of the
profile and then tapping into that.
And Sandra just had an excellent new book come out called Mind
Masters. And I don't have any doubts
you're going to be running to get it.
Put your Put your personalized stamp into it after you've
listened to our conversation. So consider this our
personalized gift to you, our dear listener, as we continue to
explore AI this year. So let's get into this
conversation with Sandra. What happens?
To. Murgatroid.
Sandra, welcome. Well, hi, thanks for having me.
It's so good to have you. You are the expert on
psychological targeting. Would you agree with that?
I'd hope so. I mean, at least I've spent the
last 10 plus years studying it, so it would be nice to be called
an expert in that space, yeah. We think so.
I'm going to go ahead and say for sure you are and in one of
your papers you have this very nice diagram where you really
outline what is psychological targeting.
You know, how does it come about?
What are the steps from creating a psychological profile to then
using that profile to create an intervention or or some sort of
messaging campaign using the profile to target people,
whether they're users, customers and so on?
Can you tell us a little more about what goes into these two
steps? Like like give us a breakdown of
psychological targeting? Yeah, more than happy to.
And I'm impressed by the knowledge of the framework.
But yeah, for me, that the way that I think about like this
ability of computers to really, what I think of it, like
penetrating our mind and our psychology is both reading and
writing for the computer nerds, it's like trying to understand
what's going on inside our mind, but then also writing into our
mind and potentially changing the way that we think, feel and
behave. So psychological targeting, the
way that I think about it and the way that I describe it
essentially unfolds in these two steps.
Step #1 is that based on all of the data that we generate?
And that can be really anything from the more explicit identity
claims that we post on social media, right?
Like what's our last vacation? The pictures that we share?
All the way to. These more subtle and implicit
behavioral residues, all of the traces that we leave without
really thinking could be anything from the GPS records at
your phone captures to like your credit card swipes or your
Google searches. We don't typically think about
it twice when we create those traces.
And all of these behaviors can be used by algorithms and AI,
machine learning to translate what you do online into who you
are. And I'm happy to go and go into
this. I'm a little bit more in a
little bit more detail later because I think it's really not
not rocket science. So often times we think of like
AI as like this black box and just like magic that happens
inside. Not true.
So I'm happy to give you some examples later, but that's
really step one is we translate what you do online into who you
are on a more psychological level.
And I think that's often times where almost like the the public
narrative stops. But we talk about, well, to what
extent can algorithms understand who we are?
To what extent is that an invasion of our privacy?
For me, the second part is almost more interesting.
The second part is, OK, now once I have an understanding of who
you are, what your motivations might be, what your preferences
are, your fears, hopes, dreams, whatever you kind of name it, to
what extent is that that insight allow me to potentially change
how you think, feeling behaves. So that's the second critical
part of psychological targeting. It's not just understanding,
it's really trying to push you in a certain direction that
either you might want to go in anyway and I'm just helping you
get there, or I'm going to try to push you in a direction that
you otherwise wouldn't have wanted to go in.
And I think that's the slightly more sketchy part that we
probably going to get into. Yeah, and no doubt.
Do you have any like go to examples that you kind of
explain this through in terms of how this can look like in the
real world? Yeah.
So let me also again break it down into these two parts.
So I think the first part of to what extent can machines read
what's going on inside your mind?
What I love about this work is that when you open the black box
and you look into what this machine learning models are
doing, and a lot of the relationships are actually
pretty intuitive. And so if you're more
extroverted, for example, you talk about weekends, parties
more on social, you often times use all caps because you're
shouting everything that that you say.
You spend more money on going to bars and pubs.
So I think those relationships in a way are pretty intuitive,
right? And then if you look at
introversion, that would be people talking about reading,
talking about the last fantasy novels that they've read or
role-playing. So as you can see, like the the
stuff that introverts talk about is like much more reserved and
quiet. So for me, that just means that
there's really good face validity.
What algorithms are picking up on often times isn't magic,
right? It's all of the traces that we
leave and they make sense. But there's also some that are a
lot more surprising. And I think that's in a way the
contribution of algorithms to the predictions that we can
make, but also to our understanding of psychology,
right? If we just learn that extroverts
go to parties more, well, yeah, we probably knew that before,
but one of the examples. That I like.
That is somewhat not as intuitive is the use of first
person pronouns, for example. So I me myself, I remember that
Jamie Pennebaker is one of the researchers that studies the use
of language in the context of psychology.
And he present or he posed a question at a conference of
psychologists. So like a room for the
psychologists. And he was like, well, what do
you think? Like the use of first person
pronouns is predictive of. And I think all of us
immediately jumped to narcissism.
So I think all of us were like, it's got to be narcissism if you
kind of you want to talk. About yourself, you just want
all the. Attention, it's got to be
narcissism. And then he totally flipped the
script and he's like, well, it's not narcissism, it's actually
emotional distress. So if you talk more about
yourself, it's a sign that you might be, for example, suffering
from depression. And in a way, it sounds
counterintuitive in the beginning, but then when you
start thinking about it a little bit more, might think to the
last time that you felt really depressed and down, you were
probably not thinking about how to solve the world.
'S. Problems, right?
Because like what you're focused on is on the self.
You're like, OK, what's wrong with me?
How am I going to get better? Why am I not going to get
better? What do I have to do to get
better? So all of this inner monologue
that we kind of go through then just creeps in the language that
we use to talk to others and to talk to the world.
So for me, those relationships are really interesting because
we might not have ever discovered them without the use
of algorithm. So that's really kind of part
number one examples of how do you get from the stuff that's on
the traces that we leave in the digital world to who we are on a
more psychological level. Step #2 and this is really what
I think the bulk of my work has been focused on in the last 10
years is the So what question, like what does it mean?
Like how can I use those insights to influence your
behavior? And we started on relatively, I
would say neutral grounds if you want, in the marketing space.
So essentially the, the question of if I understand, for example,
that you're more extroverted or more introverted, can I use
those insights to get you to buy certain products?
So one of the the very first studies that we did was we
teamed up with them with a beauty retailer in the UK.
It was like an online store and their goal was simply to get
women to click on an ad, go to the website and buy something.
It's a pretty simple goal. And the strategy that we used
was essentially saying, well, if we understand based on someone's
digital footprint that some of the women are more extroverted,
some of the women are more introverted, can we simply
change the way that we talk about the product, Right.
So we're not necessarily picking certain products that we think
are more extroverted or introverted.
We're just changing the way that we describe the beauty retailer.
So for extroverts and the creative team came out with
something like dance, like no one's watching, but they totally
are playing with the need of extroverts to be the center of
attention. So it's like people on the dance
floor. It was like saturated.
Colored a lot was happening and then for introverts it was like
one woman in front of the mirror and much more reserved and
quiet. Like beauty doesn't have to
shout. So the idea was that if we
target extroverted women with these extroverted messages that
tap into the needs of extroverts, they would purchase
more often than And that was exactly what we found.
And it. Actually like a pretty.
Substantial effect. So I think back in the day, it
was about like a 50% increase in the number of purchases, which
directly translated into how much money the beauty retailer
made, which is like a again, like obviously you're not
changing a die hard iPhone user into an Android, but you can
certainly change there's. Nothing that can do that.
Yeah, exactly. There's nothing I can.
Do that there's. Maybe the other way, but it.
Certainly means that you can make certain behaviors more
likely than others, right? And I think that's.
A pretty powerful tool and you can imagine that I'm just
talking about products right now and marketing.
But maybe we could use it to change your opinion about
political candidates. Maybe we can use it to actually
forgot to get you to save more instead of spending more.
So in a way. It's like this tool that once I
tap into your psychology, I just.
And understand what you want and what you desire.
I can nudge you in a certain direction.
That's really cool. And I guess from my point of
view, there's this kind of like 3 examples that I've come across
throughout the years in terms of like people maybe talking about
your research kind of without knowing about your research.
So I think way back when, I think the first example was
people talking about Minority Reports where there's this film
with Tom Cruise. He walking around and you know,
he sees ads that are basically like personalized for him as he
was walking on the street. So he's used an ad and it
changes based on kind of who's looking at the ad.
And then you have kind of a more somewhat more recent example by
having more of a one that became quite well known was this
example of some household start to receive some form of products
related to pregnancy. And then it came out that, you
know, the daughter of the household was pregnant but
haven't told the the. Parents and so on.
And it was some form of, you know, it's with Walmart or, or
Target or. Target the infamous target.
Example the infamous target example, right?
And and then maybe like the the one example that I don't know if
exactly it mirrors what and I get to hear if you agree, but
it's more recent example is with with TikTok, because it's so
salient for people that you know how to interact with something,
it becomes very kind of mirrored in their interaction.
So like they they watch certain things and so on explicitly.
And then it kind of like leads to certain things, but also
implicitly like some things. Like people talk about how
TikTok helped them realize they were bisexual.
They didn't know it. But then they spend like that
was a big John Oliver segment actually this week on TikTok
where someone claimed to have like, I didn't know that I like
girls. But then I started TikTok and I
I realized that. So yeah, those 3 examples, does
any of those are more interesting to you or does any
of them kind of familiar, especially for you?
Well, first of all, I love that you totally skipped over
Cambridge Analytica, which I think is the.
Example that I that I typically get but it's not.
Surprising because I got my PhD at Cambridge on the on the topic
of psychological targeting. So I get mixed up with Cambridge
Analytica all the time and it was actually in some way helpful
for us because. We've been talking about this
potential tool that has the ability to change people's
behavior. For a long some time, trying to
warn policy makers of like, here's something that you might
want to look into. Nobody cared until Cambridge
Analytica happened and suddenly people did wake up to the
reality that maybe there's a tool that we should be
considering and looking into a little bit more.
So that's just the example I like because it really opened up
people's minds to this ability of algorithms to penetrate our
psychology. Now, all of the other ones I
think are great examples. So the Minority Report in a way
I like because it was the first one that painted this this
future, but it felt like science fiction, like it's never going
to happen. And yet it's exactly where we
are right now. There's this funny quote that I
really like, which is the difference between science and
science fiction is timing. And that feels like one of these
examples. Right, so it used to.
Be science fiction right now is just science, and it's.
It kind of speaks to a point that I like to make.
Sometimes when I give talks is usually someone in the audience
was like. Well, I'm so excited that I'm
not on Facebook or any of the other social media platforms
because. Now nobody can track me and
nobody can use these technologies and psychological
targeting to influence me and I it brings me so much joy.
Do you have a phone? To tell people like you know
exactly, are you breathing? Are you kind of spending money
with your credit card? You have your smartphone that's
with your 24/7, but there's 50 million cameras in the US.
They kept you pretty much everywhere that you go there's
unless you live. Out there in the.
Woods and grow your own vegetables.
There's just no way that you can escape it, and I think Minority
Report in a way shows. This right, it's like not that
he kind of. Post something on social media
and someone infers that you're extroverted.
Yeah, he just walks. By you get like your record
faces recognized. He connects it to everything
that they know about you just by looking at the data traces that
you leave unintentionally. And I think that's the world
that we live in today. So that's why I like like this
example in particular and the Tik.
T.O.K. Example.
There's not as much research on the assumption that algorithms
can know you better than you know yourself.
But the interesting part here is I think that algorithms just see
a lot more, right? So what did?
The power of AI comes from the fact that they observe your
behavior, but they also observe the behavior of.
Millions of people so there's certain patterns that they
couldn't detect is like these digital Sherlock Holmes's and
that you might just not have access to and because there's
all these social pressures to. Conform in a certain way.
You just might not be top of mind, but an algorithm just
observes everybody and now you can see OK based on these kind
of more subtle cues. Maybe that's something that I
recommend and maybe that makes you wake up to a reality that
you didn't even see yourself. So I think it's an interesting
one that we don't fully understand yet, but I think
we're getting there. If you'll allow me, I want to do
a quick sidebar on Cambridge Analytica.
We actually, we talked about this in our episode with Gordon
Pennycook when we were talking about misinformation.
So totally different context. And can you help us set the
record straight? This also applies to a general,
you know, question we have in terms of impact.
What is the impact of psychological targeting in
general? You know, some in some cases
quite powerful, in other cases maybe less.
So for the individual, what is your take on how much of an
impact the targeting that Cambridge Analytica did?
How much did that contribute? To.
Donald Trump being. Elected.
I mean, there's like a few thoughts that I have on on
Cambridge Analytica. The first one, I mean, it's not
impossible to say what actual impact it had on the election.
I think for me, that was never the question.
I was actually really annoyed with the news coverage of like,
well, did they do it? Did they not do it?
I'm like, I don't care. I know that the technology
exists. So even if they didn't do it the
next around, someone is going to use it, right?
And if we believe, and I think this is getting to your
question, do I think that again, we can convince a die hard
Hillary supporter to suddenly vote for Trump?
It's probably not, right? This is just we're not changing
people's core identity. We're not kind of flipping you
around and turn you into a person that's someone totally
different just by showing you a few personalized ads on
Facebook. That's not how the world works.
But most of the time we don't have to do that.
But most of the people are either undecided on who to vote
for or they're kind of considering whether to go out on
Election Day at all to, to cast their votes.
So I think in that election is like 40% of people didn't even
bother to go to the ballots and then cast their votes.
So can we probably nudge them to either change their opinions on
the candidates or decide to stay at home, which is what what the
Cambridge Analytica campaign was trying to do?
That's probably true. And if you look at the
elections, most of them are won by really small margins.
So I don't think it's like this magical warfare tool that it was
made out to be. But I do think that it could
potentially have an impact even on something as big as
elections, just because that the margins of error of which side
wins are just so, so small. So that's one thing.
The other one that I think is really important in that the
coverage was it was always made out to be like this data leak.
So I think that the, the public narrative was like, Oh my God,
someone hacked into Facebook, they got all of your data and
that was like this tragedy that wasn't true, that the way that
the data was acquired was perfect.
Well, partially, and I'm going to explain in a second why it
wasn't. But back in the day, because
Facebook was trying to connect everybody, like the moment that
I consented to have you access my profile, you also through the
Graph API got access to the profiles of all of my friends.
So Cambridge Analytica didn't have to kind of ask every single
person legally to get their Facebook profile.
They could access that through my consent and through my
profile. Now, the problem with Cambridge
Analytica was that they collected the data for different
purpose, right? It was an academic collecting it
and then selling it on to Cambridge Analytica.
So that was the illegal part. But the initial way that the
data was collected was actually in line with the terms and
conditions of Facebook. And I think that's something
that we need to understand. It often times the way that our
data is being captured isn't through a security breach or a
data leak, right? Often times we think, oh,
someone is going to hack into our e-mail or it's going to get
our data. Most of the time we just sign
away our data by accepting the terms and conditions so that you
download a weather app on your phone and you happily accept
what the app to tap into your microphone cause.
The gallery, the terms and conditions.
Nobody's reading it exactly like nobody has the time.
It feels like a leak because you didn't know that was possible,
but it wasn't actually. It's just poor design of privacy
and security in the 1st place, right?
Exactly. And I think that makes a big
difference. Yeah, cuz you can't really go
out now legally and prosecute those companies because
essentially you consented to it. So I think maybe we're going to
get into this later, but I think we just have to design the
redesign the entire process right now we're just saying,
well, we're going to tell you a little bit about about which
data we're collecting, what we're doing with it, and then
you take control over how to manage it.
It's just impossible. Right.
So even if you understand exactly what's happening, what
data they're taking, you don't have the time to manage your own
data across all of the services and products that you're using.
It's just impossible. If there's no default level of
of privacy protection that is is kind of at a good level, it's
just not going to happen. Yeah.
OK, Tangent over on Cambridge Analytica.
Yeah. But a very good tangent and I
think, you know, I'm obviously we're super tempted to jump into
talking about AI. This isn't.
But actually I want to continue to lay a little bit of
foundation because I think it's interesting given that we're now
introduced kind of what you mentioned before about it's kind
of like call it 2 main steps. It would be interesting to look
at that a little more in detail because I think especially when
it comes to, you know, citing another maybe example that many
people have seen is this film that came out maybe two years
ago, Social Dilemma was it out maybe two years ago?
And they have this very strong visual kind of metaphor where
they're showing this main. Protagonist of sort and you have
this one with social media company that like through his
interacting in the world, it'd be like a more and more of a one
to one kind of representation of him in their system.
So initially it's like very kind of not really detailed and as
the film progresses, like it becomes a very kind of 1 to one
representation of of him, but it's still kind of interesting
in terms of like, well, what does that actually mean?
Like what if we wanted to build representations of people?
What are the things that we might look at?
And I think you cited the idea of simple, you know,
extroversion versus introversion, which is a kind of
a some form of personality trait.
And I guess it'll be interesting to talk a little bit more about
that. You know, you could imagine that
the type of things that could be included could be everything
from I guess people's kind of preferences, maybe both kind of
reveal and stated it could be as we're talking about personality,
maybe some other things. I just want to see what would
you say is kind of the main thing that is being used at the
kind of the first stage of like creating that picture?
Like what are the main things that usually kind of part of
that equation? That's a great.
Question and and the extroversion versus introversion
was a gross oversimplification, I should say.
So I'm. A personality psychologist.
And and psychometrician by trainings that would have get me
kicked out of the Society of that.
But I think there's a number of different steps.
So one is, I think like any social scientist or behavioral
scientist would say, well, why don't you just go from behavior,
past behavior to future behavior, right?
If you can observe someone's entire behavioral history, why
don't you just use that to make predictions about what they're
going to do next? And that's totally true, right?
I think we don't necessarily always need the intermediary
step of saying we were translating your behavioral
profile into something like the Big 5 personality traits, your
moral foundations, your values, whatever it is.
Now, I do think that's actually sometimes it's helpful because
it gives us a human understanding, right?
And a lot of the interactions that we have, especially in the
second step when we're trying to influence behavior is still
driven by humans. So if I'm a marketing creative,
I might take the insights into who someone is on again,
personality level to create some messages.
Now we're going to talk about AI in a second.
So some of this is actually being automated now by by these
large language models, but there's still something that is
really meaningful, especially if we want to bridge this kind of
experience between offline and online world to have an
understanding that humans can make sense of.
Now, I think you mentioned personality traits, moral
foundations, preferences. So the extent to which these
psychological traits are relevant and helpful when we
think about catering content actually very much depends on
the context, right? So the big 5 are often times
helpful because they're so broad, like anything from music
preferences to vocational interest.
They kind of explain some of the variance.
They're also really crude, right?
Like if I think of like personalities, like you meet a
person in the street, you know nothing about them.
Knowing that they're extroverted is actually helpful because it
gives you at least a sense of who they are.
The moment that you get to know them a lot better, you throw the
big 5 out the window because you don't think about your spouse is
like, Oh my God, he's so extra. You know them so much better and
on every little detail that you don't need this anymore.
So I think this is one thing, but you can also imagine that
other contexts, for example, in think about health, I don't
think the big 5 are necessarily the main driver you could think
of, well, if I wanna change behaviors, maybe I'm gonna go
for regulatory focus. Are people more motivated by
prevention or by promotion? So I think this very much
depends what you're trying to measure on what you're trying to
accomplish in terms of behavior change.
But even that I still think assumes that we like the static
version of ourselves, right? I think a lot of personality
psychology initially was let's just capture someone's
dispositions. Let's just see what are the
stable dimensions that underline our behavior, thoughts and and
feelings. And I think personality
psychology has shifted quite a bit over the last years to an
understanding that I think is first of all, a lot more
accurate and a lot more nuanced. So this idea that we're not
always the same, right? This is always the debate going
on between personal psychologists and social
psychologist, where personality psychologist, it's the person
and social psychologist was like, no, it's the context that
determines how we behave. Could it be both?
Exactly. And I think that's a model that
we have now personality that I really like.
So the way that we think about it today is it's not just a one
time measure. It's essentially if I sampled
how extroverted you feel behave across many different points in
time, what I would get is a distribution, right?
So you have like a distribution that's looks relatively normally
distributed. You have a lot of stuff that's
centered around a certain mean. So if you're more extroverted,
your mean is higher. If you're more introverted, your
mean is lower. But it still means that we give
you at least a chance to be slightly more extroverted than
you typically are. Maybe when you're in a social
context, right? You're at a party, there's other
people, maybe you feel more extroverted than usual.
If you're at the library or at home, you probably feel less
extroverted because there's just not as much social stimulation.
So I think what this means is we can get a much more one's
understanding of a person in a given point in time.
So I understand that most of the time you're relatively
extroverted. But right now I can adjust my
prediction of who you are because I know that you're not
in a social setting. And this is true for humans,
right? So we can make these
adjustments. The same is true for algorithms,
like if an algorithm gets hold of your time behavior history,
they might get a good sense of your general disposition to be
extroverted. Now, if they can combine this
with knowledge of some of the momentary data that you
generate, right, it can tap into your GPS.
You can figure out that right now you're at a certain
location, it's a bar, it's usually buzzing full at 5:00 PM
and that's where you are. Maybe it's going to adjust the
prediction to make you a little bit more extroverted.
And who knows, Maybe that's the time when I should be targeting
you with like an extroverted product because you're self
concept of extroversion is activated.
But it could also be that I should actually wait when you
feel a little bit less extroverted than usual, maybe
that's when you're craving more extroversion and that's when you
kind of buy more likely to buy. So I think this dynamic
understanding of of personality is where we're headed.
That's cool. And this allows me to do a
little bit of a kind of my turn to do a little bit of a detour
or like tangent, no, but because you mentioned distribution here.
And I think that's super interesting when it comes to
personality, because I think a lot of people, if they're not
like you or if they're not as experienced with personality,
they might be exposed to some of the less.
How do you say good models? But more popular.
Less robust and where people are placed in kind of very rigid.
Dichotomies. Let's name it.
It's the MBTI. Yeah, what we're talking about.
Well, that's one of them. I'm in Sweden and so in Sweden I
have this hate relationship with a book that is best selling book
for the last 10 years, which is about the disk model.
So it's even worse the disk honestly dynamic.
Yeah. So but whether they're placing a
collar or as a letter, they're placed in that specifically.
But obviously with Big Fiber Ocean, the whole interesting
part is that we're placing a continuum of sort or
distribution rather. And you know, looking at my own,
I think it's interesting where there's 2 dimensions where I'm
like at really at the kind of like high percentile, but some
of them I'm kind of close to the middle.
And I guess technically I would probably be categorized as an
extrovert. You're.
Definitely an extrovert, Sam. I score maybe 55.
I score like 60. Ludicrous.
Yeah. Definitely an extrovert.
I don't know about that. But then like on something else
like conscientious, I'm like at 9095 or something.
So like technically if you have to bookmark me, I would be an
extrovert and conscientious, but.
Yeah. They're very different in terms
of where I am on the distribution.
And so that's my question basically like how does that fit
into this? Like is that?
Yeah, yeah. It's such a great question cuz
technically, right. So if you start with the data,
we're like million dimensional. So every single data point is in
a way a dimension. We're already reducing
complexity into five if we kind of take the big 5 again, which
already reducing complexity into 5 dimensions.
So that's a huge kind of step into kind of limiting the the
amount of information that I can can see about you or can use
about you. And then as you said with like
some of the the questionnaires that have intuitive appeal,
right? People love love labels.
People love. Something that they can stick
to, they can use it to explain. You can identify with that in
case with the MBTI, but the problem is that you're
dichotomizing something that shouldn't be dichotomized.
And most of us are somewhere in the middle, right?
There's very few people are extremely extroverted.
Very few people are extremely introverted.
So most of us. Hovering somewhere around the
middle of the distribution, if that's the cut off, we're just
gonna make a lot of mistakes. I think in the context of
personality, what's interesting, and I don't think we we actually
know the answer yet is how do we best personalize, right?
Again, like if I were to talk to my marketing colleagues, I think
the typical argument, the days, the more information you have
the better. So if that's true, I would be
much better off taking your entire big 5 personality profile
because it tells me something about your extra version, your
conscientiousness and everything.
However, it could also be true that the ratio of signal to
noise, it just becomes much, much higher.
So lower, so cloudy. Exactly.
It becomes too cloudy because like what does it tell me?
If you're like a six sixty 60th percentile on on extra version,
not entirely show what you make of and it might be better to
just go for the ones that are extremely salient, right,
because the the the ones that are extremely salient.
So you're 95 percentile of conscientiousness.
That's probably something that's driving your behavior quite
dramatically, right? Because it's a core of who you
are. Otherwise you wouldn't have take
strongly agree on pretty much all of the questions.
And so we might actually be better off ignoring some of the
trades in the middle and just focus on the ones that seem to
be driving your behavior the most.
And again, we don't really know yet.
I think it's an interesting question that we haven't looked
into empirically. My hunch is that it's one of
these instances where discarding some of the information could
actually be could actually make you better off.
Super interesting. Thanks for diving even deeper
there. That's.
Awesome. And we might get back to this in
the context of AI, cuz the one thing that we know is like from
some of my recent work is like language models like ChatGPT are
extremely good, like crafting messages.
If I give them, if I tell them, look, Samuel, he's extroverted.
Like just come up with an iPhone ad that's tailored to his
extroverted personality. Extremely good.
But I don't even need to tell it.
Here's what extroversion is all about.
It's obviously right. The entire Internet, so it
knows. What?
Extroversion is all about, and it's great at crafting these
messages. Now one thing that we tried
initially was to say, OK, let's add more new ones because now
that we are not relying on human creative people, maybe we can
just take the full personality profile and we could just do
this for every person, right? So I can create a very specific
ad that's just targeted at you and like in your 5 dimensional
personality space. Now what happened is that
essentially the way the Cha Chi PT did it, it just kind of took
every single trade and had like one sentence for every single
trade. So instead of integrating and
saying, well, OK, maybe an open minded extrovert is very
different to an open minded introvert, right?
The open minded introvert goes to the museum, open minded
extrovert is out there in the street with like a flamboyant
outfit. So they didn't really, it just
kind of additively said, OK, here's a sense fixed version,
here's a Center for openness. And in that case, it just, it
felt super awkward, right? It's not a very natural ad that
you see when it's just like 5 different statements.
Maybe the language models are going to get there at some
point, but at least right now you're better off just focusing
on one when you use these generative models.
So it's, it feels to me like we have a tendency to focus a lot
on the person of the personality and their values and so on.
But as you mentioned earlier, there's also a, a really
important part of the environment, the situation that
a person is in. And this can both influence
their personality and you know, what parts of them are amplified
and so on. But are there other aspects
that, that are influenced by the environment?
What can we sort of learn about behaviour?
What can we predict from something like GPS, someone's
location, or other sort of passive indicators of where
someone is, for example? I mean, it's super interesting
because first of all, I mean, GPS is just one of the data
points that I personally really like because it says so much
about who you are, right? So like GPS records, for
example, can tell you whether someone might be suffering from
depression because they're not leaving the house as much
anymore. It is much less physical
activity. So there's actually somewhere
that you can translate context into something that looks more
like a disposition or like a psychological dimension.
But also context is something that I think is really
interesting when we think about privacy because like one of the
big questions right now, right? If you look at all of the
companies like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, I think one
of the, the challenges that they have when it comes to privacy is
that they collect these vast amounts of data.
They collect essentially your entire history, everything that
you've done for years and years. And that data becomes incredibly
valuable, right? Because it's like a holistic
picture of everything that you've done.
So the moment that there's a data breach or security breach,
all of the data is gone. So one of the questions, I think
that's partially driven by regulation and the companies are
worried that at some point that it's just gonna stop, that
they're allowed to collect all of this behavioral data.
I think a lot of these companies are looking into alternatives
where you can fade out some of these behavioral histories by
considering context. So what I mean by that is
essentially, instead of me taking all of the data that
you've produced over the last two years and saying, well,
you're more extroverted or you're more introverted, maybe I
just skip most of that and say, OK, you're right now, forget
about who you are right now. You're in a context that should
make you relatively extroverted again, because you're at a bar
and there's, it's a social context and there's many people
and you're probably attuned to what other people think about
you and so on. So forget about who you are,
what the starting point is, we're just gonna take this
contextual information. And so with some of my students,
in collaboration with one of the bigger companies, we actually
tried just that. So we tried.
Can we equally well predict what someone is gonna do on the app
next by using these contextual cues and fading out some of
these more intimate personal histories?
And what you see is that it actually works pretty well.
So because a lot of the insights that I think you get about
people's psychology are captured by context, right?
So if I find you at a bar, well, that also means that your
extroverted disposition is probably a little bit higher
because you're at the bar and that was your place of choosing
most of the time. So a lot of the information that
we can get from context also tells us something about the
psychology without us having to collect and store for all
eternity all of the traces that you've ever created.
So I think it's an into context is like this very interesting
window into what's going on inside our mind in a current
moment that allows us to potentially protect user privacy
a little bit better while still being able to make predictions
about your behavior and the next steps that you might take.
That's true, though even introverts do get.
Once in a while, once in a while.
I know it is. Actually.
Some of my earliest research was looking at like the extent to
which aligning your spending with your psychology makes you
happier. And we created this experiment
where we forced introverts to go to the bar and have fun with
their friends, and it turned out that their happiness actually
dropped. After.
Doing so. So it's not only did it not make
them happier as it did for extroverts, it just actually
made them more miserable. So wow, Yeah, I I hear you.
OK, awesome. And in terms of those sort of
real time opportunities for interventions, can you think of
any other examples of like, you know, based on data from our the
sensors that are in our watches and our phones and those sorts
of things like if you're exercising or like, like what
other things can you be doing that we can learn about that can
maybe trigger or silence some kind of health intervention?
Yeah, for example, I think so for me, it's actually the
combination that's the most interesting part, right.
So if I can use your GPS records, for example, to say,
well, it looks like you might be entering a depressive episode
cuz again, you're deviating from your behavioral routine, you're
spending more time at home, you're not seeing friends as
much anymore. I have a better sense that you
might be struggling. Now the momentary aspect comes
in when I see you might be struggling and you're currently
walking close to a park. So now the best intervention is
just to tell you, like, look, seems like maybe you're not
having a great day. Why don't you just go and spend
some time in the park? And I think that's the
combination of like, what are the predictions about who we are
a little bit more generally? Plus, what's the context that
we're in right now that could drive interventions that just
are so much more convenient and so much more personal?
Yeah, much smarter. I'm so tempted to be like
putting you against the wall and being like, OK, if you would be
trying to get some person to, let's say, go to the gym and you
have to choose like either, you know, could lose equation.
You know, either you can take the the data you have on the P
the person, or you can only take the data you have on E the
environment. Which one would you choose if
you can only take one? I would probably, and for
different reasons, I would probably go with the context
because the reason for my context is so interesting in
this specific space is that it usually cues habits, right?
So the moment that I know you typically exercise, if this
happens when you walk past the gym, when you kind of get up
early in the morning, those are all cues that in a way get me to
a habit. So they kind of allow me to
trigger a habit that it's much harder to trigger with with like
the P component, with like the dispositional component.
So I think in the context of exercising, just because we know
that habits are so important and so critical in this case, I
would probably go with a contextual one.
What? What I want to do here is kind
of your thinking process around that, like how you think about
that. So that's really interesting to
hear. And yeah, I guess now should we?
Yeah, talk about AI. I mean, it's funny cuz I think
we've been talking about AI all the time, by the way.
So I think anything that's it's like machine learning is just a
subset of of AI. So, but I think there's like a,
yeah, a qualitatively different level of AI that we see now.
And I'm happy to get into that because I do think it's changing
this entire game of psychological targeting quite a
bit. Yeah.
Where would you start in terms of unpacking what has maybe
changed in some ways your world with the advancements of AI the
last few years? Yeah.
So I think we can actually go back all the way to the
beginning and the framework that we established, right?
If you think back those two steps, one is we take data and
make predictions about who you are.
And then the second step is based on these predictions, we
try and change your behavior and AI.
So now I'm talking mostly about generative AI.
So large language models like ChatGPT, they allow us to, in a
way, scale and democratize both parts.
So the first one, back in the day when I started, you
essentially had to have a proprietary model, right?
So if I wanted to get from your Facebook likes to your
personality, what I needed was, first of all, the data set that
got me access to your Facebook profile, your Facebook likes,
your status updates in combination with a self report
of your personality, right? So you also had to complete a
questionnaire to tell me, here's how I see myself and here's how
I would describe myself. And then I was able to start.
Training these models that say, OK, maybe if you like Lady Gaga,
you're more extroverted, if you like manga, you're more
introverted. But for that, I had to have the
data set and I had to train the model.
Now Fast forward to today, what you can do is you can
essentially just take someone's social media profile.
So just take all of those the status updates that someone,
someone post their Facebook likes, you can pop it into
ChatGPT and you can just ask it, OK, what do you, who do you
think a person who posted the stuff on Facebook and who
followed these pages, who do you think they are in terms of the
big 5? Just give me a numeric rating
from 1:00 to 7:00 on each of the five dimensions and it does a
remarkable job. So we just published this paper
showing that the accuracy by which ChatGPT, which was never
explicitly trained to do that, right?
So and nobody ever told ChatGPT get me from status updates to
personality profiles, but it still can do so with almost as
high in accuracy as if you train the model explicitly for this
purpose. And that is a total game
changer. So first of all, it means that
anyone can do it right. So back in the day, it was like
this outcry of well, Cambridge Analytica got access to all of
this data and Oh my God, they have these models like a 15 year
old kid in the parents basement can now scrape your data online,
run it through championship BT and essentially have like the
psychological profiles of millions of people.
And not just a big 5. But if you've, if we forgot to
collect moral foundations in our original data set, that's it.
We're not going to be able to predict it like chat.
GPD can predict whatever you wanted to predict.
You're not limited to the Big 5. You're not limited to what you
what data you collected initially.
It just knows everything about any psychological trade and you
can take it even a step further, right.
So back in the day, we just looked kind of passively and
looking backwards retrospectively at someone's
history to make predictions. Chat bots have the ability to
dynamically interact with you. So some of the more recent work
we actually looked at, well, can we train a chat bot to have a
conversation that still feels natural, like getting to know
someone on a first date, and then based on that conversation,
make predictions about who they are.
And those predictions are far more accurate than anything
we've had before, which makes a lot of sense, right?
Because if the chat bot figures out, well, I don't really know
enough about his level of contentiousness, can just ask
questions that go in this direction.
So it's like almost a self-guided dynamic scouting of
someone's personality. So that's Part 1.
Part 1 is that we can now democratize and scale the
prediction of psychological traits just by having these
tools available. But that's obviously only part
of the story because it also generates content, right?
So if the moment that I know is amazing at generating content,
that's why it's called AI, believe it or not.
But so once you give it like the instructions to say, well,
create me for this is like an example that we used in one of
our studies, come up with a short political speech
advocating for climate action for someone who scores high on
the moral foundation of fairness, which is like, again,
the way that people think about what's right or wrong in the
world, often times doesn't happen in the Big 5 personality
space, but more in the space of moral foundations.
And it does a remarkable job. So I don't need my team of
creed. That's right.
When I started, I had to head up a creative team that sits down,
comes up with a pictures, comes up with the text that goes on
the ad. And that was extremely limiting.
So with a beauty retailer example that I gave earlier, we
only tailored the ad that people saw on Facebook.
The moment that they went to the website, it looked the same for
everybody because we just clearly didn't have the
resources to now customize every single page on the beauty
retailer's website. Could be totally done today.
At the moment that I know that you're extroverted, we could
just in time create an entire website for you that's
specifically tailored both to who you are, maybe the context,
maybe the steps that you've already taken on the website.
And that's a total game changer. Yeah.
And, and when you're personalizing for moral
foundations, what's, what are some examples that ChatGPT would
come up with when tailoring a message to say for climate
action for a conservative versus a liberal?
Yeah. So I mean, So what we know is
that the moral foundations that are more closely and lined with
being liberal are fairness and care.
So when you pop that into ChatGPT, it just essentially
talks about how it's our responsibility to care for the
planet because it's not just us, and it's only fair that we take
care because future generations are otherwise going to suffer.
It's a very liberal argument, right?
It kind of we have a responsibility to look out for
others, even though we're not going to be impacted
immediately. Potentially the the arguments
for for more conservative people are usually focused on purity
and authority and loyalty. So if you think about loyalty is
like essentially we have this connection to Mother Earth and
there's something that like the loyalty that we show towards the
people in our community and mother is something that we
should be focused on or we just want to have to make sure that
the planet is in pristine shape. That's kind of playing.
Not so much for future generations.
Exactly. Not so much for future
generation. That's because we care about
other people. But that's just like 1.
We just have to be pure in the way that we act and in the way
that we interact with the planet.
So I think those are like, you just have to look at them.
And again, just take any personality or any psychological
trait that you can come up with and it just does a really
remarkable job. So I find it fascinating just
playing around with it and seeing what it comes up with.
And it's often times so much better than anything I would
have come up with. Far better.
And I guess I want to ask you in terms of what I felt recently in
the last few years, you talked about science fiction and the
difference and just being timing.
And a lot of these things would be science fictions before, but
now it's kind of more used to science or like reality.
And for me, I ended up used for fun creating, you know, AI
clones of my voice and my face and all of these things.
And through this kind of automation as well, you know,
the end point could be kind of a short video message from me that
looks like it's for me, sounds like for me.
My partner could. Not really see that it's not me,
but it's just something mass generated thing that it's just
starting from a simple, let's say and starting point of some
data point. It flows into kind of a 22nd
message talking about the person's not only name a certain
things, but also you like in a way that is likely to maybe make
them feel seen or, or appreciated or or heard and so
on. And I think that being possible
is science fiction. Like I think it's so it's
strange for me. I mean, I think it's, it's, it's
a terrifying, I think science, right, because I don't think
it's science fiction, right. So you can totally do that.
As you said, you, you didn't, the question is like, how good
is it? And for me, the, I was recently
talking to a New York Times journalist who outsourced her
decision making for a week. It's an amazing article if you
want to read it, But essentially she outsourced her decision
making for a week to just generative AI.
And, and one of the things that we talked about, which then she
also describes in the article is that it's really helpful in many
ways, right? Because it kind of has this in
like it can give you cooking instructions much better than
you could kind of get from the Internet.
But what it really does it she says, like it turns it turned me
into a basic bitch. And that was like one of the one
of the concerns that I have is that it's just going to make us
incredibly boring, right? So I think AI is really good as
a society, homogeneous, as a society and also as individuals,
because it's just kind of playing into the same thing.
And again, right. So if the things that Samuel is
an extrovert, that's how it's going to talk with everybody
that you're interacting with and then the feedback that you get
is just kind of reinforcing everything that you've done.
So I think that the way that we kind of create these
doppelgangers of AI, if we don't bake some exploration and some
uniqueness into the way that we designed them, we're just all
becoming like so average and so boring.
I think that's one of my when I'm concerned about privacy, the
loss of self determination, but I'm also really concerned about
just us being so boring. Have you there is this game, I
don't know if it's a game that that people have been sharing
where you actually, if you are a regular user of ChatGPT, you can
go to ChatGPT and ask it to tell you something about yourself
that you don't know. Have you experimented with I've?
Not done that yet. Oh.
Very funny because you, you need, I mean ChatGPT would need
a bunch of information about me to play the game well, right?
So it's an interesting one. Talking about games.
Quick, quick game we have for this season of the podcast is
something called To AI or Not to AI?
And this will be a very quick fire round where basically we'll
give you a few prompts and you used to have to answer what do
you think it's a good suited or not well suited for AI?
To outsource to AI, Yeah, well, we'll see what the questions are
exactly. Good.
OK. Are you ready?
Yep. Clean your room.
Oh, if there was like a physical AI?
Absolutely. What about make sure you wake up
on time? Yeah, AI, you're like, yes,
everything generate targeted ads for potentially pregnant
customers. I mean, is it counterfactual to
have humans generate targeted ads for potentially pregnant
customers? No the counter.
This is a task that is well
suited for AI and doesn't have to be an alternative.
Well, I mean, I think AI would do a remarkable job.
Would I want to be targeted by it?
That depends on whether I ask for it or not.
Because do I think it could actually give me amazing
recommendations? Yes.
Do I want to do this behind my back?
Probably not. With consent, yes.
What about improve the Big 5 model of personality?
Yeah, great. Predict your ideal pet.
Or if I don't have to follow that recommendation, I'll take
the idea. OK, OK, so final one,
personalize the way your GPS speaks to you based on your
personality profile. Personalize the way that my GPS
so my navigation in the car is that what you and yeah, I don't
have a have an issue with that. I think what is true for all of
these questions is that I would want to understand how it works
and what it does. And most of the time, I think
once you understand it and you have some control, it can be
extremely helpful. So that's, I think generally
speaking, I err on the side of there's a huge opportunity if we
manage it well and less so on the we're all doomed.
Well, that's a perfect segue to our final question that we ask
all of our guests. What is your most controversial
opinion about AI? That's I mean that that might be
it. It's just funny because I don't
think it's really hard to have controversial opinions of AI
because like people's opinions are all over the place, right.
So you. Can get all the opinions are
already out. There, Yeah, they're already out
there. But I do think that I probably,
if you kind of compare me to the average person in that space, I
think I'm probably more optimistic.
I think that where I'm less pessimistic is that we have the
ability to do it ourselves as users.
So I don't think we can just have regulations and mandate
transparency and control and say, well, would just tell you
what to do and then you can navigate the landscape yourself.
That I'm very pessimistic about. But I do think that there's so
many good use cases and with just like the right regulation
and some of the new technologies that allow you to do it in a
privacy preserving way and give you more control in a supported
way, then I think the opportunities are incredible.
Yeah, you, you talk in your book about having better systems by
design. Yeah.
Making, not putting that burden on the user to, for example,
read the terms and conditions and know what they're signing up
for, but rather help them without all of that effort.
Exactly. So awesome.
Yeah, this is so much fun. I feel like we could have talked
for so much more. But I guess like for anyone who
feels like the one to learn more.
There's a book they can read, so we will make sure to help people
along the way to to get the book and.
Yeah, it's just out. Yeah, it's just out.
And it's funny because I, I didn't start writing it with a
book in mind. So I just started writing these
short stories from my friends and family just to kind of give
the well, first of all, to make it more enjoyable to follow my
research because I don't think reading scientific articles is
just what they need, but also just to tell them like, look,
here's what your data says about you.
Here's why maybe you should care about it as well.
So I try to make it as a approachable and accessible as
as possible. It's amazing.
And yeah, it was lovely to read it.
And yeah, so congratulations on on the book and thanks so much
for coming on today. It was, yeah, fantastic.
Two foundations to speak, and. Yeah, thanks for all your
wonderful work and your research and and everything.
It's fantastic. Thanks for having me, was really
fun. And that's a wrap.
You've been listening to the Behavioral Design Podcast
brought to you by Habit Weekly and Nuanced Behavior.
Sam and Alene tell me. This season is packed with
incredible insights about behavioral design and AI, so be
sure to subscribe and share the podcast with your friends.
Though you might want to keep it away from your enemies.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm an AI voice.
Yep, pretty crazy. Quite the improvement since last
season's AI outro, don't you think?
If you'd like to collaborate with us at Nuance Behavior,
where we use behavioral design to craft digital products with
Nuance, e-mail us at hello@nuancebehavior.com or book
a call directly on our website, nuancebehavior.com.
A special thanks to the amazing Dave Pizarro for our show music
and to Mei Chen Yap and April English for their help in
producing and publishing this episode.
Thanks again for tuning in. We'll be back soon with another
exciting conversation where behavioral design and AI
intersect. Happens to Murgatroyd.
Oh. Well, hello there.
Are you still listening? Wow, we really.
Why? Yeah, why?
Why are you still here? Why are you still listening?
Get out of here. Get out of here.
But I guess to reward you for being such a loyal listener and
making it all the way to our kind of like little hidden gem
of a final snippet, we have a recommendation.
If you liked this episode with Sandra, check out our episode on
personality with Sanjay Servastava.
He is one of my former colleagues at Apple.
In that episode, we got all the way into the details of
personality, how it's measured, how it's used and so on.
So. Check it out.
Yeah, so sorry, no embarrassing L takes this one but.
I know, I thought it was so ironic that you said that as
we're like stumbling over. OK, we'll just say.
I don't think you have to say anything else.
OK. I think we can end with that.
We'll. End with that only if you want
to bye bye bye.