AI and the Fatfinger Economy
a year ago
- #AI
- #User Experience
- #Tech Growth
- AI and the fatfinger economy: Tech companies intentionally move frequently used buttons to replace them with AI-summoning icons to trick users into engaging with AI, boosting metrics for investor confidence.
- Growth stocks and tech companies: High-growth tech companies benefit from higher price-to-earnings ratios, allowing them to bid with shares instead of cash for acquisitions and hiring, but growth eventually stops, leading to risks of mass sell-offs.
- Google's growth strategies: Google has used tactics like worsening search accuracy to increase ad views and entering new sectors (e.g., metaverse, web3, crypto, AI) to sustain growth narratives and investor confidence.
- Employee incentives and KPIs: Product teams are motivated by bonuses tied to KPIs (e.g., AI engagement metrics), leading to designs that trap users into unwanted interactions to meet performance targets.
- Streaming services and fatfinger traps: Streaming platforms make it hard to exit accidental clicks to new videos to inflate 'recommendation success' metrics, aligning with corporate growth goals.
- Goodhart's Law in tech: When metrics like AI engagement become targets, they lose their validity as measures of actual user interest, leading to manipulative designs.
- Google's AI push: Google replaces familiar buttons with AI traps in Gmail, Gdocs, and Android to inflate AI usage metrics, regardless of user intent.