Eric Schmidt on augmented humanity:
One of the things that eventually happens in that perceived line of reasoning is that we don’t need you to type at all… Because we know where you are- with your permission- we know where you’ve been- with your permission- we can more or less guess what you’re thinking about.
From the editor’s note in the March 2011 issue of The Atlantic.
What are your thoughts on this?
Consider the speed at which people are able to sift through information and make decisions. Computers are faster at parsing through tons of data, but humans are much better at intuition and creativity. If responses come even before questions are asked- they will influence what we think about and questions we have even before we ask them. Any architecture will affect your thoughts and behaviors when you are inside it.
Take a simple example most are familiar with. You remember you have to send out an e-mail to a colleague, so you hop over to your inbox. Immediately you see a few messages, you click on them, following those messages, and in those few seconds you forget why you initially went to your inbox. Its a simple task management issue- but it illustrates how speed of relevant information (messages mostly have to do with you, so they have high content value), and diversity of it, can be distracting to initially intentions. But computers can fix this. Just store your initial task faster.
Say your question is inferred- it may not be the exact question you would have initially asked, but its close enough, and it comes fast enough that you pursue the responses. They have to do with your interests, so you pursue the responses. Its that divergence of responses that you receive with the question predicted vs the ones you receive had you been able to contemplate the question more deeply that concerns me.
Being able to infer questions algorithmically gives humans a sense of predictability. These systems will inherently exacerbate that predictability by subtly channeling you to certain questions. Consider what will happen when the discrepancy between who we are and who we are predicted to be widens too far- and whether or not we will even notice it.
