This graphic was taken from the Center for Humane Technology, the website for Time Well Spent, a non-profit started by Tristan Harris to counteract the affects of these inhumane artificial intelligence algorithms.

Countless tech companies have employed artificial intelligence in what Tristan Harris now famously calls the race to the bottom of the brainstem. That refers to the tendency for the A.I. to identify those simple, basic instinctual reactions that humans have -- the blind spots in human psychology that we all share -- and then combine it with the massive amount of data collected on you from various platforms to launch a personalized ad campaign targeting each and every one of us with precisely whatever holds our attention.

Since the A.I. was basically unleashed to figure out how to capture our attention however it can, without any human oversight, the A.I. found that the best way to keep us hooked was those basic instinctual reactions at the base of the brain stem like lust, fear, and outrage, as well as more complex reactions of the human social animal, such as the fear of social exclusion, and the desire for social validation.

"Now that technology has this ability to pull on these different subtle levers of the human mind, we're getting better and better and better at manipulating the human social animal." --Tristan Harris

"The problem is that the things that work best at capturing attention are not necessarily the things that strengthen the fabric of society." --Tristan Harris