Modern life: Are we outsourcing our lives?

"Recently, I wrote a post here on this topic. In this article I explore it in more depth. There are no easy answers, but maybe these are things for all of us to think about. And if it's true, is it a bad thing or maybe actually a good thing?"

Every day we are bombarded with messages, some are overtly commercial, others more subtle. In the early 1990s, it was estimated that in the UK we faced hundreds of such messages each day. Now in the 2020s, it must be in the thousands, especially when we factor in all our screen time.

Each day we are also making countless decisions, often as a result of receiving those marketing and sales messages:

• When to get up?... and whether to expose ourselves to those messages from the radio or TV?
• What to have for breakfast?... coffee or tea, what cereal (and at the same time we are thinking about the health benefits, the implications on how much we put on our waist line)
• What work to do today and when?... who to call, in what order, how to write that proposal, those emails, preparing for the Zoom call, and when/if to have a lunch break?
• What to do after work?... meal in or out (if even possible), visit the gym, watch sport or a movie on TV, supermarket shopping, reading, social media, planning for tomorrow, or perhaps for the weekend?

We are absorbing information every single day. Increasingly however a lot of the decisions or the process of making a decision, are being taken away from us. Sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes it may not be so good.

Minor decisions

I was struck by the fact that you can increasingly outsource much of your life these days. By which I mean you can let others take over some of those "less important" decisions. For example try these three:

• Your previous browsing has triggered those online ads so if you looked at trainers one day, hey presto! you get a pop-up a day or so later with an offer for trainers
• Your online supermarket website is likely to show you your grocery 'favourites', so you don't have to remember or really think about them when you place your next online order
• Your eating habits for the week are decided with those food delivery boxes giving you a full week of meals, all planned out for you, with the right ingredients and in the exact amounts

Some of these things are really good. They might be considered as great advances for modern living. But here are some questions:

1. Is AI, and all those algorithms taking over too much of our lives?
2. Is it good that more and more decisions are being taken for us?
3. In time, will the algorithms, AI, big tech etc, know more about us than we know ourselves?
4. Will they understand our likely decision-making before we do?
5. If they have more decision-making data on me and you, might they actually know how we are likely to choose things in the future?
6. Hence, are we slowly outsourcing our lives?

They might be 90% to 95% accurate, but that might be much better than our own hit rate of say 70% to 80%. It's about making better decisions for us, and removing the regret of "I wish I'd done X" or "I wish I'd NOT done Y". (Note: I made those percentages up).

If AI was in control, would our regrets disappear or at least be reduced? Would an equation look like this...

Better decisions = Fewer regrets = More satisfaction = Happier life!

If so, is it more a question of 'what' decisions we should actually outsource?

Perhaps not surprisingly, we are probably more comfortable outsourcing the simple decisions, the minor ones, those things like "What to have for dinner on Thursday evening?" - i.e. let's just get a Hello Fresh box of food delivered, so we don't need to think, so we don't need a recipe, so we don't need to assemble the ingredients, thus the thinking is done for us - it's easier! (Of course, we can convince ourselves that this is perhaps better than ordering a Domino's from Deliveroo or Just Eat). Perhaps they i.e. Hello Fresh et al, are better at it than us, meaning better at choosing nicer, tastier, and healthier foods than we are ourselves?

The argument that can be made is that the benefit of this outsourcing is that we outsource the time wasting things. In the past, we might have searched for information, an activity that might have taken us several hours, but that now is one we can do in a matter of seconds via Google or Bing. How about planning our route on a roadmap, which nowadays is replaced with a few screen taps into a satnav system? Then, what about... those suggestions from our TV receiver boxes to free up the time we might use in looking up the listings in our weekly TV guides, or instead of using the EPG (electronic programming guide)?

All these things are about 'saving time' and/or 'making life easier'.

In essence, the real value is in the time saved. And we can use that time saved to do other, better things.

And that's a really powerful argument. But do we need to think about what we are doing with that time, so

• Are we spending quality time with others?
• Are we learning a new language?
• Are we learning a new hobby?
• Are we volunteering?

Undoubtedly some of us are, but I suspect many people are using the freed-up time saved to spend more... time in front of another screen... time scrolling social media... time consuming calories... time with a TV dinner and a bottle of red.

I suppose we have freewill and if that's what we want to do with our time, then that's fine. But my point is that maybe the idea of saving time on some things to use it to do better things maybe a myth. And perhaps some of the quality time we are spending with 'others' is actually time with Jim (Beam) and Jack (Daniel's). Is that really what this outsourcing is all about? i.e. our ability just to consume more things.

Question: How soon before food, drink and clothes just automatically arrive at our front doors... the algorithm knows what you need in advance, so things just arrive as if by magic, by a white van, a robot cart, or a drone. And every 12 months or so Apple delivers you a new iPhone too, that's every 12 months forever, or at least as often as they launch a new phone model...

The Big decisions

The other way to look at this is that maybe it's not the minor decisions we need the help with at all. Maybe it's the 'big' ones, the really big ones. Things like:

• choosing your college or university course
• deciding on your ideal career path
• finding your life partner, spouse or significant other
• determining whether, and when to start a family
• weighing up where to live, what house to buy, what car etc
• picking the right mortgage or loan agreement

Maybe it's those sorts of decisions that it would be better to outsource to AI, because they are more important. They are the ones that we agonise over the most. Therefore, do we see a time in the future where not only AI and big tech are determining what colour of T-shirt we wear, or what brand of trainers suit us best, or what meal we should have on Friday evening? But also what job or career we choose, who we live with, what house we buy, and where in the world we live?

Anyway enough of this. I've taken up enough of your time, it's probably wine o'clock somewhere in the world, and there is a screen to be looked at or scrolled.

?About the Author

Paul Latimer is an experienced market researcher, having held a number of marketing roles in a wide variety of industries he moved over to focus on market research from the agency side in 2004, before setting up his own market research consultancy, Latimer Appleby, in 2012. He is a graduate of the University of Birmingham, and holds several diplomas including those from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), the Market Research Society (MRS) and the Institute of Data & Marketing. He is a Certified Member of the MRS, and a Fellow of the CIM.