The 'What if' of Analogue to Digital

I'm a real believer in Person Centred Care, or Personalised Care as the NHS terms it, but what if our current focus on human control and personal autonomy is holding us back?

What if Personalised Care as we are proposing turns out to be a na?ve old-fashioned idea? It’s a part of the analogue era, a quaint stage of our human existence before we got truly digitally literate.

Let’s imagine that human autonomy and self-mastery turn out to over-rated. That through massive advances in tech and AI we can be supported in a very comfortable state of health and happiness by outsourcing decision making and individual health management to machine learning. Would we free up time and headspace for more enjoyable things?

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Our DNA and our bodies slowly adapt over generations, but AI is advancing rapidly. Its not hard to imagine that in the future we could set AI the task of personalising our world, internally and externally, so that it perfectly meets our needs. We could design living patterns, social set ups, as well as regulate what we ingested and inhaled, to maintain perfect harmony.

AI is getting increasingly sophisticated, it could assess our biology, physiology, genetics and psychological state to match the perfect social and internal and external environmental conditions for us. ?We are just starting to understand epigenetics and how certain things, gut bacteria for one, can literally turn on or off expression of different genes. With the help of rapidly evolving AI could we enhance our ability to make the most of our genetic code?

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I can imagine some might see this as mind numbingly bland. What if this approach could build in variety so we didn’t get bored, just enough surprise and unpredictability to keep life interesting. But all machine planned to the optimal level.?

It could recognise when we needed challenge to keep us on our toes. There is much written about the benefits to the human mind of flow state. This is when we get so absorbed in doing something, it becomes both pleasurable and relaxing. Experiments show that the best activities for flow state are ones we’ve mastered through practice, but that also continue to challenge us enough to maintain our focus and keep us absorbed.

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Many people have written about the burden of health care. Doing your own research and planning to follow guidance around lifestyle improvements can take an enormous amount of time and ongoing effort. This may stimulate physical and mental flourishing and lock in the best chances of longevity, but the trade-off is the opportunity cost of not leading the rest of your life. Could support help us to short cut that process, cut us out of the loop, and give us that time back?

?In some way the best indicator of rude health is that you don’t even need to think about it. Sometimes I look at dogs, especially those owned by very active families. They don’t think about health, they run until they are exhausted, sleep and recharge, eat well but not over the top. They seem pretty happy, always willing to give love. Their owners take care of keeping them content and happy.

?Talking of which perhaps we could save ourselves a whole lot of pain in finding the perfect partner. These computers would likely have a much better idea than our irrational brains about compatibility. It might even be a route to accelerating genetic advances by considering the probability of children being likely to be an advantageous genetic mix. Or maybe that’s a red flag……maybe that’s something we’d control for.

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What if we could reliably outsource all of this to an AI app? It could physically be plugged into us……I’m sure Elon Musk’s Neurolink chips are already part way there. It could pick up on fluctuations in hormones, neural firing patterns in our brain, levels of nutrients in our blood and other body compartments etc etc.

We might worry that such dependency on machine learning and outsourcing control would be dangerous to us. What if the machines take over and suddenly decide to lock is into a subservient role? Turn is into ‘organic batteries’ for their growth and development, like in the Matrix, and other similar sci-fi films. But let’s say we’ve managed to globally agree a set of safeguards so that this can’t happen. AI experts the world over have ensured the machines never turn on us humans.

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I’m writing this trying to be genuinely constructive and optimistic. There is a graffiti slogan on Ecclesall Road in Sheffield……maybe it was Banksy, or a Yorkshire Wana bee version. It says, “Why are you so nostalgic for a life you’ve never had”. ?Are we being nostalgic for human control and autonomy as though it’s a cherished commodity we are losing. How much control does any of us really have. Are we really free to think for ourselves, free of political or social influence, be that large scale or small scale. Whether its news corporations, social media channels, or our parents, how often are we making a genuinely free choice?

?In the current health world, I would suggest most doctors have been shaped by the pharmaceutical industry, be that influence on medical school curricula or through funding of research.

What we all choose to eat and do is heavily influenced by corporate commercial profit.?

What if the ultimate profit and power lies in shaping the tools I describe above. What if we trade our freedom and locus of control to the best profit-making business that wins the design battle, as long as they are really good at keeping us healthy and happy and guarantee our safety.

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Would it be so bad?

?I’d be really interested in views on this. Not the obvious knee jerk “Of course not, that’s a dystopian nightmare”. But to stop and reflect on the ‘what if’?

If we could do it, could it herald an era of human collaboration, that also took into account planetary factors, that took us to another level of sophistication and co-operation? Are we limiting our thinking with nostalgia. If, just if, the answer was ‘maybe it wouldn’t be so bad’, and maybe we could do it……. what would our next step be?