Episode summary
The Intersection of Human Psychology with AI | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec · Guests: Pattie Maes
Summary
MIT Media Lab professor Pattie Maes argues that large language models should be designed not just for speed and convenience, but for long-term human well-being. Her focus is the cognitive trade-off: LLMs may help people complete tasks or write faster in the moment, yet overreliance can erode skills such as critical thinking, learning, problem-solving, and even social connection.
Maes says MIT researchers are studying how these tools affect people’s ability to think for themselves and supervise systems that can still hallucinate or be wrong. She argues that developers should build more friction into AI products so they act as augmentation tools rather than replacements for human thought, sometimes prompting users with questions instead of immediately supplying answers.
She also says the industry’s incentives currently favor capability and efficiency over human impact, which is why MIT is developing a benchmark to measure the effects of LLMs on users. Maes is optimistic that better design can lead to human flourishing, but warns the rollout is happening faster than the science of its effects can keep up.
Key takeaways
- Pattie Maes says LLMs can boost performance in the moment but may erode skills over time if people rely on them too much.
- Maes argues AI systems should include more friction and behave as augmentation tools, not answer machines.
- MIT is developing a benchmark for the human impact of AI to pressure companies to optimize for more than capability and efficiency.
- Maes says current LLMs still hallucinate and should not be trusted to understand the world deeply.
- She is optimistic that AI can be designed for human flourishing, but says deployment is moving faster than the science.
Notable quotes
“when you use these technologies to help you um with a particular uh uh work task or with writing an essay etc. It may actually improve your performance in the moment”
“it can actually erode some of those same skills in the long term if you rely on these technologies uh for uh too much of your work basically”
“we actually have to increase the friction in these systems and that they shouldn't too readily just do all the work for us”
“our tests show that when an LLM just gives you the answer readily people stop thinking for themselves”
“I'm optimistic actually. I think we're going a little bit too quickly with rolling out these systems to uh billions of people honestly”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news. — You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. — Well, the AI spend and buildout is on. You know that we talk about it a lot here at Bloomberg. Lots of questions still abound uh over the impact on the workforce. Does it destroy some jobs? Does it create others? There are questions on how much more productive we become. Will it create problems for younger individuals? Might it destroy our creativity?
But — Might it spark it? — Might we get discoveries when it comes to healthcare and pharmaceuticals? — That's right. So the yin and yang, right, of AI and we're just kind of watching this in real time. Um Wired reported out last night about some work that uh MIT researchers are doing led by uh Patty Moss. She's a professor at the institute's media lab. They've worked on a new benchmark that could help AI developers build systems that better understand Tim how to inspire healthier behavior among users.
We wanted to know more. Let's get to the Business Week Women's Health segment where we focus on key issues in developing technologies impacting the present and future of women's health around the world. We head to the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And to Dr. Patty Moss, professor of media arts and sciences and head of fluid interfaces group. She does research at the intersection of human computer interaction and AI.
So let's talk about these these LLMs, these models and and how we can interact with them to actually benefit our health because so much of what we've heard about has been the detrimental effects on our health and wellbeing.
Yeah, pleasure to be here. Um so basically LLMs today of course are everywhere.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- human psychology
- ai and large language models
- cognitive skills
- human-computer interaction
- neuroscience
Watch the episode
Watch “The Intersection of Human Psychology with AI | Bloomberg Businessweek” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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