Will AI Strip Us of Freedom in the Name of Survival?

I got the new iPhone X a few months ago, and I've noticed a very interesting thing: when I am with a client, my phone will buzz sometimes an hour or 45 minutes in advance an my next appointment, and let me know about driving time based on current traffic conditions. Even if I check it, sometimes it will continue buzzing every few minutes with updates. I never asked it to do this and it didn't do it when I first got the phone. The really 'spooky' part is that for many of my appointments, I don't have the address programmed in, either to the contact of the person I'm meeting or in the location section of the appointment on my calendar app. This would imply that my phone is learning from past experience that when that person's name is on my calendar at the same time each week that I am likely going to the same location. In other words, it has learned where that particular client lives or works based on my having visited them in the past. My previous phone's iOS would give me similar predictions but it wouldn't let me know well in advance or constantly remind me and give updates.

This got me thinking about where the AI of these phones and devices is headed. Having the phone update me well in advance felt almost like the phone was trying to tell me what to do. Like a parent coming down stairs every five minutes while the kids are watching TV to remind them that then need to get dressed if they are to leave on time to get to school. Now, of course, there is no reason, per se, to feel like the phone is trying to 'control' in a negative sense, as that is just an emotional reaction. One could just as easily see the benefit of having the technology consider things for you so that you are freed up to focus on the important things like a particular conversation you are having with a client or a creative task that you are engaged in.

But then I was checking my email this morning and I noticed something that either hasn't happened before or that I just never picked up on previously. There was an email thread with a colleague that had gone back and forth between us a few times and the last email was from me to them and contained a rhetorical question that was meant as a joke. Thus, there was no response from the other person and it had been several days since I had sent the reply. Of course, I wasn't expecting a reply, but Gmail had placed a note on the email indicating that it had been 4 days with no response and asking whether I would like to follow up (presumably to ask my question again or remind the person that I was awaiting a response.) I had to actively dismiss the suggestion from Gmail so that it was no longer sitting there in orange text demanding my attention each time I checked my email.

Imagine a world where parents buy a robot to take care of their children and the robot decides what TV shows the child will watch, what they learn, what they eat, and what they do for fun? What if it does so based on the inventory of the partner companies associated with the maker of the robot? What if the 'free version' gets to advertise whatever it wants, whenever it wants to the child? Seems unlikely? I mean, parents already put their kids in front of TV's for hours on end to be advertised to. And now, with Amazon's Alexa people are beginning to feel very comfortable not having to lift a finger to do menial things, and sadly 'child care' is seen as one the menial things, along with education, that must just get done during the day. There is very little self-responsibility within parenting and education as they currently exist.

(note: the Robo Nanny was just an idea that I had as something that was likely, but a quick google search revealed that it's already here: The AvatarMInd iPal Robot for Children )

Is our technology trying to help us become more responsible or is it trying to tell us what to do?

Of course it would be silly to assign intent to our technology, but, then, it is being programmed by other human beings, who do have intentions, whether we know them or not.

Now, in order to avoid coming across as paranoid (which I am not), let me place more context here.

As human beings, we have abdicated a great deal of self-responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. We have accepted a system that manages all of the things that we require to survive in this world. Should our lack of responsibility for our own internal worlds interfere with the effective management of that system, what should the system do?

Is the system designed to optimize our freedom or optimize survival?

I would suggest, that if you look at the world, the system's design is to ensure survival, as we have to constantly 'fight' for freedom in many ways. But, is it even OUR survival that the system is designed to ensure? No, it is the survival of the SYSTEM that it is programmed to preserve. You can see this even within your own mind. Your mind is not programmed with your own actual best interest as its primary guiding principle. It is programmed to guide you to survive, but only if that survival ensures the survival of the greater system that we live in. I mean, where does your mind come from? Surely not from YOU, as you didn't have one when you were born. It comes FROM THE SYSTEM, as a function of your environment, the people around you when you are little, and your education. Yes, your genetics plays a large role, but that is simply the accumulated information from generations before, which is therefore shaped through iterations of experience lived by your ancestors. That information is then stored in your DNA and given to you.

Perhaps the most important part of that which is given to you is the rate at which you learn. Some experts argue that intelligence is genetic, but they struggle to find the specific genes that control intelligence. I would suggest that it is not your 'intelligence' per se that is genetic, but rather your rate of learning and ability to remember and recall that is genetic. Because those are structural things. Those are programmable things. If you study neural networks you will find that it is quite simple, in principle, to adjust the learning rate of a neural net to optimize the system's ability to learn from experience.

I would suggest that this is generally what gives people a competitive advantage in the system over others. The ability to learn quickly. Humans are born with a Natural Learning Ability; that is, they are not born with a set culture or way of thinking or believing, but they are able to learn from those around them and from the systems that are present in their environment. They adapt to circumstances. Its kind of like a real-time evolution process. If you take a Chinese-born baby and transplant them the moment they are born into American culture with American parents, they will not adopt Chinese culture, but American culture. That is so obvious. Yet, they will have certain abilities that will give them an advantage over another child born into American culture that will allow them to compete more or less effectively in the education and economic systems. That is more of a problem, though, of the rigidity of our system in valuing it's own survival over that of supporting all life equally. Because, we, as humans, have not taken full responsibility for the system that WE PARTICIPATE IN and GIVE LIFE TO, it has not been engineered to support all Life equally. Instead it does whatever ensures its own survival.

So, will we as humans step up and take self-responsibility for what we are accepting and allowing as a system that governs and manages the resources on this planet? A system that educates our young? A system that decides what entertainment is and is not? A system that determines for you, through education and environment, what your purpose will be? A system that optimizes its own survival at the expense of YOUR INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM and SOVEREIGNTY?

Do we have to choose between survival and freedom? Yes and no.

The survival of a system where we take very little to no self-responsibility for WHO WE ARE and what is acceptable is incompatible with a system of optimal individual freedom and creativity.

If we were to stand up and step up into our true nature, which is that of an adaptable creator, and take self-responsibility, we can guide the system to take care of OUR SURVIVAL and support ALL LIFE equally. The potential to create a heaven on earth is ALREADY HERE, but the BIGGEST MISSING PIECE has still not been fully realized. WE EACH have to step into FULL SELF-RESPONSIBILITY.

Otherwise, our devices, our technology, and the system will encroach on our individual freedom little by little. First our devices will remind us gently that we are late for an appointment. Then later they will simply shut down your vehicle if you decide you'd rather not go to work today but head back home and spend time enjoying life with your kids that day. Does the system care what you 'enjoy'?

No.

But, do YOU care whether all Life is supported to be its best expression?

No, you don't.

And of those two sad, basic facts of reality at the moment, the only one that really matters is WHAT YOU CARE ABOUT.

We have the solution right in our hands, and it starts with education. We have the technology to optimize the ability for each individual to learn and obtain an equally effective level of education, so that survival of the fittest is no longer the driving force behind our evolution as a species. Instead we can drive evolution based on the principle of 'creation of what is best'. Because only with that starting point can we have the best possible world and thus the best possible life experience.

And deep down, isn't that we are all really want anyway?