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