The Future of Decision Making
[Applause]
i made
a decision today a decision to speak at
tedx
everyone makes thousands of decisions
every day
they might be as insignificant as
deciding which pair of socks one is
going to wear
or have a little more importance such as
deciding a career path
but the fact is that decisions are
everywhere
they’re ubiquitous and nowadays
we’re relying more and more on
technologies to help us make these
decisions
for us for example we want to go to
frankfurt city
instead of opening up a map looking at
the different ways to get there
and then deciding upon the fastest route
we just type in the destination on
google maps
and let google maps make that decision
for us
my name is shira rastogy and today i’m
going to be talking about the future
of decision making more specifically
how ai will help us and influence
our decision making in our day-to-day
lives
so i’m going to outline what a world
would look like where ai has taken over
our decision making
and then leave it up to you the audience
to decide whether you would like to
adopt this society
or not but before i get started
i feel like it is really important for
me to define what decision making even
is
decision making is the cognitive process
resulting in the selection of a belief
or course of idea and
the decisions i make might be completely
different from the decisions you make
because decisions are heavily dependent
on the decision makers
knowledge beliefs ideas
one can say that you are who you
are based on the decisions you have made
so they’re kind of a big deal but
they’re not that easy to make now are
there
because there are so many people out
there that are trying to manipulate
our decision making they’re gaining
so large financial incentives out of
this
let’s say you’re outside a supermarket
you see a poster which says by
product a product day is amazing it’s
cheap awesome then when you walk inside
the store
you’re bombarded with all these
different possibilities all these
different
products but you still remember what you
have read from that poster
about how great product a is and what do
you do
you buy product a company a
has successfully manipulated your
decision making skills
well this is only a small example let’s
think big
let’s think politics politicians
are trying to manipulate our decisions
so that when we walk inside the voting
ballot
we vote for them so yeah decision making
is
difficult as well who here is satisfied
with all of the decisions they have made
anyone see any hands well i aspire to be
like you
but for the rest of us we’re not so
great at making decisions now are we
because there are seven steps to
effective decision making
the first one is to identify the
decision
second one is to gather information
identify alternatives weigh the evidence
choose among alternatives and take
action
us humans generally we’re great at steps
one to six
we can take the action but when it comes
upon
reviewing and reflecting upon our
decisions
we often find that the decisions we have
made in the past
are not so great
and that is okay because each day we are
armed with so many new facts
so many new experiences that our
decision making is bound to get better
every day
and i’m pretty sure most of you guys
have heard about this before
but why is there so much regret in
society
why you see psychologists have gone so
far
as to even coin a fancier word
or regret namely post-decision-making
dissonance
why is there so much
post-decision-making dissonance
why can’t so many people relate with
this quote
well to name a couple of reasons why us
humans
we’re irrational right we make decisions
with our heart
and not our brains sometimes we look at
the short-term
benefits and we don’t look at the
long-term benefits
sometimes we just have so much
information bombarded at us
nowadays this has become even more
complex since we have so much
informations
right in our pockets and you might ask
well information is good for decision
making right
well yes it is but now you see our brain
isn’t
programmed to process so much
information on a daily basis
and also as i mentioned before there are
people out there that are trying to
manipulate
our decision making so when we read
something on the internet
let’s say a blog about how great product
a
is does the blogger genuinely think
product a is good
or is company a paying the blogger
so that the blogger could write great
stuff about product a
we don’t know and no wonder
there is so much regret no wonder we are
confused
we are frustrated nowadays because of
all this misinformation floating around
i can’t blame you i’m not great at
decision making myself
but naturally us humans we have created
a demand a demand for a product that can
help us
may help us in our decision-making
process
and as my economics teacher likes to say
when there’s a demand
a supply is quick to follow well
except in the case of the coronavirus
vaccine but that is a different ted talk
now is it
[Music]
so as i speak today
neuroscientists are developing a kind of
decision-making
machine a machine which can make
decisions
even better than the human you might ask
how does that even work whenever
when most of us think of our brain they
think of this
mystical ball of magic but what they
don’t see
is that that our brain works just like a
machine
through our brain through biochemical
algorithms
and information knowledge is stored
inside these little
synaptic weights and the second
neuroscientists figure out a way to
convert these biochemical algorithms
into numerical algorithms they have
essentially
captured all the great things our brain
can do in a usb stick
a program called the brain
but it would just be better because it
would also have access to all of this
information
it would be able to filter out all the
fake information from the real one
who wouldn’t want that now
but some of you guys might still not be
convinced
you might say well humans have this
thing
an intuition and this cannot be
replicated
by any program
well as professor brian d ripley
asserted
human intuition is the consequence of
trial and error
so when you might have this gut feeling
about something
it is usually based on some past
experience of yours
and if the brain would have all the
experiences of a human stored
then it would logically also have a
human intuition
just like us so this
machine could make better decisions
than us and if someone came up to your
door
and said look here is a usb stick i know
you’re not great at making decisions
but this usb stick can answer all of
your doubts clear all of your
uncertainties
would you buy it i mean i would because
i’m really not that great at making
decisions
but what would happen if these decision
makers
actually took over our society
what if these decision makers were would
be launched inside
the market will this be our future
who would be entitled to rational
decisions
would only the rich be entitled to these
decision-making devices
what would happen to democracy
you see the mastermind behind this
decision maker
could manipulate us in one second
because we would all just be so
dependent on this device
our entire socioeconomic infrastructure
is based on the assumption that humans
can make their own decisions
and once that assumption is proven to be
false if we give our decision making
to a program a device then the entire
infrastructure that we’ve built will
just collapse
but obviously these are just
speculations what we can reliably
conclude
is that our brain development will sink
we will obviously make more data-driven
decisions
whether they will be ethical as
something we also do not know
and yeah we will just be very very
reliant on this decision-making device
and you might now ask okay
if let these decision makers take take
over the world right it’s just another
revolution
no it’s not you see this revolution will
be
like no other in the industrial
revolution
machines were able to outdo
humans in physical tasks and yes a lot
of people were jobless
but this then sparked the digital
revolution and look where we are now
you know but now
human capabilities and technological
capabilities are neck to neck
and if these decision makers are
launched inside the market
then technology will overpower
humans it will not only be physically
stronger than us
it will also be smarter than this and
that poses a significant problem for us
right what will there be left for us to
do
we will just be redundant right with
nothing left to do
because we won’t even have time to think
we won’t we won’t even be able to think
because
this decision maker would be making all
our decisions for us
and this sounds pretty scary but this is
not even my main concern
my main concern is that irrationality
leads to innovation sometimes the
mistakes you make
you learn from these mistakes and this
sparks
some great interest this motivates you
to make yourselves better
this these mistakes are what put these
mistakes are the
the ones that push you forward
if steve jobs had a decision maker and
he would have asked
should i launch apple the decision maker
would have said
no the financial risks are too high
and if steve jobs hadn’t taken this
irrational decision
why would i be even up here giving this
ted talk now
irrationality leads to innovation
and now some of you guys might be
completely terrified and honestly i was
as well
but then i realized that there is a way
to stop this
the whole reason why decision makers
would be in the market
is because we have created demand for
them
so the only way to stop societal
destruction the collapse of everything
we’ve built
is to eradicate the demand we have
created
we have to learn to be satisfied with
the decisions we make
we have to learn that the decisions we
make are not set in stone
and we obviously have to assess the
situation we’re in
and analyze information given and yes
this sounds easier said than done but we
have to appreciate
our decision-making gift
you see right now we’re in a society
where we all want to reach the most
idealistic version of ourselves
and what we’re not realizing is that in
order to reach this super idealistic
version of ourselves
we’re ready to give us to give up the
most
important weapon we have the weapon of
decision making
this is what sets us apart from all of
the animals
everyone this is what has brought us so
far
today this is why i’m standing on the
stage
we are ready to become the slaves of the
very thing we have created
technology and for what
so that we can be manipulated easily
or that our brain development will sink
and we will just be redundant creatures
in society
what’s the point we need to learn
to think of decision making as a gift
and not a burden
so when you guys walk out of this great
event today
i would like you to think i would like
you to think about
how you think and appreciate
the gift that has been bestowed upon
humanity
the gift of decision making
and i certainly am super grateful for
speaking here at tedx today and i think
i made the right decision for this
thank you for having me