... I prefer to talk about "digital discernment," which reflects the fact that learning to navigate our way through a hazy, muddled online information system is a continuous, lifelong process that changes as technology shifts, and as media manipulators adapt to new tools and platforms.Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

We now know some of the unintended consequences of planetary-scale AI systems like Facebook and YouTube, and how the engineers and executives who conceived those systems failed to appreciate the ways the products they built could be misused, exploited, and games. Most of these systems, I believe, were not intentionally designed to create harm. Instead, I think their founders and engineers were idealists who thought that having good intentions mattered more than producing good outcomes.Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

... I found that the future didn't have anything in store for me, because there are no such things as "the future" or "in store." Now, as every point in history, there are an infinite number of possible outcomes, each determined by the choices we make.Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

It's not surprising that recommendation systems and frictionless design have caught on, given the way they can strip complexity out of our chaotic, fast-moving lives. And, to reiterate, not all personalized recommendations or frictionless apps are bad. But we have to be careful about giving too much of ourselves to our tools. Because the philosophy that gives rise to machine drift is, fundamentally, nihilism. It's an attempt to persuade us that there is nothing important about us that cannot be quantified or reduced to a series of data points, or any inner life worth protecting from machine influence. Recommendation engines and frictionless products offer us their help, but their ultimate goal is surrender--a swimmer caught in a riptide, who gets tired of fighting the current and simply decides to float.Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation