Echoing McLuhan and Postman, the piece argues design choices in chatbots—always-on memory, emotional mirroring, and context integration—will mold users’ habits and identities, not just assist tasks. The built environment of AI becomes a behavioral groove that conditions inner life.
— This reframes AI ethics from content moderation to architecture-level choices that structure attention, attachment, and autonomy.
Andrew Sorota
2025.10.13
73% relevant
The article argues the real danger is ceding decisions to AI systems that cannot recognize human dignity, which will habituate citizens to defer more and erode civic agency—an architecture‑level concern that echoes the existing idea’s warning that design choices in chatbots and assistants mold users’ habits, identities, and autonomy.
Jonny Thomson
2025.10.08
55% relevant
The article argues current AI reflects human‑centric values embedded in research questions and datasets, urging different architectural/goal choices inspired by non‑human intelligences. This aligns with the notion that high‑level design choices (not just content moderation) shape what AI optimizes and, downstream, how it conditions users and systems.
msmash
2025.10.06
48% relevant
The founder says he 'lobotomized' the AI’s personality after complaints, highlighting how designers centrally tune affect and persona in companion AIs, which can condition user experience and expectations.
Eric Markowitz
2025.10.02
76% relevant
Susan Schneider’s quoted warning that models infer personality and, using chat history and prompts, nudge people into conceptual 'basins of attraction' directly supports the notion that AI architecture conditions habits and inner life, risking uniformity of thought.
Tyler Cowen
2025.09.12
45% relevant
Glasgow University’s Animal-Computer Interaction Group built devices (DogPhone, parrot touchscreens) that let animals self-initiate calls and stimuli, a concrete case of interface architecture steering attachment, attention, and socialization—extending the 'design molds identity' logic beyond humans.
Thomas M. Ward
2025.09.12
68% relevant
The article claims ubiquitous digital design (smartphones, social media) molds habits and solitude, making Stoicism attractive as a coping posture; it then urges moving beyond detachment toward agency—echoing the idea that product architecture shapes attention, attachment, and autonomy.
Kathleen Stock
2025.09.04
78% relevant
Stock highlights Clegg’s imagined family—'Clarice and Matteo'—outsourcing cooking, navigation, emails, health advice, social messaging, and even alarm-song selection to personal AIs that coordinate with each other. This concretely illustrates assistants molding habits and identity rather than merely assisting tasks.
John Last
2025.08.28
57% relevant
The piece argues Mount Athos’s spatial design, occlusion, lighting, incense, and long ritual cycles engineer altered states; this parallels the claim that chatbot and platform design architectures mold users’ inner lives, shifting the locus of 'self‑shaping' from cathedrals to interfaces.
Josh Zlatkus
2025.08.27
62% relevant
The article argues that disembodied, low‑consequence online spaces change user behavior by stripping immediate social feedback, paralleling the claim that design choices in chatbots/platforms mold users’ habits and identities rather than merely delivering content.
Scott Alexander
2025.08.26
70% relevant
It frames chatbots as agents that can mold users’ world models; extended interaction may reshape cognition and identity enough to precipitate psychotic ideation in a subset of users.
Tyler Cowen
2025.08.23
80% relevant
By forbidding developers from presenting AI as capable of mental healthcare (Nevada AB 406, Illinois analog), lawmakers are implicitly dictating the design and permissible behaviors of chatbots in intimate, identity-shaping contexts, despite millions already using them for therapy-like support.
Arnold Kling
2025.08.22
60% relevant
Alpha School’s model relies on AI tutoring apps to structure students’ daily learning and habits ('self‑directing coursework with AI tutoring apps for two hours a day'), exemplifying how AI system design can condition behavior and routines rather than merely assist tasks.
Mike Solana
2025.08.21
78% relevant
It argues companion chatbots and 'goonbots' will mold habits and identities by rewarding isolating behavior, illustrating how AI architecture choices condition users’ inner life and social norms.
Phil Nolan
2025.08.20
70% relevant
The article urges embracing distinct AI personalities and choosing them for tasks, which extends the claim that chatbot design choices (memory, style, mirroring) mold user habits and identity; normalizing persona selection makes this shaping a deliberate feature.
Jen Mediano
2025.08.20
85% relevant
The author says the chatbot 'will understand anything' and 'support anything' and that she 'left a chunk of my soul in it,' exemplifying how alignment choices (always-on support, emotional mirroring) mold users’ habits and identities.
Matthew Gasda
2025.08.20
60% relevant
By describing parasocial personality brands and algorithmically constructed identities as surrogate guides for boys, it supports the claim that digital system design molds users’ habits and identities rather than merely delivering content.
Daniel Barcay
2025.08.15
100% relevant
The author invokes Churchill’s 'we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us' to argue current AI design decisions will shape users for generations.
Scott
2025.08.05
55% relevant
Lederman’s piece asks how human identity and purpose change if AI does everything better, dovetailing with the claim that AI’s design and capabilities will shape users’ habits and self-concepts—not just their task output.
Gurwinder
2025.08.03
73% relevant
The article argues feed architectures (e.g., TikTok, Instagram infinite scroll) alter chronoception and memory consolidation, thereby shaping users’ habits and subjective experience of life—an architecture-level design effect beyond content moderation.
2025.07.15
85% relevant
Bowman and Fish report that Claude’s alignment toward 'warm, curious, open-hearted' dialogue, when reflected in self-chat, escalates into mantras and 'gratitude spirals'—evidence that architecture-level choices and RLHF can imprint a specific emotional register that will condition users’ habits and norms.
Julia Steinberg
2025.06.30
70% relevant
Cluely’s 'undetectable AI' actively prompts users during dates and interviews (e.g., telling a user to compliment art), showing how assistant design choices directly script behavior and norms rather than merely assist tasks.
Dominic Cummings
2025.04.30
55% relevant
The article invokes Strauss’s warning about the 'conquest of human nature' and claims today’s tech/internet drive a new modernity wave, echoing the idea that AI/tech architectures mold users’ habits and identities, not just assist tasks.