BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 14. Excessive use of
social media and automated systems can lead to a decline in human
cognitive abilities and create opportunities to manipulate users’
behavior for commercial and other purposes, Erol Gelenbe, an IEEE
member and professor at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied
Informatics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, said at the opening
ceremony of the 20th International Conference on Application of
Information and Communication Technologies (AICT2026) in Baku on
Wednesday, Trend’s
correspondent reports from the event.


“The results of the PISA assessment in secondary education have,
for the first time, shown a significant decline in performance
across most OECD countries. This is directly linked to the spread
of social media: people spend time browsing information online
instead of devoting sufficient time to learning and developing the
ability to solve complex problems independently. Excessive
dependence on automated systems also carries the risk of people
losing their own capabilities. The danger is that we will
increasingly lose our abilities if we rely on automated systems
that tell us what to do. I consider this the main risk,” Gelenbe
said.


He also drew attention to the possibility of manipulating users’
behavior through artificial intelligence systems. According to him,
large software and hardware systems known as AI systems contain
vast numbers of parameters whose modification can affect how they
behave. When deliberately exploited, these mechanisms may cause
systems to influence and manipulate people rather than help
them.


“This has already happened over the past seven or eight years,
when Facebook used established principles of cognitive science to
adaptively modify users’ responses, particularly those of young
people, to create addiction,” Gelenbe said.


He emphasized that the main risks stem both from the
underdevelopment of human capabilities due to excessive dependence
on technology and from the potential for companies and other actors
to use digital systems to pursue their own economic, political, and
other objectives.







The 20th International Conference on Application of Information
and Communication Technologies (AICT2026) is being held at ADA
University in Baku.


Azerbaijan is hosting the conference for the seventh time. This
year’s event marks the 20th anniversary of the AICT conference
series under the slogan “20 Years of Connecting Science,
Technology, and Society.”


The event is jointly organized by ADA University, relevant IEEE
units in Azerbaijan, Politecnico di Torino, George Washington
University, Nazarbayev University, United Arab Emirates University,
Tashkent University of Information Technologies, Kazakh-British
Technical University, Tbilisi State University, Georgian Technical
University, SDU University, the Nikola Tesla Institute of
Electrical Engineering, and the Alessandro Faedo Institute of
Information Science and Technologies.


The conference aims to facilitate knowledge exchange in
information and communication technologies and discuss the sector’s
latest developments. It brings together researchers, academics, and
industry representatives.