VIEW FROM HERE: AI Is New. Our Addiction to Outrage Is Not. (Part 2 of 2)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an issue that we’ve been watching closely for several years – it’s really not “new” because AI (artificial intelligence) impacts what we do here in a myriad of ways — the written word, images and more. We’ve been mindful and thoughtful about our approach and use of AI – which has been very limited. Recently we’ve been seeing an extreme “backlash” to the use of AI images particularly (boycotting businesses that use AI graphics) and questioning original writings that sound “too good” so it must be AI. We’ve shared several of Kiandre’s commentaries that have received some attention on social media. She experienced just that reaction to her business flyer. Here’s Part 2 of her very well-researched article about AI … a link to Part 1 is below.

By Kiandre O’Neaque Clark

The Ego Loves a Story Where We Are the Hero

Human beings naturally interpret our own choices through the circumstances surrounding them while judging other people’s choices as reflections of their character. I use AI because I am busy, learning, experimenting, operating a business, or working with the resources available to me. You use AI because you are lazy, dishonest, greedy, or uncreative. We look at one finished image and imagine we know how it was produced, how much work went into it, what its creator can afford, what obstacles they face, and whether they deserve our respect.

Several well-known thinking patterns help this happen. Confirmation bias encourages us to notice evidence supporting what we already believe while dismissing information that complicates it. In-group bias makes people who share our opinion appear more thoughtful, principled, and trustworthy. Self-serving bias allows us to explain our own behavior generously while assigning less flattering explanations to somebody else. Once an opinion becomes attached to our identity and community, changing our mind can feel less like learning and more like betraying our group.

Cognitive dissonance enters the room when information challenges the story we have already told. Admitting that we publicly misjudged someone can be uncomfortable, especially after other people have applauded us for doing it. Doubling down may feel easier than saying, “I came in hot, made assumptions, and was wrong.” Maybe the flyer was not created the way we assumed, but surely the owner is still wrong for using AI somewhere else. Maybe the environmental claim was exaggerated, but the image is ugly anyway. Maybe the person offered a reasonable explanation, but now their response feels “defensive.” Eventually, the flyer becomes irrelevant because we are no longer protecting the environment. We are protecting an identity.

As a Black woman, I am especially cautious about pretending snap judgments are harmless. Black people have spent generations being told that others can look at us, notice one feature or behavior, and confidently decide who we are. We know what happens when assumptions are treated as objective truth and when a group with social power gets to define whose intelligence, language, work, or creativity counts. That does not mean every criticism of AI is discriminatory, and it certainly does not mean AI cannot reproduce racial bias. It absolutely can, which is one reason Black voices must be included in its development and regulation. It does mean I am uncomfortable with any culture that encourages people to inspect a stranger’s work for a few seconds, invent an entire moral story about them, and then recruit a crowd to enforce it.

When the Behavior Becomes the Substance

When many people hear the word addiction, they imagine alcohol, methamphetamine, opioids, nicotine, or another substance entering the body. However, a chemical does not have to be swallowed, smoked, snorted, or injected before someone can develop a compulsive relationship with a rewarding experience. Behaviors can also engage the systems involved in reward, motivation, emotional regulation, reinforcement, and habit formation. Gambling disorder is currently the only behavioral addiction formally recognized alongside substance-related disorders in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. Social media addiction is not an official DSM-5-TR diagnosis, so casually diagnosing every frequent Facebook user as an addict would be inaccurate and irresponsible.

Researchers often use the term problematic social media use to describe patterns that may include preoccupation, difficulty controlling use, unsuccessful attempts to cut back, withdrawal-like distress, neglect of other activities, and continued use despite negative consequences. Spending a lot of time online does not automatically establish an addiction. Social media provides connection, education, entertainment, business opportunities, community information, and support. For rural residents, disabled or isolated individuals, minority groups, and people searching for others who understand their experiences, that connection can be particularly meaningful. The more useful questions are what happens when we try to stop, whether we still control the behavior, and whether we continue even after it repeatedly interferes with our sleep, relationships, responsibilities, or mental health.

The World Health Organization describes problematic social media use as involving addiction-like symptoms such as difficulty controlling use, withdrawal, neglecting other activities, and experiencing negative consequences. In a large international survey, 11 percent of adolescents showed signs of problematic use. That research focused on young people, but let us not pretend adults become immune to reinforcement the moment we turn 18. Grown folks can lose three hours arguing with a stranger just as efficiently as anybody else.

People frequently explain social media’s appeal by saying that likes release dopamine, but human behavior is more complicated than a single brain chemical turning us into helpless phone zombies. The reward may be attention, agreement, belonging, validation, novelty, distraction, entertainment, relief from loneliness, or the delicious satisfaction of correcting another person in public. Sometimes outrage itself becomes rewarding because it creates stimulation and gives us somewhere to direct our fear, frustration, or powerlessness. It can make us feel active and important even when the action accomplishes very little.

Imagine someone encounters a business flyer they believe was created with AI. Quietly scrolling past produces no social response, but leaving an angry comment might produce ten likes, approving replies, an argument with the owner, screenshots shared in another group, and repeated reasons to reopen Facebook throughout the afternoon. The commenting behavior has now been reinforced. Positive reinforcement occurs when a behavior produces something rewarding, such as attention or approval. Negative reinforcement occurs when a behavior reduces an uncomfortable feeling. Condemning AI may temporarily relieve someone’s fear, anger, helplessness, or anxiety about technological change, even if that relief does nothing to address the underlying concern.

The unpredictability of the response makes the cycle especially persistent. We never know which notification will be exciting, which comment will trigger an argument, or which post will suddenly attract a crowd. Research examining more than one million social media posts found that people adjusted their posting behavior in response to social rewards, following principles of reward learning. Features such as push notifications, infinite scroll, autoplay, visible popularity counts, and personalized recommendations further encourage continued engagement. In plain English, the platform studies what keeps us looking and gives us more of it. Outrage gives it plenty to work with.

I Recognize the Machinery

Recovery taught me that addiction is not a simple failure of intelligence, character, or morality. Intelligent people can rationalize compulsive behavior. Caring people can hurt others while protecting whatever helps regulate their emotions. Honest people can become remarkably creative when explaining why their situation is different. We minimize consequences, compare ourselves with somebody “worse,” insist we could stop whenever we wanted, and become defensive when someone questions the behavior because the behavior is doing something for us that we are not prepared to surrender.

I am not saying that arguing on Facebook is medically equivalent to using methamphetamine. It is not. Substance use disorders and problematic social media use have important clinical and medical differences, and I would never flatten the physical dangers of substance use and withdrawal into a comparison with putting down a phone. What I am saying is that I recognize some of the machinery. I recognize reaching for another emotional hit, using an experience to escape discomfort, and returning even when it repeatedly leaves us agitated, distracted, depleted, or ashamed. I recognize the bargaining, defensiveness, illusion of control, and insistence that the real problem is always somebody else.

Recovery also taught me that shame rarely produces honest self-examination. Calling everyone who becomes heated online an addict would be inaccurate, irresponsible, and unlikely to help. Lord knows Facebook has enough amateur clinicians assigning narcissism, trauma, and personality disorders to anybody who irritated them before breakfast. The purpose is not to apply a diagnosis from a distance or use psychological language as another weapon. The purpose is to become curious about our own behavior and notice what the experience is doing for us.

Before commenting on the next AI flyer, article, photograph, or business advertisement, we could ask what is happening internally. Am I gathering information, or preparing to perform certainty? Am I trying to understand how something was made, or constructing an entire story based on how it looks? Am I addressing measurable harm, or have I found a socially acceptable person to punish? Does the community genuinely need the information I am contributing, or has conflict offered me another emotional reward?

After posting, how many times do we return to check the response? Does the exchange leave us better informed, or merely more activated? If nobody could like, share, applaud, or argue with our comment, would we still feel compelled to write it? If we care deeply about AI’s environmental effects, what have we changed in our own lives besides the tone we use with strangers? Those questions may be uncomfortable, but discomfort is not proof that a question is unfair. Sometimes discomfort is simply the ego realizing it has been invited into the examination too.

These questions apply equally to AI supporters. Defending a tool can become just as reactive, self-serving, and identity-driven as condemning it. People who enjoy AI can minimize legitimate harms, dismiss artists’ concerns, exaggerate what the technology can do, or become personally offended by any attempt to regulate it. Nobody receives a psychological exemption because they believe they are on the correct side. Our brains are remarkably skilled at turning “what I believe” into “what a good person believes,” then treating disagreement as evidence that somebody else is foolish or bad.

Artificial intelligence deserves careful examination. So do the companies developing it, the resources powering it, the people using it, and the policies governing it. We need room to distinguish a medical tool from a novelty image, accessibility support from academic dishonesty, a searchable security system from mass surveillance, and occasional assistance from replacing human judgment altogether. Refining how we use this technology will require nuance, and nuance cannot survive if every conversation immediately becomes a loyalty test.

While we examine this unfamiliar technology, we should not ignore the familiar technology already shaping how we think, react, divide ourselves, and treat one another. We should also examine the very human minds bringing all their biases, fears, appetites, identities, and unresolved needs into both spaces.

AI may be learning from us. Social media has been learning how to use us for years. The most uncomfortable possibility is that both technologies are revealing something about human beings we would rather not examine.

*Link to Part 1 – https://www.tillamookcountypioneer.net/view-from-here-ai-is-new-our-addiction-to-outrage-is-not-part-1-of-2/

Note on AI use: I used generative AI as a collaborative editorial tool while developing this article. It assisted me with organizing ideas, identifying possible sources, testing counterarguments, restructuring sections, and refining language through multiple rounds of revision. The central argument, lived experiences, community observations, examples, perspective, humor, voice, and final editorial decisions are my own. I personally reviewed the finished article, evaluated its claims and sources, and accept responsibility for everything published here. Irregardless of how sophisticated the tool becomes, it cannot decide what I believe or speak from a life it has not lived.

Sources and Further Reading