Are human beings free to act according to their will? Or are their actions ordained by
external forces? This was one of the oldest and the most confounding of existential queries. As our horizon of knowledge widened, things previously attributed to
fate or to unknown forces began to be explained with reason. Human beings thus realised that they are not helpless victims to be acted upon. They are also free to act.
As we evolved further, recognition of free will and human agency gave shape to our moral or ethical world. Without free will, all our actions remain amoral or unaccounted for. But everything in life is not guided by free will; uncertainty, happenstance, inexplicability occupy large parts of life. So it is very human of us to find measures to reduce or eliminate uncertainty. We try to decode, decipher and develop predictable
patterns to understand the unknown. Predictability brings familiarity and dispels uncertainty, though sometimes at the cost of free will.
Nowhere do we find a better demonstration of this than in the world of the internet governed by algorithms. Our pervasive anxiety about the unknown has reduced us to fodder for internet-based prediction technologies that function on the basis of predictive algorithms. What we search, share, see and shop on the internet constitute raw behavioural data. Based on the analysis of behavioural data, algorithms try to predict our future action or behaviour.
For us, predictive algorithms provide an element of surprise. We are often pleasantly startled by the ‘mind-reading’ capacity of algorithms. In reality, however, the copious amounts of behavioural data collated by internet giants enable them to ‘read’ our minds. A pattern of our preferences and prejudices is developed based on past choices. It is a continuous and mutually reinforcing process where we keep revealing ourselves only to be overwhelmed by algorithmic revelations.
In her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff elaborates on how access to users’ behavioural data has become a source of power and profit
for internet companies. Internet giants have not only monopolised their access to raw data but they have also invested heavily in turning the data into predictable patterns to be traded for profit. Initially, information was harvested to make their products perfect and useful. Soon, perfection paved the way for predictability and profiteering.
But how does the free world of the internet affect our free will? Lack of freedom is not always manifested in the form of coercion or force. Unfreedom that looks more like freedom is the most vicious form of control. It may appear that we freely determine the nature of our engagement with the internet. The truth is algorithmic prediction models control us effectively but in a subtle way. First, our preferences are registered; then the same are reinforced through predictions. We are pushed into an echo chamber where we find our beliefs, thoughts, preferences and prejudices reiterated and vindicated. Unbeknownst to us, our decisions and actions eventually get shaped not by our free will but by technology that is used to generate profit and power. All this is done with a semblance of freedom.
The boundary between the virtual and the physical worlds has been effectively shattered by the insatiable desire to collect behavioural inputs. What we think we
do freely in the virtual world is directly linked to our functioning in the real world and vice-versa. We are thus residents of a panopticon.
A system that thrives on predictability is supposed to be far more totalitarian than any political regime and far more intolerant of free will. Does this mean we are heading towards a digital dystopia and that algorithms have adverse impacts on our lives? Certainly not. Algorithms have made life easier and better in innumerable ways. What we need to ensure is that we do not surrender our choices and voices to an invisible authority.
Nirupam Hazra is Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, Bankura University
