AI decide. We follow.

Cries such as “AI-Powered”, “Powered by AI”, “AI First” etc. sound hollow when used excessively and unnecessarily by some tech businesses.?Make you feel like they have a solution looking for a problem!

That said, one thing is clear - almost every aspect of our life today generates digital traces. For hundreds of millions of us globally, the most trusted and reliable guide to take us places is Maps.?Likewise, Google for search.? We are increasingly becoming reliant on AI to make decisions for us.?

The mammoth infotech revolution with Big Data and AI/ML is slowly but steadily establishing the authority of algorithms.?Combined with the advances in biotech revolution, the duo is gradually making us lose our ability to make decisions for ourselves.?These two revolutions show that our decision making and feelings are mere calculations, and the rapid process of calculation occurs naturally, far below our threshold of awareness.?Put crudely, it is like we are outsourcing our decision making, bit by bit.

It is impossible for us to arrest this avalanche?of digital information, nor make a U-turn and drive away from our digital selves - where we have allowed businesses and others to micro-target?different aspects of our lives.

In a sort of crystal ball gazing view on liberty and individual decision making, Yuval Noah Harari writes brilliantly in his book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”.??The following are excerpts.

Life, all around us, is increasingly becoming different with advertising, propaganda, monitoring and precision-guided manipulation by businesses and governments.?In this whole process, two things are likely to get impacted: ?human feelings and human decision making.

It is here that ‘Responsible AI’ provides a glimmer of hope - about increased trust, transparency, fairness and auditability of AI technologies-based solutions.?But as they say, “It is easier said than done.”