Is AI turning us all into the same person? | Sandra Matz

You're listening to Ted Talk's Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. You hear it from speakers on this show pretty often. There's no shortage of worries about AI. Fear is that it will take our jobs, spread misinformation, confuse what's real. But behavioral data scientists Sandra Maths has a different fear. She worries that AI is quietly making us boring. The more we outsource our decisions to AI, the more we surrender something deeply human. Our capacity to explore, to take risks, to stumble into your known, and sometimes surprising ourselves. In this talk, Sandra reveals how algorithms limit what you see, try and ultimately become. As she explains tools and platforms we lean on every day, whether it's Google, chat GPT, Spotify, or Netflix, are all built to give us more of what we already like, which sounds helpful and often is, but she argues that when we let those systems make more and more of our choices, something starts to shrink. AI narrows your taste, it flattens your personality, and it scrubs the way the edges that make you interesting and keep you dynamic. Sandra warns that this flattening is happening so gradually, most of us aren't even noticing, but there's a twist. She also thinks AI could help us fight it if we're willing to ask it for something different. That's coming up right after a short break. And now our TED talk of the day. People worry about AI for all kinds of reasons. It's polarizing, it spreads misinformation, it's coming for our jobs, and those are all good reasons to be nervous, but what really keeps me up at night is something else, something that feels more personal, and perhaps even more concerning for the human experience itself. I worry that AI will make us boring, you, me, all of us. That's because the more we outsource our decisions to AI, the more we surrender something deeply human, our capacity to explore, to take risks, to stumble into your known, and sometimes surprise even ourselves. I worry that without the potential for discovery, for serendipity, we risk becoming more shallow and unidimensional versions of who we are and who we could be. Not just as humans, as individuals, but as humanity. Now let me make this idea a bit more concrete and take you somewhere perhaps unexpected, but also totally relatable. Imagine walking into a Baskin Robbins, what you'll see is an illustrious assortment of 31 different ice cream flavors, there's chocolate chip, pistachio almond, lemon sorbet, and many more. You're now facing a difficult choice. Are you going to go with an old favorite, chocolate maybe, or are you going to take a risk on something funky and new, like wild and reckless sherbet? And yes, it's a real flavor. The choice you're facing is a classic human dilemma, a scientist called the exploitation exploration trade-offs. Are you going to play it safe and capitalize on what you know you like, or are you going to take a risk with the hope of finding something even better? And our lives are full of these trade-offs. Stick with your favorite restaurant or try to fence a new spot on the corner. Keep your usual haircut, I'll ask for something new and edgy. Your stable job will finally try to become a pick-a-ball champion. We all differ in our appetite for exploitation versus exploration, but we're also all hardwired by evolution to strike a certain balance between the two. Because for our ancestors on the African savannah, the trade-off was actually pretty simple. Stick too closely to what's safe and you risked starvation when the grove runs dry, strafe too far into their known, and you might get poisoned or eaten by lions. Luckily for you and me, the trade-offs we face today are far less about survival, but our choices are still governed by this instinct to balance caution with curiosity. If all you ever did in life was played safe and exploit, you'd never get disappointed, but you'd also never get a chance to advance and grow. If all you did instead was discover and explore, you'd collect endless experiences, but you'd also never get a chance to capitalize on your learnings. So it's really the balance between exploitation and exploration that fuels our growth, not just as a species, but also as individuals. But it's exactly where AI throws a wrench into the works. Because AI hates risk. And that's not because of its algorithmic DNA. It's because the systems we rely on to navigate our world from Spotify to Netflix to Chad CBT are overwhelmingly trained to optimize for exploitation, or more specifically for short-term engagement and satisfaction. Did you click the link, watch the video, like the song? If yes, AI gets a clamp on the shoulder. If no, it gets a slap on the hand. Risk, discovery, and exploration are simply not part of their programming. Think back to Baskin Robbins. If 60% of people prefer their flavor, pralines, and cream, then that's what the AI is going to recommend. It's not that AI lacks imagination, it lacks incentive. Safe bets protect against disappointment, which in turn reduces customer turn. So instead of taking this risky gamble that helps you explore, companies tend to err on the side of exploitation when training the AI systems. And to be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I've spent the last 15 years as a computational social scientist working at the intersection of psychology, computer science, and business. And I know that rewarding AI in that way can be extremely valuable. Algorithms in a way only become so good at figuring out what you might enjoy or currently be looking for because they focus on exploitation. And that's not just good for business, it's also good and sometimes even necessary for us as consumers. For me, the mere thought of having to choose between 31 different ice cream flavors makes me dizzy. And yet most of the choices that we face today are far more complex than that. Netflix, for example, has over 5,500 movies to choose from. Spotify over 100 million songs. So the truth is that without a little help from our exploitation-loving AI friends, we simply don't stand a chance at navigating modern life. But I've also become increasingly concerned that this upside comes at a somewhat existential cost. And to give you a first flavor of what I mean by that, let's go back to Basque and Robbins. Before coming here, I ran a simple experiment. I asked ChatGPT to recommend one of the ice cream flavors. I did that a hundred times each round pretending to be a new customer. 96 times, it recommended one of their two most popular flavors, Pranins and Cream and Chocolate Chip. Which I realize, and I'm sure you'd agree, is not exactly a very diverse set of choices. And it could mean that we soon find ourselves in a world where Basque and Robbins offers only those two flavors. If no one ever picks the other 29, why bother offering them in the first place? Now this might sound trivial and not really existential at all. But that's only until you realize that this flattening of the human experience happens across every aspect of life. In studies with my collaborators and students, we've shown that when people use AI for guidance, their preferences become more normative and less diverse. Their creative output becomes less unique. And their choice of the most important scientists, athletes, and historical figures becomes the same as everyone else's. So in a nutshell, AI turns this infinite diversity of human opinions, beliefs, and preferences into statistically safe sameness. And that's only part of the problem because even when AI learns your quirks, say, it figures out that you like Nadi Coconut, better than Pranins and Cream, it will still play it safe within your preferences, meaning it is going to optimize for what you are most likely to like. I went back to Chantypt for a second experiment, and this time told it about my personal ice cream preferences. I said that during my last 100 visits, I picked Nadi Coconut 70% of the time. The remaining 30% I split evenly among three of my other favorites. I then asked it to make the next 100 choices on my behalf. And guess what it did? It picked Nadi Coconut every single time. Gone. My adventures into occasional chocolate fudge cookie dough or mango, all I am at that point, is literally a Nadi Coconut. But forget about ice cream. My students and I have repeatedly shown the same patterns when studying people's actual preferences. And the insidious part of all of this is that the impact of AI on human complexity is subtle. You won't notice it happening overnight. Rather, it's a death by a thousand algorithmic recommendations, one slightly safer movie, one slightly more popular book, one slightly more mainstream vacation at a time. With every decision, you outsource to AI, you become one arrow, then AI learns from the I'm going to show our version. of you, and narrows its recommendations even more. The New York Times reporter Kashmia Hill captured this dilemma perfectly in one of her articles. After outsourcing her decisions to AI for a week, she complained about its hidden agenda to turn her into a "basic bitch." And the funny part is it's the word "basic" here that's the biggest insult. Because being "basic" means being unoriginal and exceptional and uninteresting, it's offensive not because it suggests failure, but because it implies mediocrity, an absence of complexity. And who really wants it for themselves? Nobody. We all like the feeling of being unique, of being special, of being someone who doesn't easily fit into a box. I for one don't want to become exactly like everybody else, and I also don't want to become a singular version of myself. So what can we do to cause correct and avoid destination "basic" bitch? We can't hit the reset button on AI, and we shouldn't, as I said before, these tools are incredibly valuable for navigating modern life, and they make us better off in many ways. But we need to reclaim our ability to take risks and discover. We need to find a way to rebalance exploitation and exploration. And ironically, AI could actually help us accomplish just that. But only if we ask it to write questions and reward it for the right actions. So instead of asking it to help us find something we like, we could start asking it to help us find something new. Something we're likely to love even though we've never tried it before. And by that, I don't necessarily mean you typing that question into chat GBT yourself, although you should certainly try. What I mean is getting companies to harness AI super power, its ability to detect patterns and vast amounts of human data for exploration purposes. Because AI has seen the entire universe of preferences, it knows not only what you currently like, but also what lies just beyond the boundaries of your typical preferences. Which means that it can help you explore smartly to take curated risks when you want to. Now, here's what this could look like. Imagine a dial on your Netflix account or your Google search bar that lets you design how far from your typical preferences you want to stray at any given point in time. On a regular date, you probably keep the dial close to the spot on setting, because you want to get the most relevant hits right away. But then on other days, you might feel adventurous enough to push it all a little closer to the "me" with a twist setting and ask for content that's a little outside of your comfort zone, but still relevant. And then on other days, for those rare moments when you feel like you're really ready to take on the world, you might push the dial all the way to the wild card setting and ask it to help you discover something entirely new. I for one would love to have such a dial. It doesn't force me to leave my comfort zone. I can always leave it on the spot on setting and benefit from the convenience that comes with it. But it gives me the choice and the agency to break out of my little bubble whatever I want you, why I feel like I have to. But here's the catch. For AI to toggle its super power between exploitation and exploration, we need to incentivize it to do so, merely asking it to be more creative or help you become more adventurous isn't going to do the trick. In most cases, it will still default to the tried and tested output because it craves that clamp on the shoulder. So instead of punishing AI every time it takes a swing and misses, we need to start rewarding it for taking smart swings. For making bets that are a little bold, a little unusual, perhaps, but still grounded in what it knows about us. AI doesn't have to throw darts in the dark. It can take informed risks. It can help us optimize our exploration. And when it does, we should treat it as a success, not a failure. Now, this isn't about desserts or playlists. This is about preserving what makes this uniquely messily and gloriously human. It's your random passion for ET memorabilia. Your weird detour into geocaching or your stubborn preference for a stick shift car. It's about all the contradictions that AI can't quite explain and the beauty of us being just a little weird once in a while. And if we believe that human complexity is worth preserving, then the time to act is now because we're at this inflection point where AI is no longer just recommending but starting to act on our behalf. It's choosing, not suggesting. And that's where the stakes become really existential. So next time AI offers you pralines and cream, maybe say no. And ask it to help you go wild and reckless instead. Thank you. That was Sandra Maxx at TEDx New England in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com/curationguidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefonos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Topner, and Tonsica Sunglearnivo. Additional support from Daniella Ballerizo, Christopher Faisy-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Laney Lot. Learn more at podcast. TED.com. I am Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]