Algorithmic Threat To Rational Animals

The rational judgement of a human (rational animals) is being influenced in the algorithmic mediation of contemporary architecture of the digital era. Personalization of the social media and electronic-commerce platforms are re-organizing notions and preferences of the participants involved as they replace their independent assessments and free will with an algorithmically controlled set of saliences. Operationalizing of the Human brains decision-making is achieved through the dual cognitive systems where one is intuition which is an intuitive system that is based on the life experiences of an individual, intuitiveness, and emotional forces. The second one is reflective that occurs in extreme cases where we encounter complicated problems due to rationality, cognition, reasoning and logical thought, and is strenuous due to grounded reasoning that is rationalized. The personalised algorithms selectively favour the former one by filtering informational environments which is geared towards the engagement, not deliberation. Users are currently betrayal of their own autonomy and undermining practical abilities under the resultant of the filter bubbles that deteriorates the epistemic agency besides limited the area of available reasons. This is undermining the conditions of the meaningful consent and political autonomy of the user who is being structurally distorted by meaningful public sphere. Now this issue is not limited to the consumer protection or data governance, but it has implicated the constitutional commitments to democratic processes of all over the world.

Are we losing our free will?

This question of free will is now very ideal these days as the informational self-determination and legitimacy of collective decision-making are under immense threat. The growing reliance on free AI systems for everyday judgments is risking the core function of the human reasoning while fostering an uncritical dependence, attenuating the individual epistemic agency. Now every individual has a dual condition on personhood, one is how we interact and behave with people in person, exchanging thoughts and ideas while grounding ourselves in social realities. On other side we have a digital personality, shaped and personalized by our past behaviours, fitting into statistical computations dictated by algorithms. This digital personality of the individuals is losing its cognitive liberty to revise their own preferences and encounter novelty. Their reasoning is being offloaded to an extent that they are unable to participate in the social and political life on the terms which are not pre-scripted by the algorithmic inferences. This personalization curate informational and decisional environments based on historical preferences since every individual have their own cognitive biases and stereotypes. These dynamic confines the individuals within a self-enforcing choice that are narrow to the horizon of possible beliefs, options and experiences while insulating them from the corrective engagement with disconfirming reality. This is a deliberate trapping of an individual in a predetermined pattern. Then where is right to personal autonomy, freedom of thoughts and access to the pluralistic information environments? This issue is concerning the positive obligations of states to formulate the effective policies to mitigate these issues so that the conditions for meaningful self-development and free will of the individuals can be secured.

Big Tech's Data Dominion

In 1973 a video published by Richard Serra with Carlota Schoolman Shoshana finds a mention of term “You are the end product” it articulates new-canonical insight that the users are the converted into commodity when any service is being offered to them for free. This logic has matured into the dominant economy of Big Tech's where the personal data collected through their application is treated as core productive assets. Previously, they were working behind the vail to collect that data while monitoring user's activities on different digital platforms. This process got some short setbacks due to consolidation of data protection regimes in some jurisdictions. Therefore, they recalibrated their approach to extraction with the provision of free model of Generative AI resulting in voluntary participation and redefining consent in the terms of contractual formalism. The best example is the trend of Ghibli AI art where we have given personal sensitive data. It is not just limited to such trends the way we are using Gen-AI models on a daily basis; it is working as slow poison in destruction of our rational discourse. Bound with our old human tendency we think when something is free then what's the harm in using it. Whereas initial harm is way more than our imagination because when our rationale gets dependent on some artificial thing then decision making situation would be worse than an animal.

Paving way to 'Algocracy'

The way algorithmic-based technologies are being disseminated among the public is deeply concerning the functioning of the democratic process. Our thought processes are increasingly trapped in a pre-existing loop of patterns and predictions, perpetuating the social biases, prejudices, and discrimination already prevalent in human discourse. The major platforms which are prevalent across the digital infrastructure are driven on algorithmic curation where patterned prediction is prioritized over open-ended and neutral deliberation. This accelerating diffusion of algorithm driven governance is structuring society toward the 'algocracy', where the public and private decision-making would be shaped, steered, or displaced by automated systems with no accountable human institutions. In such situation the major constitutional concerns are not merely technological mediation, but this is leading to structural relocation of power from the democratically constituted authorities to the computational infrastructures which are being privately owned big techs. The core domain of public discourse, access to information and civic participation is being filtered through the systems which are optimized based on users' engagement. The major concerns with these systems are their possible biased data which may amplify the preexisting social hierarchies, stereotypes, and exclusionary norms with the behavioral reinforcements. Under these dynamics, the principles of equality are undermined with the embedment of structural discrimination into the informational ecosystem.

What next?

Such trends beg reasonable doubts because when the reasoning, expression and resolution of user's problems relies upon propriety generating models, which are placing their deliberation-independence on infrastructural reliance. Over time, this will gradually establish a cognitive capture implicating the constitutional guarantees of equality, freedom of expression, and democratic participation. The human rights protections of dignity, autonomy, and the right to receive impart information is under immense threat. The platforms cannot self-regulate or post hoc content moderation across jurisdictions. The democratic legitimacy survives on the citizens forming the views under the conditions of epistemic openness. Under such impression the law must treat large-scale algorithmic mediation of attention and beliefs as a locus of constitutional risk demanding a structural safeguard rather treating it as neutral technical layer. States and courts have a responsibility to develop effective rules and regulations based on non-discrimination as well as due process limitations to maintain a useful digital access route by users.