Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) tools might soon “covertly influence” users’ decision making in a new commercial frontier called the “intention economy,” University of Cambridge researchers warned in a paper published yesterday.
The research argues the potentially “lucrative yet troubling” marketplace emerging for “digital signals of intent” could, in the near future, influence everything from buying movie tickets to voting for political candidates. Our increasing familiarity with chatbots, digital tutors and other so-called “anthropomorphic” AI agents is helping enable this new array of “persuasive technologies,” it added.
It would see AI combine knowledge of our online habits with a growing ability to know the user and anticipate his or her desires and build “new levels of trust and understanding,” the paper’s two coauthors wrote.
Photo: AFP
Left unchecked, that could allow for “social manipulation on an industrial scale,” the pair, from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, argued in the paper published in the Harvard Data Science Review.
It characterizes how this emergent sector — dubbed the “intention economy” — would profile users’ attention and communicative styles and connect them to patterns of behavior and choices they make.
“AI tools are already being developed to elicit, infer, collect, record, understand, forecast, and ultimately manipulate and commodify human plans and purposes,” coauthor Yaqub Chaudhary said.
The new AI would rely on so-called “large language models” to target a user’s cadence, politics, vocabulary, age, gender, online history, and even preferences for flattery and ingratiation, the research said.
That would be linked with other emerging AI tech that bids to achieve a given aim, such as selling a cinema trip, or steering conversations toward particular platforms, advertisers, businesses and even political organizations.
“Unless regulated, the intention economy will treat your motivations as the new currency,” coauthor Jonnie Penn said.
“It will be a gold rush for those who target, steer, and sell human intentions,” he added. “We should start to consider the likely impact such a marketplace would have on human aspirations, including free and fair elections, a free press, and fair market competition, before we become victims of its unintended consequences.”
Penn noted that public awareness of the issue is “the key to ensuring we don’t go down the wrong path.”
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS