DAY17 OF 100 DAYS SELF-REINVENTION SERIES - The Invisible Person Running Your Life

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I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” – Apostle Paul, Rm 7:15

I want to introduce you to the person responsible for many of the decisions that you make, why you chose the wife or husband that you currently have, the job that you do, the friends that you have, the colours in your house, the car make that you prefer and so on. My reason for exploring this person in detail is that a person this powerful should be known, considering how much influence he wields on us. I know many of the decisions he is making are good for me, but there are some that he makes that I would want to influence. I do not like for example, letting him tell me when to eat or how far I can go in life. Here I am in my conscious mind; I want to lose weight, make more money, travel round the world; but after I decide that I will only eat so and so meal, this person tells me that I should forget that plan. I set goals to build a great company, and he tells me those kinds of plans are not for people like me.

For much of the writings in this book I have referred to a mental program called artificial intelligence AI, which is working in the background and influencing our lives. This AI, also called Subconscious is very powerful and makes a lot of decisions for us that we are not even aware of. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, writing for the US News and World Report has this to say, “According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behaviour depend on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness”.

If you drive regularly, I am sure that you have had the experience of driving a few kilometres and unaware of when and how you did it. What was happening was that your AI just took control and gave the instructions on the lane to take, the speed to go at and what else you needed to do. How is the AI able to do this? When you were learning to drive, you wrote mental programs about why you drove the way you did, why you went at that speed, and how you might react if you encountered something strange. Once your AI got the code, he didn't really need you again. Growing up for example, if you lived in a slum and raised by poor parents, every time you wanted a good toy, your father told you those beautiful toys are not for you; at first you resisted it, but after a while you accepted it and told your AI to make sure you never went near those fine toys again. Now your AI works round the clock to protect you from good toys.

There have been fears recently on the growth of artificial intelligence in the computer world. One of such persons who is afraid of the spread of AI is Elon Musk. Why is there fear and a call for legislation on the spread of AIs? AIs are not Robots. They are developed to “think”. A robot is programmed with a set of reactive instructions such as “if you hear this sound then do this…”, if you come across an obstacle then do this and that. That makes robots dumb servants. This is not the case with AI. AIs are developed to think, to observe and come up with their solutions.

In 2017, when Google's “DEEP MIND”, an AI developed by Google beat the world Chess champion, people started expressing worries on the future of AI. The amazing thing about DEEP MIND was that it learnt to play Chess just a few hours before playing with the world chess champion. An AI is loaded with a set of codes on how decisions are made, and it is then programmed to come up with its own decisions when faced with any challenge. When you say someone has 20 years' experience in playing Chess, an AI can play Chess repeatedly overnight and get a hundred years' experience in just 24 hours. One fear is this: will the computer industry preload for example an intelligence, to kill an enemy on an object and the object preloaded with AI becomes so experienced and goes after humans?

The above description of how AI works in the computer world is to drive home the point we are making about our own AI or what we call subconscious mind. At the beginning we told our subconscious mind what to do and how to watch over us, and it does it so well that we started relying on it. The challenge is that some of the instructions we gave it earlier in our lives are no longer relevant. When we told our subconscious that we were not meant for the good toys, it was our understanding at that time; we now want good toys. When we heard of marriage challenges and told our AI to keep us single, it was for a point in time. Now we want to get married, and our AI is holding us back, breaking some of the useful connections that we are making to get married. Here we are in a training on how to do this and that and this supercomputer AI reminds us that it is not for us. I used to think that my subconscious was a robot I built to which I could give instructions, but now I am finding out that it is an AI chipset, and it makes its own decisions irrespective of my conscious wants and desires.

?We cannot do without our subconscious or AI. On several occasions, this AI has been our saving grace. We have walked into a place and even without thinking; our AI sounded a warning that something was wrong. Some of that warning wasn't specifically something that we taught our AI, but because the AI can utilize the basic rules we gave it to make decisions, even when we were not consciously aware of danger, our AI alerted us of the presence of danger. However, like the fears expressed by the likes of Elon Musk about computer AIs, how much control over our lives do we want to cede to our subconscious.

As in AI, can this subconscious get the better of us and harm us in any way? At a certain age you gave your AI a script for your alcohol consumption, because you enjoyed alcohol; and besides every time you drank it, your confidence was sky high; you sang on stage effortlessly. Now, your AI has developed several control codes by which you drink alcohol without even thinking and it is damaging your livers. You want to stop, but you do not just seem able to stop.

Growing up, a petty crime was the formula with which you got on. Your AI has now perfected how to do this for you and you can engage in petty crimes even without thinking about it. The positive side of our AI is that it is the reason we are hired to do the work we do. The vacancy says 20 years sales experience. If your AI has been taught well and has directed you well this past 20 years in selling, why do you want to ditch it?

In his book “Blink, thinking without thinking” Malcom Gladwell explains how we think without thinking. He narrates several stories of people who just by looking at something reached the exact conclusion within seconds. A conclusion an amateur reached only after months of examining the same object. Gladwell goes on to tell the story of policemen who shot a black victim because their AI was preloaded with prejudice, a decision which a policeman with a different programming will not reach. He explains that in times of pressure, we do not use our analytical conscious mind. A policeman who needs to make a decision in the fraction of a second whether to shoot at a suspect is not likely to have the time to analyse whether or not he should shoot. In a fraction of a second his AI takes control and makes the decision for him.

I remember asking the American Sport Psychologist, Garret Kraemer what he will do if he was confronted by a particular challenge? His answer shocked me. He said he wouldn't know what he will do because at the moment he is confronted with the challenge several options could come up and he wouldn't even be able to tell me which of them he would choose in the very moment.

?At first, I felt he avoided answering my question, but over time, since that experience, I have observed in my own life that I have made decisions in the spur of the moment which afterward I would not consider in my rational conscious mind. Today, I have humbled myself, and I now pray even in matters I once was 100% sure what I will do. Where it is a conversation, I not only pray for myself but also for the person with whom I am going to have the conversation.