Artificial Intelligence and Free will

How AI is going to impact human free will

When you are a child, you want to do everything. You want to become a pilot, doctor, and an engineer at the same time. You want to travel to distant places and even planets (my case).

But then you start growing up, and you begin to know that you cannot become everything simultaneously; you can choose only one thing out of them.

At this point, you have completely accepted all the norms of society and want to do something amazing that people will admire.

Looking back to where you started, you will realize that you have lost control over what you can think. Now, you can think only using a small, narrow perspective.

Since you are an engineering student, you can only aspire to become a great engineer, not an artist.

The amount of free will (if you believe in it) has decreased from when you were a child to when you become an adult.

Now, your aspirations have a different source, which must follow the societal code.

But one thing that a man still believes even if he has become a subordinate to the societal structure is that he is the man of his fate, even if deep underneath he knows that the limitations imposed by the society limits his fate.

Now, a man can choose only what society allows him to, but he still assumes that out of the given choices, his choice is his own and so free from any kind of influence.

The illusion of free choice

Let's get to the general story of a modern man and how he thinks about the world.

After the Enlightenment period, man became aware of his cultural and religious structures, and this awareness was so shallow that it failed to provide him the idea that behind these structures, he threw them like orange peel.

God was dead now, life-long marriage was a sham.

Human will and the idea of so-called love emerged. Now, a man can do whatever he wants just under the confines of the society, and he can marry as many times he pleases.

His will is guided by his feelings.

If we think of the liberalists, they believe that human emotions are free from nature and history and have divine origin, which emerge out of nowhere and are trying to guide him forward.

But it is a sham.

Emotions are biochemical algorithms developed through millions of years of evolution to foster security and reproduction.

They do not possess a divine origin. Even emotions like benevolence and forgiveness are just survival mechanisms developed from the old human tendency of group participation.

So, the cozy dreams of living a great life might not be the right choice because your emotions and feelings can be easily shaped.

This new idea of following your feelings or gut to do something gives us this illusion of free will which makes a man believe that his actions belong to him; he is not following any kind of God or any belief system, he is following his heart.

Feelings operate below the threshold of your awareness, giving you the illusion of being in control of your own choices.

In some sense, to progress, man has to limit his free will and must submit to something. You can't just act out into the world whatever you like, because, after all, it is not yours.

AI gives you more free-will

Artificial Intelligence is growing rapidly. When infotech combines with biotech we will get big-data. Now, you don't need to make any decisions on your own; you just need to listen to the algorithm which is connected to the sensors in your body, which are constantly monitoring everything happening inside your body from blood pressure to new cancerous cells to your newborn fantasies.

Stuck while choosing between law or engineering? No worries- the so-called algorithm connected to the sensors in your body and the big data advises you to choose law because it saw a trend of dopamine increase in your brain while debating and a couple of other factors like that. It might also tell you how likely you are likely to succeed in a given field by using the laws of probability. This is not a sham. Kids prefer the advice of a random YouTuber who came out of nowhere into his feed rather than listening to their parents.

Wanna marry? No worries- sensors installed in your body recorded an increase in your blood pressure while seeing a particular kind of actress in a particular scene of the movie while recording dilation in your pupil size. Based upon this data, it will show you different people of your age group to choose from who are dating currently.

The thing is, most people make staggeringly wrong mistakes while choosing their careers, and having an algorithm that can predict with a certain degree what your future is going to look like is amazing. In India, we have Pandits but, soon they might also be replaced by a cheap piece of code just like we rush to hospitals before going in front of Ganesh-ji when our loved ones get ill. This wasn't what your great-grandfather used to do.

Companies might persuade you to share data from your body sensors while you are watching a movie so that they can give you better movie recommendations next time. They might even give you personalized movies based on your interests and data. People with the best personalized movies will become superstars and get awards.

On the surface, it looks cool; after all we all like YouTube to give us personalized recommendations, it might prove helpful to us if we might find something we never knew before.

AI is serving your interests after all, People might be enjoying the best healthcare in human history and even mental well-being of people will improve once we start to understand human psychology better and integrate it with the algorithms.

Your life might be full of meaningless shit but you might be completely satisfied with it. Feelings of depression and anxiety used to be signs that something was wrong with your life, but now you can just kick them out of your life with a single click or thought. We might get billion-dollar startups that promise you that you will never feel unhappy in your life, that you will have happiness 24/7. We will have a society of people on LSD 24/7.

GOVERNMENT, COMPANIES, and INDIVIDUALS in the ALGORITHM

You may think that people are not going to like the fact that their data is being shared with companies whose names they don't even know. Although this happens even these days, it is not that prevalent, and you cannot just take anybody's medical data and tell him that he is in the first stage of cancer.

The future is going to be different. Governments might force everybody to share their data with a particular organization; otherwise, you might not be considered a citizen. People will deliberately share their data with the government, and the current government in power can easily use that data to create personalized campaigns for everybody.

It might find out that most of the people who are 18 like and support watching porn so government might come up with a campaign which supports watching porn and back it up with strong ethical reasons. This is not that difficult; most people confuse the causal chains and rationality with something being right. Something might sound rational on the surface, but that does not prove that it's right.

With AI, you can produce infinite different types of personalized campaigns for everybody, even if the promoting idea is different. For 18 years old you like porn you will produce porn supporting campaigns and for the 54 years old who are orthodox and have strong repulsive views about porn you will produce campaigns which support their views. It is not that difficult to do using AI; it just demands hard work of one click.

Companies might tell you that if you share your data with them, they will provide you with a good service. Entertainment companies will use AI to generate personalized movies and content. Health companies will use your data to give you recommendations about certain insurances or about the current status of your health.

Since the data that is no longer personal is being shared deliberately, getting a job without sharing personal data will become difficult. On sharing personal data of your health with your boss, he can decide whether he should give an alcoholic a job or not because the algorithm can predict with a certain probability that you are going to have cancer in the next 5 years.

People on the individual level are going to get the best health care facilities, but anything like privacy will become a fancy concept of history like the burning of old ladies by claiming that they are witches.

You might feel that getting personalized ads or healthcare is a good idea it's helping me to become better and live a good life, but the concept of life being good is also shaped by the current narrative of society. Living a life of dignity was considered good in the old times, but now, money and fame are topping the charts.

You might fool yourself by thinking that your support for some random party is because of your will to choose the party, but where is your will?

As individual we will become nothing more than a part of an algorithm that has a certain piece of information to serve the motives of a multinational company that is on the other side of the world. This is happening today also, but the autonomy is still in the hands of an individual. We can still choose.

You might feel you have free will but that's because people having the control want you to believe this otherwise the system won't work.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU?

All of this feels good, doesn't it? After all, you will be getting everything you want, and all your desires will be met instantly. You will be healthier than ever, your age might increase a lot, and you will be living in this utopian world where suffering exists only in the far-flung dreams of your 400-year-old ancestors.

But the real question is, was life all about removing suffering? What will happen if you have no suffering in your life? What if there is no death at all?

Will your life be meaningful? If you think carefully and you aren't devoid of the psychological gift of introspection, you will realize this thing is one of the worst things that humanity can face.

Suffering gives meaning to your life, and if there is no suffering at all, life loses its meaning. Life is a journey towards death; if there is no death, what does life mean?

This is not a dream of the future; it's happening now. Our societies are more hedonistic than ever; therefore, more people have made pleasure the primary goal of life. Many people can be seen claiming that happiness should be the aim of life. Our society is moving rapidly towards realizing this aim, removing the problems and suffering from our lives and trying to create this utopian world which will pour human life with nothing more than the toxic stream of resentment.

Therefore, on the individual level, we must embrace the difficulties and invite them into our lives voluntarily because they make our lives worth living and adventurous.

If you are subordinate to your emotions and they guide your behavior in this world, then you already have no free will, and AI is just going to enhance it, given that we don't consider the scenario of a nuclear bomb dropping on your head among the multitude of possibilities.

The interesting question is where all of this starts. It all starts inside the human mind, a mind that does not know itself but gifts the world with its chaotic discoveries. It's obvious humans are becoming more knowledgeable than wiser.

Our education system and even our life goals do not include the skill of knowing the self, even if it's the most essential skill you will need when making any important decision in your life. This is insane.

The best step to take forward to counter this problem or all the problems of society because all the problems of society start from the human mind, the mind of the people living in it, is to start knowing yourself. You don't need anybody to help you out. You can just start reading books by yourself.

The best step we can take forward as a society and as an individuals is to start knowing ourselves and become self-aware.

The problems we will be facing are psychological problems under the garb of societal, cultural, or environmental problems.