Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) could soon influence users’ decisions to trade before they have even been made, opening the door to possible manipulation, researchers at the University of Cambridge warn in a paper published Monday.
« AI tools are already in development to obtain, infer, collect, record, understand, predict and ultimately manipulate and transform into commodities » the future decisions of Internet users, explains Yaqub Chaudhary, one of the co-authors, of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at Cambridge, an interdisciplinary research center dedicated to AI.
This commerce would be centered on the intentions of an Internet user, for example their future purchases or their next votes. It would therefore go beyond current practice, which aims to sell a user’s attention to the highest bidder, in particular on social networkssocial networksfor example to submit targeted advertising based on their browsing habits or history.
AI, a lever of commercial and social influence
Concretely, an AI could glean the intimate psychological and behavioral data of a user, then adapt to him in order to establish a high level of trust and influence him more easily, according to the authors of this article published in the Harvard Data Science Review. « Have you thought about going to see Spiderman tonight? » or « You said you were feeling overworked, can I book you that movie ticket we talked about? “, cite the authors of the article as examples of suggestions from a chatbot.
Proposals “for sale” via a real-time auction system, which could also concern a hotel, the rental of carcar or voting for a political candidate.
What will remain of free will in the age of AI?
This “economy of intention”, as researchers call it, paves the way for a potential “ social manipulation on an industrial scale », According to the press release which accompanies this article.
« We should start thinking about the likely impact of such a market on human aspirations, including free and fair elections, a free press and fair market competition “, says Jonnie Penn, co-author of the study.
« What people say when they converse, how they say it, and the type ofinterferenceinterference [possibles] are much more intimate than simply recording online interactions », underlines Yaqub Chaudhary.
Researchers note that companies like OpenAI (ChatGPTChatGPT), Shopify, Nvidia, Meta ou AppleApple have started to look at these “persuasive technologies”. AI is already criticized for its capacity for disinformation, for example the manipulation of images during the US presidential election.
