Biryani, AI & Humane Design - What's the common link between them?

Like many of you out there, I like to live my life to the fullest. And I have never taken the blessing of good food lightly, especially with Chicken Biryani. If you haven't heard of this dish earlier, try it, and you'll love it for sure. And it's this dish that made me make a conscious change to my Digital life. Want to know how? Read on and trust me, it will be worth your time :)

After a long work week, I got a craving for Biryani. As usual, I ordered home delivery from one of my favorite restaurants, and it was delicious. Fantastic dinner for a Friday night; the dish was aromatic, tasty with tender chicken pieces. So far, So good! But the next day, things started getting a bit strange.

The Weekend Triggers

The next day, I woke up to a text message from the food delivery app mentioning a 20% discount coupon on my next purchase - It was an indeed pleasant start to my day. After a quick brunch (I sleep a little longer during my weekends), I check my smartphone for emails. And I see a notification pop-up stating a Biryani dish combo-offer from my other food delivery app. Interesting coincidence - Is the universe telling me to order it again? Anyways, I move on. During the day, I somehow felt that I'm seeing and hearing about Biryani throughout my Digital world. All the website ads, ads in my social network feeds, and heck, even my Youtube suggested video list started showing Biryani Cooking videos! Something didn't feel right.

The final confirmation to my doubts

When the dinner time came, a pop-up notification from my food delivery app shows up. If I order my dish in the next 30 minutes, I'll get an additional 35% off my bill. When I clicked the link, it took me straight to the billing page with my shopping cart pre-loaded with the dish. But I stopped and closed the app.

So after a little bit of researching,

I identified that this is a classic case of funneling and conditioning. Advanced AI engines with high-fi analytical models have been trying hard for the entire day to make me order Biryani again. And they almost succeeded.

and they almost succeeded.

I'm sure you would have faced similar experiences wherever you are across the world and across a variety of your purchases - from food to finance and everything in between.

AI's conundrum - to be humane or not?

The digital industry has always been at the frontiers to develop tech that revolves around our lives. They designed the apps to be smarter, more intuitive, and focus on predicting our needs so that they can fulfill them, even before we realize it. This design methodology has always been welcome and useful too. As a consumer, I would be happy to have a smart car that adapts to my driving style, maps on my phone that accurately predict my travel time, etc. But all these should be done on my wish.

There's one problem here - AI is expensive and if you're not paying for the service, then you become the product for that service.

So to monetize or make money, the tech mentioned above can be tweaked to understand your triggers and then nudge you towards making decisions without you realizing it. The worst part is that you'll think you're making the decisions the entire time, but in reality- it's already been made by someone else.

The earlier experience of mine with the dish belongs to the latter part - subtle clues and triggers throughout my day and the final push to the last step over the proverbial fall of the conversion cliff. So who is responsible for this seemingly sinister plot of a story?

Who's to blame here?

It would be naive to blame the AI tech because it has done its intended work correctly. To simply put, the technology focused on maximizing value on a given objective, given a set of constraints in place. So how about the firms that build these apps - No again. In the capitalist/consumerist world of ours, they've done nothing wrong. This approach has been in place for decades now, much earlier than the current AI capabilities came into the picture.

The answer - It's us.

Please don't get alarmed. The human minds of our generation tend to lose focus when shown things that we desire. And it's a rare trait among us to think critically of the things happening around us. We readily welcomed these firms to become a part of our lives because we wanted to have the convenience of someone else to do the challenging role of making decisions on our behalf. To make it a bit theatrical - We wanted someone else to take care of our problems for us.

How to be aware of and overcome this trend? - As a creator and a Consumer

As a creator, if your design helps to improve the consumer's lives for the better with their consent for the same - Go ahead. But don't try to make their decisions for them. We need to be responsible with our designs and work ethically for the better of this generation and generations to come.

As a consumer, the next time before you start using a free service, ask the right questions. To begin with, how are they providing if for free? If you want to encourage the good guys - pay reasonably for their work. Because as the classic saying goes, there's no free lunch in this world. So if you're not paying, then it is you who's being sold to someone else.

And here comes the real twist to the story.

If you're reading this part of the article, I've succeeded in garnering your attention till now. And if you started getting questions in your mind before reaching the previous section, then the subtle nudges placed in this article worked well. If not, guess my writing model needs further tweaking (wink wink).

The article mentioned above is my personal view only and doesn't represent the firm that I'm associated with. If you enjoyed reading this article, please do like, comment, and share!