From Cambridge University via SciTechDaily, January 3:
AI Could Predict and Sell Your Desires Before You Know Them
AI assistants may soon predict and influence our decisions at an early stage, selling these “intentions” to companies in real time, creating an “Intention Economy,” say Cambridge ethicists. These tools, leveraging vast behavioral data and persuasive AI, could manipulate human plans for profit, raising concerns about ethics, privacy, and societal impact, especially on elections, media, and markets.
The emerging “Intention Economy” leverages AI to forecast and influence decisions, commodifying human motivations. Cambridge researchers warn of ethical risks, including manipulation and threats to democracy, urging regulation to prevent misuse.
AI assistants may soon play a pivotal role in predicting and shaping our decisions at an early stage, selling these emerging “intentions” in real-time to companies ready to fulfill our needs—sometimes even before we consciously make up our minds.
This concept, known as the “Intention Economy,” is highlighted by AI ethicists at the University of Cambridge. They warn of a burgeoning and potentially unsettling marketplace where digital signals of intent—ranging from purchasing movie tickets to casting votes—become highly lucrative.
Experts from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) suggest that the rapid growth of generative AI and our increasing reliance on chatbots mark the beginning of a new era of “persuasive technologies.” These developments, they note, align with recent strategic moves by major tech companies, hinting at the growing potential of this emerging field.
“Anthropomorphic” AI agents, from chatbot assistants to digital tutors and girlfriends, will have access to vast quantities of intimate psychological and behavioral data, often gleaned via informal, conversational spoken dialogue.
This AI will combine knowledge of our online habits with an uncanny ability to attune to us in ways we find comforting – mimicking personalities and anticipating desired responses – to build levels of trust and understanding that allow for social manipulation on an industrial scale, say researchers.
Ethical Concerns About AI Manipulation
“Tremendous resources are being expended to position AI assistants in every area of life, which should raise the question of whose interests and purposes these so-called assistants are designed to serve,” said LCFI Visiting Scholar Dr. Yaqub Chaudhary....
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