And yet, we are all hungry for exactly that understanding. We check our horoscopes. We take personality tests. We even take the Harry Potter sorting hat quiz, as if these evaluations could explain who we really are.
To be sure, this desire is not new. Psychologists have long known that people crave self-definition and that social identities give us a sense of belonging, especially in times of uncertainty. The difference is that we have little idea how AI is shaping what we want, what we like, and who we think we are, or to what ends.
Take how at the end of each year, we obsess over our Spotify Wrapped, an annual algorithmically-generated portrait of who we apparently are. We internalize this reflection, arguably more readily than our own self-knowledge, because it came from our data. Instead of asking ourselves who our favorite musician is, what kind of music we like, or what kind of music fan we are, we ask Spotify. Too often, we’re unsure of who we are and what we’re becoming, and then we look for answers from big tech, rather than in the one place that might actually have them: ourselves.
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