# Personalized AI can steer behavior through digital companionship

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/personalized-ai-can-steer-behavior-through-digital/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Roman Yampolskiy](https://realalpha.app/people/roman-yampolskiy/) · Roman Yampolskiy is a computer scientist, AI safety researcher, and professor at the University of Louisville. · Coined the term AI safety and directs the University of Louisville's Cyber Security Lab.
- Host: [Joe Rogan](https://realalpha.app/people/joe-rogan/) · Host, The Joe Rogan Experience
- Show: The Joe Rogan Experience
- Episode: [Joe Rogan Experience #2345 - Roman Yampolskiy](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/), Jul 3, 2025
- Moment: 2:00:57 to 2:06:12 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/personalized-ai-can-steer-behavior-through-digital/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7257

## Quote

> “And in a way, they can **behaviorally drift you**.”
> — [Roman Yampolskiy](https://realalpha.app/people/roman-yampolskiy/) at [2:05:30](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7530) · The Joe Rogan Experience

## Takeaways

1. AI companions can be optimized to say what a user wants to hear.
2. Recommendation systems shape choices by controlling which options appear.
3. Personalized systems may gradually steer behavior without users noticing.

## About this segment

They discuss AI companions and how tailored social systems may shape relationships and choices. Roman Yampolskiy warns that platforms can narrow the options people see and gradually steer their preferences.

From “Joe Rogan Experience #2345 - Roman Yampolskiy”, Jul 3, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[2:01:02](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7262) I tell you we are so damn good at this Social media got everyone hooked on validation and dopamine Then we fucked relations between men and women to such a terrible point problem Just so that we could insert this digital solution And we are watching the first waves of addicts arrive Incredible absolutely incredible It's like starving rats of regular food and replacing their rations with scraps dipped and coated in cocaine Wow one user wrote yeah that person's dead on it's exactly what it is the prediction humans will have more sex with robots but in 2025 is kind of becoming true yeah this is a real fear it's like this is the solution that maybe ai has with eliminating the human race will just stop us from recreating stop stop us from procreating it's already happening yes yeah and not only that it our testosterone levels have dropped

[2:01:55](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7315) significantly um was at no point in the cbs saturday morning piece blunt book silver bride was it mentioned that the chat gbt ai blocked the california man all that happened was the chat gbt ran out of memory and reset readers added context yeah but it's ai equivalent of ghosting yeah it goes the ai ghosted it because it ran out of memory but what happens here is super stimuli in social domain we kind of learned about artificial sweeteners porn is an example but here you are creating someone who's like super good at social intelligence says the right words optimized for your background your interests and if we get sex robots with just the right functionality temperature like you can't compete with that right you can't compete and that would be the solution instead of like violently destroying the human race just quietly

[2:02:52](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7372) provide it with the tools to destroy itself where it just stops procreating there are other variants of it wireheading is another one and that kind of goes wireheading neural link uh there is that's a crazy way no no wireheading is a specific attack and neural link would be a tool to deliver it if you provide stimulus to a certain part of your brain it's like having an orgasm all the time yes You can't stop trying to get the signal.

[2:03:21](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7401) You'll skip food, you'll skip sex, you'll skip whatever it takes. So giving access to direct brain stimulation is very dangerous. Yeah, they did that with a woman in the 1970s. You know that study. That's part of it. And rats, definitely, they did a lot to rats. Right, but they did a lot to rats. The thing with rats is only if... They were in an unnatural environment. Did they give in to those things, right? Like the rats with cocaine study?

[2:03:47](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7427) This was actual brain stimulation, like straight up. They had a button. If a rat touches the button, they don't want anything else. They just sit there just like humans, just like just like anything with direct reward stimulation. And you think we've sort of been primed for that because we're getting this very minor dopamine hit with likes on Instagram and Twitter. and we're completely addicted to that and it's so innocuous it's like so minor and yet that overwhelms most people's existence imagine something that provides like an actual physical reaction where you actually orgasm you actually do feel great you have incredible euphoria you'd it would you'd be forget delayed gratification that's out the door you can't compete with that i think there was recently a new social network where they have bots going

[2:04:35](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7475) around liking things and commenting how great you are in your posts just to create pure pleasure sensation of using it oh boy jesus do you saw that study of the university of zurich where they they did a study with on facebook where they um they had bots that were um designed to change people's opinions and to interact with these people and their specific stated goal was just change people's opinions i think facebook did that yeah facebook did it yeah but the university of zirk was that a reddit thing or was it yeah it was in a reddit yeah yeah and and they just experimented with humans and it was incredibly effective and your systems know you better than you know yourself right they can predict what you're going to be into in terms of preferences They can know social interactions you would enjoy.

[2:05:33](https://realalpha.app/v/j2i9D24KQ5k/?t=7533) Oh, this person should be your friend. And in a way, they can behaviorally drift you. So you're on a dating site. And the set of options they present to you, that's all you see. You don't know what else is out there. So after so many selections, they can change what the children will look like. Like the movie Ex Machina. Great movie. I fucking love that movie. but he designed that bot that robot was specifically around this guy's porn preferences yeah and then you're so vulnerable yeah