“Beyond the Binge” Conference To Tackle AI in Entertainment and Education

COMTalk: What was the genesis of “Beyond the Binge?”

James Katz: I have been long interested in the topic of “soft determinism,” wherein the systems we build lead us unintentionally toward certain outcomes in terms of behavior and social structure. I coedited the book, with Juliet Floyd, on this process of nudging behaviors and the ethical implications. Sometimes the influence is not subtle at all. This is often the case with artificial intelligence and the algorithms that it uses to guide our decisions concerning binging on entertainment and choices about what kind of educational processes we want to employ. 

We might say that this problem has been around for a long time. For example, there is only one public broadcasting system in the United States, and the people in charge of this have great influence over the programming that young people see. But how representative are these decision-makers of the overall will of the American people? The problem becomes even greater when considered against the backdrop of vast entertainment and educational systems. And it must also be considered within the context of proliferating channels of communication at both the mass and individual levels.

COMTalk: The focus of this event won’t be generative AI but rather uses of AI that are perhaps less obvious or visible to users—algorithms feeding us recommendations, for example. Why is that important?

James Katz: So many of our choices about what entertainment is available to us are affected by earlier, often subtle decisions by generations of producers and developers. Already, much of this is done with today’s sophisticated AI systems—no generative AI is necessary.

COMTalk: What do think communication/media scholars have to learn from the humanities and vice versa?

James Katz: Communication scholars tend to focus on what might be called social engineering: trying to get people to change their behavior in ways that experts have decided are the best for them. By contrast, the humanities often engage in a search for enduring human values and how they may best be represented in public culture and individual lives. At the very least, communication scholars can benefit from understanding better the philosophical predicate of their activity and the need to respect the individual human’s choices. Humanities scholars can benefit from the sophisticated analytical methods and tools of empirical communication scholarship to better understand their field.

COMTalk: What do you hope comes out of this event, both tangible and intangible?

James Katz: The workshop should help uncover some of the subtle and often opaque processes that affect our educational and entertainment systems. By making the world more aware of these often hidden forms of influence and persuasion, better informed choices can become matters of public choice. This is far preferable to current conditions, which are that we live in a world that is, speaking from our entertainment and educational algorithmic perspective, all too frequently a result of either neglect or manipulation. If not our own destinies, we should at least become masters of what entertainment we choose to binge on.