Another great piece, this one highlighting the more subtle forms of manipulation at play than the overt political messaging of Cambridge Analytica et al. I have a few thoughts, the algorithms in the world that we clearly identify as eroding free will share a lot of similarities with neural mechanisms formed by evolution, developmental context or habit, shouldn't we then see our cognitive architecture as antithesis to free will too? Second, a totalitarian regime that is universal and inescapable is one of the existential threats to humanity cataloged by those who study these things. It's a genuine risk that we probably ought to begin acting now to understand and mitigate. Thirdly, William Gibson's latest novel 'Agency' deals with a lot of this stuff too, the willingness to follow AI generated recommendations, those in power pulling the strings etc. But adds an additional layer of reverse causation, where those in the future manipulate the actions in the past too...
Another great piece, this one highlighting the more subtle forms of manipulation at play than the overt political messaging of Cambridge Analytica et al. I have a few thoughts, the algorithms in the world that we clearly identify as eroding free will share a lot of similarities with neural mechanisms formed by evolution, developmental context or habit, shouldn't we then see our cognitive architecture as antithesis to free will too? Second, a totalitarian regime that is universal and inescapable is one of the existential threats to humanity cataloged by those who study these things. It's a genuine risk that we probably ought to begin acting now to understand and mitigate. Thirdly, William Gibson's latest novel 'Agency' deals with a lot of this stuff too, the willingness to follow AI generated recommendations, those in power pulling the strings etc. But adds an additional layer of reverse causation, where those in the future manipulate the actions in the past too...