> What if the user's current need is to not play music?
Then don't play music. You are asking for something that only works in a dystopia.
Either the machine tries to understand "what I need now" from partial information and will not play me music when I want to listen because it thinks it "knows what I need".
Or the machine actually is hooked up to my real time health data and possibly brain activity to actually know what I need.
I definitely don't want to have a personal computing machine thinking it knows what I want and deciding for me in such a way, or to have such access to my internal state.
You missed my point a little. We keep optimizing for more addictive services. It's just as dystopian for a service to always present exactly what will keep me using the service and giving thumbs up.
Every single entertainment service of product in the history of entertainment has been designed so the user has the most entertainment as possible, and its up to the user to moderate consumption. Nobody creates entertainment services that are boring on purpose just because they believe in temperance or whatever, and if they do, nobody uses them because by definition they are more boring than they could've been.
Move away from the songs strawman you're arguing against. My point was about content in general. As we get better and better at recommending the next content item based on engagement and likes, we make things more addictive. We don't have to do this. Not everything needs to be a slot machine that keeps you there as long as possible.
I love listening to one podcast episode each evening while I clean my kitchen. I do this each day. I would pay for this. I don't want this to hijack my brain and keep me up all night with content that requires an inordinate amount of willpower to put down.
There are plenty ways to provide content and make money off it without optimising for the best possible next item that keeps a person engaged until they fall asleep.
Then don't play music. You are asking for something that only works in a dystopia.
Either the machine tries to understand "what I need now" from partial information and will not play me music when I want to listen because it thinks it "knows what I need".
Or the machine actually is hooked up to my real time health data and possibly brain activity to actually know what I need.
I definitely don't want to have a personal computing machine thinking it knows what I want and deciding for me in such a way, or to have such access to my internal state.