Teknologi i kampen mot kortsiktighet
En till kaka nu, eller den långsiktiga belöningen av bättre hälsa i framtiden? Människor är över lag ganska dåliga på att avstå små omedelbara njutningar, även då en rikare belöning väntar i längden. Kan AI-drivna röstassistenter hjälpa oss att välja mer enligt våra långsiktiga preferenser? Bör de göra det? Emma Engström skriver på bloggen AI Futures.
Läs hela inlägget på AI-futures: Voice assistants become Choice assistants?
"In Homer’s epic poem, as Ulysses heads home, Circe suggests that he plug his ears. Otherwise, the Sirens’ song would lure him to steer his ship towards rocks and shipwreck. Ulysses asks his crew to plug their ears and tie him to the ship’s mast. When he passes the Sirens, he asks his crew to release him, but they refuse and the ship sails on.
This story was recounted in Erik Angner’s book on Behavioral economics to illustrate that our preferences may not always be consistent over time. And that sometimes we may need to constrain our future selves. Thus, economic choice theory may help to consider an earlier blog post that illustrates a role that voice assistants may play in the future.
In that scenario, you decided on Saturday not to binge-watch series on weekday nights. You preferred to go to bed early and be well rested at work. Hence, you preferred a large reward later over a small reward sooner. However, the following Tuesday evening you preferred watching another episode over going to bed. You favored a small reward at once over a large reward later. Consequently, your discount rate had changed. Your AI-driven voice assistant, Alice, was the one to implement your preferences.
The post was about the cognitive bias of hyperbolic discounting: the increased tendency to prefer a small reward sooner over a large reward later as the delay nears the present: waiting is more appealing if it occurs further in the future. There are naïve and sophisticated hyperbolic discounters. The former are not aware of their self-control problems, but the latter are. Sophisticated hyperbolic discounters can predict their self-control problems and choose to restrict themselves in the future.
This is how voice assistants may change our decision-making. Could they help us get rid of bad habits? Do we want that?"
Läs hela inlägget på AI-futures: Voice assistants become Choice assistants?
