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9 - Artificial Intelligence: Promise and Threat

from Part III - The Future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2025

Cass R. Sunstein
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

“Choice Engines,” powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and authorized or required by law, might produce significant increases in human welfare. A key reason is that they can simultaneously (1) preserve autonomy and (2) help consumers to overcome inadequate information and behavioral biases, which can produce internalities, understood as costs that people impose on their future selves. Importantly, AI-powered Choice Engines might also take account of externalities, and they might nudge or require consumers to do so as well. Nonetheless, AI-powered Choice Engines might show behavioral biases. It is also important to emphasize that AI-powered Choice Engines might be enlisted by insufficiently informed or self-interested actors, who might exploit inadequate information or behavioral biases, and thus reduce consumer welfare. AI-powered Choice Engines might also be deceptive or manipulative, and legal safeguards are necessary to reduce the relevant risks.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Manipulation
What It Is, Why It's Bad, What to Do About It
, pp. 164 - 195
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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