Consciousness of Choice and AI's Danger
We all get to thinking about free will at some point and time in our lives. But now we have to think about AI taking our freewill and monetizing our data. The right to privacy is still in our constitution so why is no one protecting us.
PSYCHOLOGYAIPOLITICS
Charmaine Begell
5/31/20265 min read
As someone who believed that regardless of habits, critical-thinking predisposition, and moral foundations, humans could act unpredictably depending on different situations, AI data-mining analysis is challenging one of my philosophical positions. I have seen the evidence of predictive models being accurate. This business model gives me a high degree of anxiety about maintaining the value of one's agency. So I got to thinking, did a little research, and then some writing.
I broach the subject not as one of the many analysis of determining whether we truly have freewill or if everything is predetermined. The philosophical fate versus choice conundrum. I honestly don’t see them as particularly different. My dive into the question is a little bit more psychological in nature. I became interested in that part of the brain that determines decision-making. Most recorded medical data allocates that function to the prefrontal cortex or and the limbic system.
Speaking of nature, this is where I feel the bulk of my argument stems from. Nature is that genetic sequence that really makes you an individual entity, outside external influences. External influences may affect you, but really, it is your natural predisposition that leads people to react to the same situation differently. Subject A and B could have both grown up in a middle-class broken home, played sports, had a sibling, and experienced social awkwardness. But the root of who you are is how you, as an individual, adapt to those experiences, making up the variables of our personal development forming one’s core character. No matter the nurture, there will always be a dominant force of nature that formulates the building blocks upon which our personality is built. At least that is the theory I am basing my assertion!
Adolescence is the time for us to use our limbic system to interpret data; affecting our decision-making. By the time our prefrontal cortex has matured, we have become the first built version of ourselves. The results of these decisions compound themselves as the decades accumulate. Faced with decisions, the older we get, the more likely the outcomes can be predicted. Predicted, because we embody an accepted character that represents our morals, goals, preferences, desires, and motivations. You know all those aspects that a Meyers-Briggs test looks to assess. Which brings us to the mental framework that represents our choices. So, when we are faced with a binary choice of a do or do not, is it really a choice we are making? Or just a pre-designed accumulation of probability?
Yes, you have to take action to make a choice, but it is my position that even the act of not choosing is making a choice. As AI makes spectacular advances in generative models the question of choice and free will become ever more important to personal agency. Over the last 15 years our agents of government, one by one, have submitted to the will of the tech industry, allowing for the sale and accumulation of constituent microdata. The data firms have realized the power in predicting human behavior and have moved from trying to sell us things to monitoring, manipulating, and in some people's cases, controlling free will.
Micro data represents decades of choices; our favorite bands, brand of soda, on what day we grocery shop, where we have lived, for whom we vote, where we vacation, what subjects peek our interest, what books we prefer to read, when we are having sex. These are the building blocks to decoding our conscious, our psyche. I think you get the idea. Every membership, electronic transaction, and review have been some of the millions of micro decisions we've made that an algorithm can now utilize to target and predict our choices. Maybe better than we do ourselves. I heard someone say that if their Starbucks was waiting for them on the way to work instead of them having to order it, they don't mind. The shallowness in that statement is a vivid example of the hollowness and numbness some people have come to accept about privacy. I mean, giving up your personal identity and privacy for a cup of joe; idiotic.
As a student of economics and sociology, I always felt that no matter what, humans could not be predicted to a 100% certainty. Because there is always a situation that may cause a decision to go one way or the other. So there is no ambiguity, let me elaborate for you. For example, I tried to find a way to complete my thought in this moment, and every 'for instance' I came up with in the end could be argued by a predictive model that may not be predicted as it would happen every day, but that the outcome would, with a high-predictability, happen if faced with a certain waterfall of data points. Let's say I have a romantic type and I have strong boundaries. This leads to me only saying yes to a person I am willing to show trust toward. That decision of choices stays consistent until one hormonally inconsistent day, and a spout of loneliness and pity leads me to say yes to a date I know I don’t want to go on and won’t get anything beneficial out of. My choice seems random because it is out of my normal decision-making process and motivated by an emotional anomaly. A data model would say it was fated to happen based on the data. They foresee the anomaly.
Our free will does determine our fate, in my proposition. We are responsible for our choices as we are the outcomes. What leads us to those big moments are the accumulation of choices. Psychologists have identified and characterized the parts of the brain most associated with our decision-making processes. There is the prefrontal cortex, which represents the analytical aspect of our internal dialogue. Then there is the limbic system that recaps all the historical data of our decision-making and outcomes. But these things are all theoretical until the moment you build the framework from which the data can be integrated and interpreted. This is our nature.
Fate or Choice, Free Will or Divinity. I state again that I feel these are different sides of the same coin. One does not exist without the other because your free will lead to the building blocks that make up the fate of your life. It is like when people seek approval from social circles or mental professionals. AI has become the tool that validates your choices. Therapists all have this moment with a patient when they understands that a patient isn't asking for advice they are asking you to validate the decision they have already come to. I seek guidance from spirit, friends and understanding my past to help me navigate my present. In the end advice provided is used my be to validate what I feel best actually doing. So am I really making a choice in the sense of the definition? More or less I am driven by how decisions and outcomes make me feel and I continue to chase that feeling of happiness. I choose happiness but the choices I make to get me there are not about the option at the time but the result.
When was the last time you truly made a choice that didn't already have the answer written in your genes before you made it? If you had the change to change one of your decisions it that even free-will or is it just the prediction of an anomaly? Are you comfortable giving away your privacy to third-party tech companies? Where do we draw the line and take back what makes us, us?