Have you ever wondered if your decisions are really your own? Experts at the University of Cambridge have a disturbing answer to this question: AI will soon be able to predict (and more importantly sell) our intentions before we are even aware of them.
Welcome to the “anticipated” market, which transforms our nascent desires into commodities.
Inside the market of desires
The first time I read this research of the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence (find the link to consult it at the bottom of the article) I had to stop and reread it several times. It's all true: we are entering an era in which our most intimate thoughts, our intentions not yet formed, maybe even dreams they will become a commodity.
It's as if someone could peek into our minds while we're still deciding what to do. And not just look but, as mentioned, sell that information to the highest bidder. The Dr. Yaqub Chaudhary says it clearly: “AI assistants are infiltrating every aspect of our lives, but we must ask ourselves: who are they really serving?”
It makes me think of all those times my mother talked to Siri or Alexa, thinking she was having a private conversation. How much of what she said was analyzed, predicted, sold? Probably all of it.
How this hidden economy works
Il Dr. Jonnie Penn uses a metaphor that I find perfect: if before the digital economy was based on our attention (likes, views, time spent online), now it is aiming for something deeper. It is like going from photographing the surface of the ocean to mapping its underwater currents.
Cambridge researchers call it the “intention economy,” but I see it as a giant desire-prediction system. Think of Minority Report, but instead of predicting crimes, AI predicts purchases, choices, decisions.
What scares me the most? This system could influence everything from our most trivial purchasing decisions to our electoral decisions. How can we be sure that our desires are truly our own?
The technology that reads our minds
I find the example that researchers give to simply understand the level of sophistication of this technology fascinating. If current language models "anticipate" sentences and linguistic structures (they are a sort of "mega T9" of the smartphone), gradually artificial intelligence will not limit itself to understanding what we say, but will also analyze (to the point of predicting it) including we say it, when we say it, with what emotional tone we say it.
Have you ever had an app suggest something to you at the exact moment you were about to decide to do it? Not yet, I think, I hope. But if it happens in the near future, it might not be a coincidence. AI is learning to recognize the paths of our intentions: the ones that precede our choices. From a moment after we express a wish, they will switch to a moment before.
And big tech companies know this well. OpenAI actively seeks data on human intentions, Shopify develops chatbots that “extract” our intentions, Meta studies how to understand our hidden desires. It is not a hypothesis: it is the simple observation of the context.
The intentions (and signals) we cannot ignore
Last year Apple has done something that should make us think: it has created “App Intents”, a system that allows apps to predict our future actions. It is no longer just a matter of responding to our commands, but of anticipating them.
And what about CICERO, Meta AI playing Diplomacy. If an AI can predict and manipulate intentions in a game of negotiation, what can it do with our everyday decisions?
Il Dr. Chaudhary he says it bluntly:
Companies already sell our attention. The next logical step is to sell our desires before we are even aware of them.
Economy of Intentions: A Future to Design Together
The research published on Harvard Data Science Review (I link it to you here) presents us with a choice. As a society, we must decide whether we want a future where our intentions are a commodity to be bought and sold.
Let's be clear: as Dr. Penn himself concludes in his analysis, these developments are not inevitably negative, but they certainly have disruptive potential. The key is public awareness. We need to understand what is happening so we can influence the direction this technology takes.
Personally, I think we are at a crossroads. We can let the economy of intentions develop in the shadows, or we can demand transparency and clear rules. The choice, at least for now, is still in our hands. Or maybe an AI has already foreseen that too?
