How Will AI Nudging Affect Our Privacy?

When you want to influence behavior, but you don’t want to restrict freedom of choice, you might take advantage of something behavioral science calls “nudging.” While most of us believe that humans behave rationally, nudge theory believes that humans are often irrational, making decisions based on influence and priming.

The truth is, we often go against what we know to be in our best interest, making decisions based on situated models of cognition, meaning we’re actually highly influenced by things going on around us.

With AI transforming almost every aspect of our lives, it only makes sense that AI is also helping “nudge” us to make certain decisions. Philosopher Dr. Karina Vold sheds light on how AI nudging is different than traditional human model nudging and what that means for us.

[Related Article: Explainable AI: From Prediction to Understanding]

How Do We Make Decisions?

Cognitive Science tends to follow a dual model of cognition. We have the automatic system, which is fast and unconscious, and the reflective system, which is conscious and more analytic. The automatic system handles a lot of our daily activities because it requires less energy.

Built-in biases help speed up decision making, so nudging can take advantage of that to help…