AI Face Filters + Social Media + Evolutionary Game Theory. Oh my!

Beauty is getting weird right now. Thanks to technology, you can transform the ugliest photo into pure glamour in one click. But is this good for us? Will it make us happier and sexier, or will life become a soup of Kimface avatars and suicidal teenagers on TikTok?

This video is part one of a series on game theory and civilisation. It centres around a character called Moloch: the God of Unhealthy Competition. The bad guy of humanity’s evolutionary story that we have to figure out how to defeat.

Written, produced and edited by Liv Boeree

More information on Moloch: Meditations on Moloch by Scott Alexander