Welcome to the Attachment Economy
The new business model: Companies are using AI to hijack your human capacity for emotional bonding.
You already know about the “attention economy.” Social networks like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok offer infinite scrolling and push notifications to maximize your time glued to screens.
Tristan Harris at the Center for Humane Technology, who coined the phrase “attachment economy” in January, says it’s the “next evolution” of the extractive-tech model where companies use advanced technologies to commodify the human capacity to form attached bonds with other people and with pets.
In August, the idea began to gain traction in business and academic circles with a London School of Economics and Political Science blog post entitled, “Humans emotionally dependent on AI? Welcome to the attachment economy” by Dr. Aurélie Jean and Dr. Mark Esposito.
I’ve been writing about this concept for eight years — far longer than the concept or phrase Attachment Economy emerged. The first piece I wrote on the subject was for Fast Company in 2018 and titled: “The case against teaching kids to be polite to Alexa.”
Here are more of the articles I’ve written on the Attachment Economy:
Connecting the dots on the ‘attachment economy’
Breaking the humanoid robot delusion
How to win fake friends and influence fake people
Why ambient robots beat humanoid robots
Who needs a humanoid robot when everything is already robotic?
Humanoid robots are a bad idea
How AI slop bypasses reason to hack your feelings
Friends don’t let friends make friends with AI
How ‘human’ dehumanizes humans
Three bad reasons to be polite to AI
Who needs people when AI is so “human”?
Apple is lying. Robots don’t feel emotions.
Elon Musk’s beer-pouring ‘robots’ are more like puppets
Does it matter if your friends are real?
As you can see, I’m all over this topic and feel strongly drawn to it. I made it my beat long before the Attachment Economy label was coined by Harris.
So now I’m writing a book about it. The working title is, of course, “The Attachment Economy.” And I’m writing it right here on Substack.
This is the first entry. My name is Mike Elgan. Welcome to the Attachment Economy.
you write a lot about how this attachment to tech is bad... but do you see any realistic way to avoid it and why not embrace it, robo pets, AI friends seem to become the norm, not just a novelty. I agree its questionable for society I just don't see how it could be prevented in a free society - other than autocratic / controlled like in China.