Muriel Leuenberger writes:

Your phone and its apps know a lot about you. Who you are talking to and spending time with, where you go, what music, games, and movies you like, how you look, which news articles you read, who you find attractive, what you buy with your credit card, and how many steps you take. This information is already being exploited to sell us products, services, or politicians. Online traces allow companies like Google or Facebook to infer your political opinions, consumer preferences, whether you are a thrill-seeker, a pet lover, or a small employer, how probable it is that you will soon become a parent, or even whether you are likely to suffer from depression or insomnia.

With the use of artificial intelligence and the further digitalization of human lives, it is no longer unthinkable that AI might come to know you better than you know yourself. The personal user profiles AI systems generate could become more accurate in describing their values, interests, character traits, biases, or mental disorders than the user themselves. Already, technology can provide personal information that individuals have not known about themselves. Yuval Harari exaggerates but makes a similar point when he claims that it will become rational and natural to pick the partners, friends, jobs, parties, and homes suggested by AI. AI will be able to combine the vast personal information about you with general information about psychology, relationships, employment, politics, and geography, and it will be better at simulating possible scenarios regarding those choices.

So it might seem that an AI that lets you know who you are and what you should do would be great, not just in extreme cases, à la Harari, but more prosaically for common recommendation systems and digital profiling. I want to raise two reasons why it is not. [Continue reading…]