Pervasive technologies have the roots and communication of my discipline for a long time. There was a big fame and our famous effort in Stanford University in the Bay Area in the 1990s, the Stanford persuasive Technology Lab, and if you go now to the websites to their historical websites, you can see. Often the word ethical is nowadays written on this website because, these technologies have been a little bit abused in order to control people to brainwash people. Now, the person who the professor who ran this lab, BJ Fogg, he's a really likable nice guy and he studies behavioral change most of his reason, most of his books all the way along. To show you and to teach to people how they can create useful habits of how they can actually become better people in order to create new habits. He wrote about persuasive technology is a powerful tool in order to change your habits. And that has a lot long tradition in the literature. It's referred to economists refer to this Literature is nudging. You know, you can nudge somebody with your elbow and you try to give them, you just try to give them a little nudge to do something. So behavioral economists have been working on that to nudge people to. To develop better habits, for example, to become organ donors or to stop smoking, or to just how do you do this in order to motivate people to do something that's useful to society even if it's something like a little bit like organ donation, right, so can you naturally stop smoking. Which is then also good for everybody and good for their health care costs or how can you nudge them to order some healthy foods or do their health checkups get their vaccination. And these theories became very popular. In 2017, the Richard Tada that got the Nobel prize in economics. So these are extremely useful, economics. It's extremely successful economics, theories of Nanjing, and most of them have been used to get the best out of people. To not spend so much to save a little bit of money, for example, to not put so much on the credit card to stop social media wait, now wait to what? Well of course, you can use that for both ways, but this then this nudging and this persuading can also be used in order to get people use more social media and control the more and if that's your business model. Or that's what you will basically use, persuasive technology to foster your business model. This kind of literature of behavior economics is based on the psychological tradition of judgment under uncertainty and Conoman introvert, escape and leading in that economy. And then also getting later on the Nobel prize for his contribution to this field, and they say research on judgment and uncertainty typically comes down to collection of heuristics and biases. So what is that? Well, evolutionary revise. We develop our mind. And it's important to understand our mind a little bit because these technologies that's where the doggone the extensions of our minds. Our minds have evolved. Some kind of computing machines you might think of that has some shortcuts. So evolution taught us some shortcuts that we that we live with, that are extremely useful and. Cognitive psychologists have detected some 200 of them. So if you go to the Wikipedia page of list of cognitive biases, you will find 201 risks and biases kind of like shortcuts that we would that we would use to make decisions under uncertainty. These kind of characteristics of how our mind works is what these persuasive jalaja basically figured out through their blind a/b testing and that's what they take advantage of an order to then get us to do. What they want us to do first of all to get our attention and then to change our behavior, for example, click on the next thing or something like that right to nudge us. For example, I show you two cognitive biases now and how they relate to fake news. Again It's not like somebody's sitting in the basement trying to think like how can we make the world full of fake news and misinformation? No, it's just basic technologies. Try to understand how they can hold our attention, for example, with the confirmation bias, a very proven bias, is a very long standing bias. Now if you if I show you something if I tell you something that isn't agreement with your previously existing opinion, you are 88% less likely to identify as fake just because he previously believed it. And you will you will also like that more right? You're like no, that's true. WelI I knew that before I want to be no I knew that before. So also 69%. You have a robust memory of what I told you, if it is in agreement with what you previously believed. Even if I later on tell you know what? [LAUGH]. Just kidding, is that really true but then three months later, you will remember what you wanted to remember which was an agreement with your previously existing it confirmed as a confirmation it confirmed what you previously already knew. So any of you like to see what you so that's that's how we create these filter bubbles and these echo chambers and then you also would like that you like to be confirmed you like to be right. Second the novelty bias nother bias, which has been very long standing. We are all descendants. Have those ancestors who disproportionally paid a pin attention to new things, something novel, those who didn't were eaten by the saber toothed tiger. [LAUGH]. So it was extremely useful to kind of like see around what's still going on? What's new what's going on, right? And we inherited that we have part of that it was like a little bird that's picking something and then looking around what's new. So we have genetically programmed to do that. That's part of our brain. So if I show you something, new something novel, you are likely to pay more attention to it. And that's the currency the attention economy because once I have your attention, I can study your better. I understand what you want, I have your attention, I can change your behavior and that's the product that's being sold. Now. So, if I show you something that's not normal, for example, I tell you well, there's a virus. It's a deadly virus. Wash your hands. Well, how boring is that you'll get hurt if that's not but if I tell you, well take some Clorox put it down your throat and what? That's something completely novel so your program to pay attention to something like that and fake news are more likely to be normal as a result big news spread six times faster, 20 times deeper and twice as broad as real news, because they're not as novel maybe that's what this study shows. Right. So the combination of the confirmation bias showing you what you actually want to see what reconfirm that tells you arrived, combined with something novel right. Then really has your attention. So look at you actually interested in. And down that line, I show you something a little bit now surely has your attention. Now, it's not the task of the attention economy companies to show you the truth and to educate you. Absolutely not, that's not of their business model. It is to have your attention. And once they have your attention, get the attention to change your behaviour because that's the product they're selling. The client is the person that wants to behaviour change and their platform is what's providing the delivery of this product. And that's what persuasive technology in the attention economy is basically about.
