Sense Gratification in the world of AI

Has it ever happened, that you are sitting and just grabbing your phone to check if you have a new unread message on WhatsApp, a new email in your mailbox, a new comment on your Instagram post that you shared yesterday? And if you have not got any of this, then you continue to many other apps until you find something to latch onto for that moment. This search or craving of the mind is for instant sense gratification.

Human intelligence is driven by the five senses – hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, and tasting. Mind is collecting inputs from external world in the form of these five senses. Our mind is getting trained in such a way that as soon as it gets to an idle state, it craves some sense gratification. Our phone being with us 24x7 provides three out of the five senses (seeing, touching and hearing) at the same time, we keep spending more and more time with it. This gratification is so short-lived that we crave it again in some time. If you are not getting any interesting things on your phone, you would head over to the kitchen to grab something to eat even though you might not be hungry at all, but just to satisfy the brain via other means of sense gratification- this time: taste.

We have come a long way. From the world of no computer, to spending some time in the café to access a computer, to a computer at home but with a very slow dial-up connection, to faster internet, to the most powerful computer in your pocket aka smart phones, to the fascinating world of Artificial Intelligence! All the big corporations are spending billions of dollars to build the most advanced artificial intelligence in order to study the human mind and assist humanity. You might have noticed that after you are done with work and thinking of your dinner plan and get a notification on your phone to order food with 20% off! Or, if you are bored and get the notification that a new episode of the show you are following on Netflix is now available, what a coincidence! It’s the power of sophisticated machine learning algorithms that study your day pattern each and every day, which app you are opening at what time, what you are doing on those apps at different times of the day, how much time you spend on it and thousands of such input vectors which you are generating very unknowingly. These algorithms process these input vectors and predict what you might need at that time of the day. The story seems promising till this point. But it doesn’t end here!

Sunday afternoon, after a heavy late lunch you are relaxing and a notification pops onto your phone ‘wondering what to eat for snacks!? Order from a newly opened restaurant in your neighborhood, get 50% off on your first order- offer just for today.’ After seeing this notification, your mind asks – Am I hungry, since you had a heavy late lunch, the obvious answer is NO! But, the mind is still processing the rest of the info that this is a new restaurant in the neighborhood with an introductory offer of 50% off, which seems like a good deal. You will most likely end up ordering something, convincing your mind- that I am supporting a local new business, I will eat it for dinner or even for the next day's lunch. This example is just tip of the iceberg, of how you may get manipulated. The values that you hold, and the ideas you support can be used to manipulate you into buying services. We have even seen examples of government election results being swayed based off the wrong information available on social media sites, resulting in the manipulation of minds.

In order to survive in this powerful world of AI, you must have a deeper connection to your own self. To identify what you really are and what you really want. Finding that deeper connection with yourself is the need of an hour. In addition to that, find simple things to restrict the influence of AI from your life and especially from the life of your kids, as we cant even imagine the exponential trajectory of AI development will bring us to what extent of influence. Simple things like deleting the apps that keeps you busy and collecting the data in terms of your clicks or scrolling ups. If you really need to access them, do it on dedicated time on your computer or even on a dedicated day of the week. Make those instant sense gratification inputs to your brain as hard as you can, it will help you immensely to have mindfulness in life. A few things which helped me to handle this

• Turning off notifications from 99% of the apps, only some home security and child/Pet camera apps are excluded

• Deleting social media apps, Yes! Linked in as well.

• Putting time limits on apps ex news etc.

• Putting the phone away in a drawer when you work, or spending time with kids (Experience with kids is at a different level and you can find a deeper sense of joy spending time with them)

To get to know your self, exploring spirituality can be a good start. If you want to get started, please visit the spirituality section.

As one of the famous authors Yuval Noah Harari said in one of his podcasts, we are in the times of a critical race with AI to know oneself. The day AI knows you better than you know yourself- Game Over!

Lets not make this happen, Lets have The Mindful Tomorrow.