The intention economy: Subtly, quietly replacing your motives with their motives

I originally posted this on 1/5/25 as the 2nd of a two-part post. This topic is so important that it needs a dedicated post. I cannot emphasize too much how important this new AI-powered front in propaganda war is. This is a lightly edited version of the original.

***************************************************************** 

There is a new front in the war on human minds by unscrupulous marketers, ideologues, plutocrats, theocrats, politicians and other morally debased opportunists! On Dec. 30, 2024, the HSDR (Harvard Data Science Review) posted an article about this nascent new war. Viewed from my cognitive biology and social behavior point of view, this constitutes an entirely new political, religious and economic gold rush. The HSDR calls it the intention economy. The HSDR sees this new mind war about the same way I see it, scary or worse. 

Long story short: Artificial intelligence gives the opportunists a way to discover and manipulate your intentions and motives to do or not do something, e.g., to buy or not buy a product or to vote for or against a political candidate. This new mind war is truly scary:

ABSTRACT

The rapid proliferation of large language models (LLMs) invites the possibility of a new marketplace for behavioral and psychological data that signals intent. This brief article [it's not brief, it's well over 4,500 words] introduces some initial features of that emerging marketplace. We survey recent efforts by tech executives to position the capture, manipulation, and commodification of human intentionality as a lucrative parallel to—and viable extension of—the now-dominant attention economy, which has bent consumer, civic, and media norms around users’ finite attention spans since the 1990s. We call this follow-on the intention economy. We characterize it in two ways. First, as a competition, initially, between established tech players armed with the infrastructural and data capacities needed to vie for first-mover advantage on a new frontier of persuasive technologies. Second, as a commodification of hitherto unreachable levels of explicit and implicit data that signal intent, namely those signals borne of combining (a) hyper-personalized manipulation via LLM-based sycophancy, ingratiation, and emotional infiltration and (b) increasingly detailed categorization of online activity elicited through natural language.

This new dimension of automated persuasion draws on the unique capabilities of LLMs and generative AI more broadly, which intervene not only on what users want, but also, to cite Williams, “what they want to want” (Williams, 2018, p. 122). We demonstrate through a close reading of recent technical and critical literature (including unpublished papers from ArXiv) that such tools are already being explored to elicit, infer, collect, record, understand, forecast, and ultimately manipulate, modulate, and commodify human plans and purposes, both mundane (e.g., selecting a hotel) and profound (e.g., selecting a political candidate).

CONCLUSION

The possibility for harm made feasible by a large-scale, multiparty intention economy merits sustained scholarly, civic, and regulatory scrutiny. In whatever way these data partnerships turn out in practice, the ambition of making conversational interfaces and generative AI systems unavoidable mediators of human–computer interaction signals a turn from the attention economy, whereby access to the limited resource of human attention is traded through advertising exchanges, to the intention economy, whereby commercial and political actors bid on signals that forecast human intent. This transition would empower diverse actors to intervene in new ways on shaping human actions. This ambition must be considered in light of the likely impact such a marketplace would have on other human aspirations, including free and fair elections, a free press, fair market competition, and other aspects of democratic life.

All of that is going on right now. As far as I can tell, the mainstream media has not picked up on this yet. It constitutes a vast new playing field for bad people and interests to (i) manipulate minds and beliefs, (ii) create false realities, and scarier yet, (iii) implant desires and motivations in a person's mind.  

Q: How well known is the concept of the intention economy, as exemplified in this article: https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/ujvharkk/release/1 ?

A: The concept of the intention economy is gaining traction in academic and tech circles but remains relatively niche in broader public discourse.

Attention vs. Intention: There's a distinction between the attention economy, which focuses on capturing user engagement, and the intention economy, which aims to predict and influence user decisions. Some discussions mistakenly conflate the two, but the intention economy goes beyond mere attention to actively shape consumer behavior.

Ethical Concerns: The intention economy raises significant ethical questions about privacy, autonomy, and manipulation. Researchers warn that without proper regulation, this economy could undermine fundamental societal values, including free and fair elections, a free press, and fair market competition.

Marketplace for Intentions: The intention economy envisions a marketplace where AI systems not only capture attention but also anticipate and influence user intentions. This could lead to a scenario where our decisions are influenced before we consciously make them, creating a new commercial frontier.

Hm, Perplexity sees it about the same way that HSDR and I see it. Well brain war fans, there we have it. A whole new front against us and our democracy has opened up and we are clueless.

Of course, this could also be used for good. But think about our current political, social, commercial, financial and religious situation. Where does the balance of power lie, with super wealthy, self-serving special interests and ideologies or public interest-serving ones? 

Q1: What array of forces and finances is most likely to more aggressively and more deeply apply this new kind of mental manipulation, (1) morally bankrupt for profit commercial interests and various kinds of authoritarians seeking power and wealth, or (2) nice people wanting to do good things for people and society?

Q2: Which political party is most likely going to oppose regulating the intention economy for concentration wealth and power, the Repubs, the Dems, or both about equally?

Q3: Can you see the potential for a further shift in the balance of power from the seriously weakened public interest to the already more powerful special interests?

News bits: Discontent with democracy in Europe; Authoritarianism update; The Palestinian plight

In the US, the 2024 elections apparently were significantly driven by a combination of discontent, anger and feelings of alienation mostly from inflation, immigration, and perceived aggressive, dictatorial wokeness and DEI. A scary NYT article reports about the same anti-democratic sentiments that have engulfed America and are apparently starting to rise in Canada too (not paywalled): 

Voters in Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands have shown the potency of this new populist wave. What’s behind their dramatic shift? We asked them. In more than two dozen interviews across the continent, Europeans who voted for far-right parties talked about casting their ballots in fury, in frustration, in protest, but perhaps most of all in a bid to bring change to a system they believe has failed to fulfill the contract between their democratically elected governments and the people.

They talked openly about nationalism, immigration, stagnant economies, the cost of living, housing shortages, anger at the elite and their countries’ perceived buckling to what many consider politically correct views. 

For 2025, the main event will be a Feb. 23 snap federal election following the collapse of the governing coalition in Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has made tremendous gains. Voters in Italy, Poland, Norway, Ireland, Romania and the Czech Republic — all countries where populist movements are either well established or on the rise — are also expected to choose leaders on the local or national levels.

Europe is changing.

Europe’s largest economy is stagnating, afflicted by high energy prices, industrial decline and job cuts. Fierce debates over immigration have raged on for a decade and Germany’s military aid to Ukraine has grown increasingly controversial.

Tarah Wild, Kindergarten assistant in Munich, 46: “I don’t like the fact that we are supposed to send our tax money for this war in Ukraine. We’re not asked whether we want this war at all. The migration policy doesn’t work here either. They bring everyone in, supposedly because they want to help the people who are doing badly. But somehow everyone comes in and takes advantage of Germany. A lot of people just don’t want to assimilate here.” 

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

ProPublica writes: 

The second-term president likely will seek to cut off spending that lawmakers have already appropriated, setting off a constitutional struggle within the branches. If successful, he could wield the power to punish perceived foes.

DJT is entering his second term with vows to cut a vast array of government services and a radical plan to do so. Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike.

“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.

Trump’s claim to have impoundment power contravenes a Nixon-era law that forbids presidents from blocking spending over policy disagreements as well as a string of federal court rulings that prevent presidents from refusing to spend money unless Congress grants them the flexibility.  

Trump and his aides have been telegraphing his plans for a hostile takeover of the budgeting process for months. Trump has decried the 1974 law as “not a very good act” in his campaign video and said, “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State.”

By Deep State, DJT means reasonably competent, honest and transparent government. He wants government that is incompetent, corrupt and opaque.

And, being a full-blown authoritarian, DJT does not care about the 1974 law that made impoundment illegal. He is going to force the issue into the USSC in the hope that the court will give him unlimited, or at least significant, impoundment power. A supreme court decision to give a president the power to block congressionally approved funding he wants would seriously neuter congress. 

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

DJT proposed moving all Palestinians out of Gaza so that Gaza can be rebuilt. He wants Egypt and Jordan to take them and settle them. Obviously, this nonsense is a thinly disguised trick too ethnically cleanse Gaza and give all the land to Israel. CNN writes:

Trump suggests his plan for Gaza Strip is to 

‘clean out the whole thing’

DJT indicated Saturday that he had spoken with the king of Jordan about potentially building housing and moving more than 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, a remarkable proposal from a sitting US president.

Trump said he asked Jordan’s Abdullah II, a key US partner in the region, to take in more Palestinians in a Saturday phone call.

“I said to him that I’d love you to take on more, because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The kingdom is already home to more than 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the UN.

Trump, who noted there have been centuries-long conflicts in the region, said Saturday, “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.”

DJT's attitude toward the Palestinians is quite clear. He is very hostile to them. He acts like he hates their guts. Consortium News reports: Trump Lifts Settler Sanctions, West-Bank Violence Explodes -- On his first day in office, Donald Trump lifted all sanctions previously placed on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, a political move that coincided with a series of violent attacks by Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians that same night. While the president has publicly committed to combating violent extremism, extremist settler groups continue to finance their activities through American charities. On Monday night, with the backing of the Israeli military, settler groups launched a series of violent assaults on residents in the West Bank. The most severe attacks occurred in two villages near Qalqilya, where masked settlers set fires and fired indiscriminately. Amid the chaos, Israeli soldiers deployed tear gas against villagers attempting to flee, leaving 21 people injured.

The chances of a separate Palestinian state seem to be basically nil at this point. 

Regarding the unforgivable rarity of the A-words

I've criticized the MSM repeatedly because I believe that it softens and normalizes concepts of authoritarianism and authoritarian (A-words) people. The MSM misleadingly uses words like conservative or conservatism. As far as I know, no MSM sources consistently uses A-words to describe the GOP, DJT, Project 2025 or the MAGA wealth and power movement. When an A-word is used, it's a rare moment of honest accuracy and candor. Far too rare. 

Slate writes:

On Monday night, while much of the United States was tuned in to the College Football Playoff game, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump released 41 different executive orders and memorandums covering such issues as varied as immigration, energy, gender identity, and even the names of significant geographic features.

In both form and substance, these Day 1 actions leave no doubt that the Trump administration intends to take up the mantle of Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation–led blueprint for building an authoritarian executive branch. Project 2025 is best known for its mammoth 900-page manifesto, which assembled a comprehensive right-wing agenda for nearly every policy issue you can think of.

Receiving less attention, though, was the effort’s promised “180-day playbook” for taking quick action to advance that agenda, beginning on Inauguration Day. Notably, that playbook, which Heritage advertised but never made public, called for aggressive use of executive orders and memorandums soon after inauguration.  

As these Day 1 actions indicate, the unitary executive theory supplies a veneer of academic respectability for the Trump administration’s policy goal of creating an authoritarian president. That has enabled the administration to wield it to justify presidential actions that arguably violate the law as well as to defeat attempts to oversee or hold the president accountable for those actions. Thus, it undergirds the memo’s call for political appointees to find ways to sideline the top career staff in their agencies as well as the order’s plan to make it easier to fire career civil servants and replace them with people willing to put loyalty to the president ahead of their legal duties. (emphases added)

Well there it is ladies 'n germs, a few A-words used by the MSM. Savor it. It will likely soon become rarer, if not completely extinct. Dictators, theocrats, kleptocrats, oligarchs, MAGA and their politics really, really hate being referred to by A-words. They call themselves patriots defending democracy, the opposite of what they actually are.

Rut roh!! Chinese AI is upon us

This NYT article got my attention (not paywalled)[1]:

DeepSeek Forces a Global Technology Reckoning

The fast-growing popularity of the Chinese artificial intelligence software hit shares in tech giants like Nvidia, as Silicon Valley worried about what comes next.

Markets are on edge on Monday, as global tech investors face a $1 trillion wipeout. The cause: anxiety that the emergence of powerful — and cheap — Chinese artificial intelligence software could upend the economics of A.I.

Nasdaq futures have plummeted nearly 4 percent. And shares in Nvidia, the chipmaker whose processors help train and run A.I. software, are down 11 percent in premarket trading. Those in Constellation Energy, a utility betting heavily on powering A.I. data centers, are down nearly 13 percent.  

DeepSeek is forcing a reckoning in Silicon Valley. 

The company’s models appear to rival those from OpenAI, Google and Meta, despite the U.S. government’s efforts to limit China’s access to leading-edge A.I. technology. And DeepSeek says it did all this with a fraction of the resources that American competitors use.

Over the weekend, DeepSeek shot to the top of Apple’s App Store charts, rivaling ChatGPT. And DeepSeek is drastically undercutting OpenAI on price. 

Consider that OpenAI and its partners have promised to spend at least $100 billion on their Stargate project, or that Microsoft said it will spend $80 billion, or Meta $65 billion.

China's public investment in AI R&D was estimated to be on the order of a few billion dollars in 2018, but there may be secret Chinese government money involved. Given the hardware, software, and personnel costs, (and here) the development of DeepSeek was estimated at around $5.5 million to $6 million. This figure includes the cost of training the model, which is far less than what U.S. companies like OpenAI spend.

What the frack is going on here? If American capitalism is so damned good and efficient, why is China doing the same thing at what seems to be about 1% the cost of American AI development efforts. The US spends hundreds of billions or trillions, while the Chinese do it for far less. If American capitalism is so damned good and efficient, why is China doing the same thing at what seems to be about 1% or less of the cost of American AI development efforts.  

Maybe China is going to eat our lunch in AI.

I went to DeepSeek and checked it out. Since it is a Chinese company/government, one can expect no privacy. Its privacy policy includes this, along with some other creepy things:

Data Controller: The Service is provided and controlled by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., with their registered addresses in China (“we”or “us”). If you have any questions about how we use your personal data, please contact service@deepseek.com(Chat) / api-service@deepseek.com(Platform) or click "Contact us" column on the website.

The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country where you live. We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People's Republic of China.

Where we transfer any personal information out of the country where you live, including for one or more of the purposes as set out in this Policy, we will do so in accordance with the requirements of applicable data protection laws. 

We automatically collect certain information from you when you use the Services, including internet or other network activity information such as your IP address, unique device identifiers, and cookies.

• Technical Information. We collect certain device and network connection information when you access the Service. This information includes your device model, operating system, keystroke patterns or rhythms, IP address, and system language. We also collect service-related, diagnostic, and performance information, including crash reports and performance logs. We automatically assign you a device ID and user ID. Where you log-in from multiple devices, we use information such as your device ID and user ID to identify your activity across devices to give you a seamless log-in experience and for security purposes.

My keystroke patterns and rhythms? WTF is that about? Who is going to stop China from breaking applicable data protection laws? No one. 

I tried to set an account up, but DeepSeek denied me. I wonder if the Chinese government already knows me and decided it doesn't like me. 🥺 

Qs: Is this creepy or what? Is China going to eat our lunch in AI?

Footnote:

1. Another NYT article: How Chinese A.I. Start-Up DeepSeek Is Competing With Silicon Valley Giants -- The company built a cheaper, competitive chatbot with fewer high-end computer chips than U.S. behemoths like Google and OpenAI, showing the limits of chip export control -- DeepSeek’s engineers said they needed only about 2,000 specialized computer chips from the U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, in comparison to the as many as 16,000 chips needed by major American companies. The team behind the system, called DeepSeek-V3, described an even bigger step. In a research paper explaining how they built the technology, DeepSeek’s engineers said they used only a fraction of the highly specialized computer chips that leading AI companies relied on to train their systems. These chips are at the center of a tense technological competition between the United States and China. As the U.S. government works to maintain the country’s lead in the global AI race, it is trying to limit the number of powerful chips, like those made by Silicon Valley firm Nvidia, that can be sold to China and other rivals. But the performance of the DeepSeek model raises questions about the unintended consequences of the American government’s trade restrictions. The controls have forced researchers in China to get creative with a wide range of tools that are freely available on the internet. According to the benchmark tests that American AI companies have been using, DeepSeek answered questions, solved logic problems and wrote its own computer programs as capably as anything already on the market.