The EU’s AI Act needs to address critical manipulation methods

[Deca]

The EU’s AI Act needs to address critical manipulation methods

https://oecd.ai/en/wonk/ai-act-manipulation-methods

 

 

 

 

 

Quote

These days Generative Artificial Intelligence like ChatGPT is all the buzz. Still, behind the scenes, artificial intelligence has an even more significant impact on our lives by silently and invisibly shaping our decisions and behaviour. This artificial intelligence goes by the ubiquitous moniker of “personalisation” and is not as benign as its name suggests. These are algorithms that take our actions for inputs and use the tools the algorithms have on hand to increase our engagement with and consumption of a platform in a way that serves the hosts’ interests.

There’s a raging debate in technical fields about whether these methods compromise human autonomy and violate consent. Yet when the problem is articulated clearly in plain language as above, it seems clear that the origin of this debate lies elsewhere. To quote Upton Sinclair ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’.