There are many incentives and issues with the current world that are making correct and healthy behaviors difficult. The main reason people are fat does not necessarily lie on personal responsibility, sure they are mentally very weak but even if such people were given an environment where no junk food was present at all, no snacks, no added sugar to every single possible thing many of them would probably stay fit. I argue here that these AI tools are yet another example of something that will push more people in the wrong direction than the number of people it will push into the right direction, thus making it a net negative for humanity.
I think it is simply impossible, I mean, to create conditions in which a person will be completely restricted from what you have listed. Yes, within a family, one can set such rules for a child, but there is no certainty even that both parents will follow them unconditionally, let alone other family members who want to spoil the little one. And the older the child gets, the more they are influenced by the environment and the cultural industry.
Even if they don't see this in the family, they will find out about it in kindergarten, or at the very best, at school. Even if we imagine, which is highly unlikely, that they end up in a group of children whose parents share the same categorical principles, they will still find out about such things from TV, social networks, or simply by seeing the product in a store. Therefore, there is no point in discussing total bans and conditions that are impossible to create. It is better to think about developing strong willpower and a conscious understanding of certain limitations.
and from that perspective you are correct, but I was talking about a
top-down approach which is why I used plural. I am referring to society, the governments and the world in general. If shit food was outlawed or heavily taxed, then the environment would be there in which people could thrive (in respect to food-choices and fitness). Unless you want to believe that large numbers of people would try to smuggle and risk prison over a few candy bars? Some idiots would, that is for sure but who cares about those.
What I am writing about is that we have collectively made a terrible environment for the sake of profit, whereas we could have easily taken the other way. Snacks and sodas are a great example. We could have set a maximum sugar content at 1/2 of the current contents easily, it would have been no challenge at all because the food and drinks would still be fucking sweet. Instead we let companies do mostly whatever, most of that food is as addictive as substances that are age-restricted or illegal. Do we have more people addicted to drugs or to sugary foods? It is actually to sugary foods. Actually it is not even too late now, it could be done in steps for example reduce the maximum sugar added by 10% every 5 years. This would induce a gradual adjustment of palette and sugar-addiction and over decades until we reach the desired maximum, most people would not objective because it is so gradual that it would not be noticed. But there is simply no interest in this, they want to do things that maximize profit regardless of the harm.
Similarly with AI we have the opportunity to take a balanced approach, where it would not be provided as fast as possible to as many people as possible all for the sake of profit. This is how you would take a reasonable approach and create an environment in which many people would succeed. Instead, we are going the wrong way and creating a dangerous environment in which many people will suffer negative consequences from these. As I said already early studies indicate that humans are massively losing skills in various spheres due to these tools, and this is even with restrictions on doing these studies. Often when there is a desire to lead us in one direction, you will have a hard time getting funding to show that we should not do that. We did the same with social media, studies were suppressed or their effects minimized even if you could tell from the earliest days that the damage it causes is extreme and obvious. Only recently have they started letting this into the mainstream because they want to abuse this situation to introduce digital IDs.
