(More thoughts on The Selfish Ledger.)

So,… NOW I notice my newsfeed nudging me. I’m not too certain that it is or isn’t… but I’m going with it is.

As a third child I have spent my life watching my oldest sibling do everything they thought they were supposed to, and the second sibling doing the opposite of everything they thought they were supposed to. They do this because they were conditioned to react to their environments in a way that got them what they wanted, attention from their parents, in the easiest, most straight forward way possible. The oldest learned in a environment by themselves, and the second in an environment where there was already a sibling doing all the right things. Because I have witnessed this my whole life, and adapted a more dynamic strategy, I consider myself someone who can read the environment, take advice at face value, and make my own choices. (Although, I think I am smart enough to know that this is not entirely true.)

I sit and drink my coffee wondering if AI can discern between these three different types of people. Surely, the first type would be better off if they knew they were working with an AI (obsessing over whether they were doing it right), and the second would be better off if they didn’t know at all (out of spite, they would intentionally change self destruct just to prove independence). The third type could go either way depending on how willing they were to incorporate the AI into their thought process.

In that extension of thought process, would the AI know the difference between (aka, adapt differently to) people consciously including it in their thought process and those who are simply reacting in a predictable manner… Or is AI really just a fancy tool and the burden of adaptation lies completely with the human.