This will sound contradictory when ACTION 3 explained why you should reject each and every opportunity to ‘click’.

However, we are already within a digital world and until such time as we aren’t, or preferably we have a system of ethics and regulation that protects humanity on both an individual and collective basis, we have no choice but to recognise, accept and then work with some of the more ‘everyday use’ AI systems. So that they can be made to work for us, rather than being used against us.

Everyday use AI are the sources of information that many of us read, that we use to inform our understanding and views on current affairs and pretty much everything where any kind of meaningful life choice for us or the people we care about is being made.

The chances are that you will already be following, bookmarking or subscribing to various companies, news sources, celebrities, people with public profiles and the list really does go on.

Each and every one of these is likely to be exerting an influence on you in some way and although you will genuinely believe that you follow them because you ‘like’ them or you ‘agree’ with them, what you are doing is limiting your own input and therefore the understanding that you have about events, issues, trends and ways of thinking and giving yourself an isolated viewpoint – irrespective of whether you believe it to be right or wrong.

Nobody is impartial. But everyone can be objective.

Sadly, we are experiencing times when it is more often than not the case that writers, speakers and just about everyone who is in the public eye – or has a platform that people like you and I follow and listen to or read, that they tell us is based upon them being impartial in some way (e.g. they speak for the public or have the majority view), when they are actually being highly subjective.

By isolating our information gathering, reading or listening just to the people and the subjects that we like, we are consuming and growing with a subjective view of the world too.

This has never been more dangerous than it is right now, when you can no longer even be sure that the words you read or listen to come from the source you believe and may have been created only using a criteria they gave to a machine.

To understand a subject, the news, or what is really going on, follow as many sources that have different views on the same subject areas as possible – even when the differences seem trivial or too small to note.

AI is about to make information so easy for you to find, that there is already talk that Search Engines such as Google and Bing are about to become redundant and will very quickly be left behind.

The only question you really need to ask yourself about using AI when you are looking for an answer is ‘Will this form of AI provide me with what I actually need?’

The reality is that it will not. Because:

1. Someone somewhere may have programmed the AI to ignore the answers that they don’t want you to see.
2. Someone somewhere is likely to have a pecuniary or financial interest in you receiving information that benefits you in some way.
3. The programming of the AI is based only upon the parameters that its algorithm has set.
4. Some AI programmes have already demonstrated that they have the ability to create sources that appear credible to the untrained eye. Yes – that means they have the ability to lie.
5. Like a search engine, the AI reads your question or request in a very literal way. It does not and cannot see, hear or even pick up any other information about your request, that would enable a human to respond to you in a very different and considered way.

Once again, in the absence of ethically based regulation or ending the use of the equipment and tech that we already possess, we have no choice but to use the tech that we already have in ways that will help us, rather than hinder us.

Use Tech as the means. Not the end.

The healthiest and most beneficial way to work with existing smart technology and help prevent further development, is to use it as the means to find the right information, rather than relying on it to be the end, final source or to provide the conclusion in itself.

Use search engines that already exist and search out as much original content and as many original sources as possible. DON’T rely on just one.

One original information source is likely to be better than any AI supported view. But even then, that source will still be subjective, no matter how less subjective than the AI would be.

The best way to learn any subject in real depth is to teach it or talk about it many times over. Because the understanding of many different perspectives is how we finally uncover the genuine truth.

There are already apps available that sell the lie that you can fully understand concepts, principles and even entire philosophies by quickly reading the 10 summary points they give you – for a charge.

They can’t.

There isn’t a cheat on real learning.

You have to read the whole work if you are to have any idea what the author intended to share. And even then, the wisest move to understand any real learning is to read as many books about the same subject by as many different authors as you can, if you want to understand the objective truths.

The only books that it might be safe to summarise and look at this way would be stories, fairytales or fiction. Because they are stories anyway and it doesn’t matter what conclusions you reach, as the outcome of your conclusions cannot usually hurt anyone, including you.  

As you will surely realise already, cheating actually misses the point of reading such books anyway.

AI is about to offer you a no return ticket to a summary of life outside of you. Not a genuine or truthful one. But a mere overview, written using someone else’s filter or terms.

You may believe that you already look, listen and then think critically about every bit of information that comes your way.

Regrettably, the chances are that like many others, you don’t.

Yes, I just said, the chances are that most of the time, you don’t think critically at all.

What you and what most people do, when approaching new information, is to filter it in terms of past experiences, or in terms of what you already know.

The problem with this process or this way of thinking, is that we become complacent or take for granted the validity, reliability and objectivity of what we already know, failing to recognise that our assessment of any encounter is likely to be influenced by what we have already seen.

That false sense of security and misplaced confidence means that we don’t ask any of the questions that we should be about the information that we receive.

As we don’t ask those questions, the problem is then compounded further because we then fail to look into the subject as deeply or in as much detail as we really should.

Sadly, most of us alive today have been failed by our education system. Unless you are focused on subjects such as philosophy within higher levels of education, there is no part of any syllabus within mandatory areas of schooling that teach critical thinking or the ability to think critically in a fully objective way – when this is a skill for life that every human living in an information-based environment should be automatically trained to have.

The question over whether this omission was and continues to be deliberate is one for debate elsewhere.

However, you can quickly teach yourself to become proficient as a critical thinker, IF you want to understand everything at a level and in a way that is beneficial to you.

Read or listen to everything thoroughly. Then ask and find the answers to questions like these:

• Why is this being done?
• Who is doing this?
• Why are they doing it?
• Whose purpose does this really serve?
• What is the real benefit for them?
• What is the real benefit for me?
• What is the real cost to me?
• What are the alternatives?
• Why are the alternatives not being used?
• Do I actually need this, or do I just believe I want it?

Yes, it sounds like a lot of work.

However, by going through these questions or questions that typically begin with Why, How, What, Who and words just like them, you will soon change the way that you process information and the way that you think about new information.

Critical thinking will quickly become second nature with practice. As with the benefits of practicing any skill, you will just get better and better and more efficient at using it the more you do so, until you don’t have to even think about it.

Being an objective reader and listener will just become another part of who you are.

NEWSFLASH:

Real life doesn’t come to you digitally. Real life is everything that doesn’t involve a screen.

Regrettably, the days that existed when it was even possible to be able to trust a newspaper, a TV news bulletin or a radio announcement have long since gone.

News is no longer news. It is opinion and we can see it too.

Yet we still persist in giving our trust to created content, rather than genuine human interaction and life experience – every day.

If you can accept – as you should, that AI, opinion or something somewhere that has an agenda which is highly subjective – now controls the channeling and placement of every bit of information that ‘just comes to you’, the next step is to reach the understanding that no source of information that you haven’t independently made the decision to search for and then qualified as credible, is a source you can trust.

As a process that anyone who genuinely values freedom will soon have to follow, it will only be the people who we can access in ‘real’ life, who we are able to relate to as fellow human beings, who we will be able to genuinely trust.

It is only the people who are in your life that have any chance of understanding anything that is going on within it. We should never go in search of help and support from anyone or anything that can only ever be made available to us through a digital medium or online.