UK study warns of perils in AI-driven ‘intention economy’

AI, left unchecked, could allow for "social manipulation on an industrial scale", researchers at Cambridge University have warned.

Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) tools may soon “covertly influence” users’ decision-making in a new commercial frontier called the “intention economy”, University of Cambridge researchers warned in a paper published today.

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 to enable this new array of “persuasive technologies”, it added.

It will 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 co-authors noted.

Left unchecked, that could allow for “social manipulation on an industrial scale”, the pair, from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI), argued in the paper published in the Harvard Data Science Review.

It characterises how this emergent sector – dubbed the “intention economy” – will profile users’ attention and communicative styles and connect them to patterns of behaviour 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,” co-author Yaqub Chaudhary said.

The new AI will rely on so-called Large Language Models – or LLMs – to target a user’s cadence, politics, vocabulary, age, gender, online history, and even preferences for flattery and ingratiation, according to the research.

That would be linked with other emerging AI tech that bids to achieve a given aim, such as selling a cinema trip, or steer conversations towards particular platforms, advertisers, businesses and even political organisations.

Co-author Jonnie Penn warned: “Unless regulated, the intention economy will treat your motivations as the new currency.”

“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 public awareness of the issue is “the key to ensuring we don’t go down the wrong path”.