1342: Jacob Ward | How AI Turns Convenience Into Control

Think you make your own choices? The Loop author Jacob Ward shows how AI preys on the autopilot brain, and what a little friction can do to fight back.

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1342

What We Discuss with Jacob Ward:

• How nearly all our daily decisions run on autopilot, made by the ancient shortcut part of the brain rather than the rational sliver that makes us human, and why that makes us so easy to steer.
• Why AI rarely seizes your choices outright and instead narrows the menu until you pick what it wanted, turning feeds, risk scores, and recommendations into rails that only feel like freedom.
• How unauditable algorithms quietly absorb old biases like redlining, and why the harm falls hardest on the powerless: denied loans, food stamps, and Medicare claims no human can explain.
• Why recent verdicts against Meta and YouTube establish "behavioral harm" as a new legal category, and how lawsuits, like the ones that reined in Big Tobacco, may be the only real check here.
• What a little friction can do to hand decision-making back to you, from leaving your phone at home to bricking the apps that hook you, and why treating your brain as a separate voice helps.
• And much more...

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