AI's Part In Our Evolution

For the longest time, our ancestors have transferred a lot of knowledge through social learning. Social learning in a family or community setting builds the foundation for adaptability as an adult. An extended childhood with a lot of opportunities for social learning is one of our adaptation. (https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-benefits-of-a-long-childhood). All humans learn socially and individually. We use whatever we learn to guide our behavior or decision to what we think would be beneficial to us.
The context of social learning is an ever-changing landscape. The setting of our social learning and the influences that we have from people are now shifting online. With just a few clicks of the button, you can learn from professors from ivy league universities, consult with a doctor, or even cook dinner with a world-class chef.
Gone are the days that you learn your trade from your father or immediate family. You no longer are bound by the tradition of your ancestry of what you can learn because at your fingertips are the expertise of millions of people. When was the last time you called your Mom or Aunt for how to bake a cookie? When was the last time when you have to call your Dad how to fix a faucet? I think where at a point that a child will be learning more online than what their parents be able to impart. With this shift in our social learning and our influences, there is also a shift in our behaviors. We can now see the emergence of some of these, like trolling, catfishing, more toxic comments, and reactions become amplified. We see this because the context of our social interactions is much less base on face to face conversations and teachings. Even traditional religious interactions are being affected by this shift. Just take for example the rise of screen preaching and wearable prayer articles (Screen Preaching - https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-i-object-to-screen-preaching/) (Click and pray - https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/world/vatican-click-to-pray-erosary-trnd/index.html)

A New Platform of Influence


Since our behaviors are a result of our learnings, most of our actions will be influenced by the most significant contributor to our learning. Those contributors will be the most dominant entities in our online world. Online gaming, social media, shopping are but a few entities that will influence human behavior. Evidence of this has been apparent in how a social media platform been used to win an election. For online shopping, you look at reviews of products. The most popular one with a 5-star rating usually becomes your choice. Now imagine this: the influence on your behavior does not come from another human with ethics. What if it comes from a pre-trained intelligent system?

Social Implications

AI has now a say in your social behavior and decision. 
It is becoming hard for a human to decide without assistance from a smart system. There is now a lot of data that we need to analyze, Can a human be able to judge the quality of the data? It is becoming more normal to buy, retweet, repost, copy an online interaction with an intelligent system. Gone are the days where humans will make a rational choice base on their own analysis of the merit of that choice. No wonder following viral trends, no matter what the consequences are, becomes acceptable social behavior. (Fire Challenge - https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/parenting/2019/10/04/fire-challenge-michigan-boy-treated-burns-social-media-stunt/3862622002/) What was the last challenge you did?

Evolution



Whether we like it or not, AI is becoming part of our social and cultural evolution or maybe even our natural evolution by being part of our learning that influences our behavior. Is it something to be scared of, or something that we should accept and try to put a strong framework around it?

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