Most of the software we use every day is already run by AI—and most of that AI works for someone else. TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter decide what you watch next. Tinder and Hinge decide who you meet. Google News and Apple News decide which headlines reach you. Each one learns when you're tired, what holds your eye, and what you'll tap before you've actually decided to.
For years, the only thing on our side of that exchange has been willpower. But as AI gets more powerful, willpower won't be enough. The only thing that can free us from algorithms may be an algorithm of our own.
The AI models that power those apps get cheaper every year, so it’s easy to imagine a world where everyone has the same kind of intelligence working for them. Imagine having a personal AI that is aligned with you. It reads your inbox before you do and takes care of what doesn't need you. It goes through your feeds and brings back the few things worth your time. It holds notifications while you're focused, and it can tell a friend who needs you from a company that wants something from you. Nothing reaches you without first passing through something that is on your side.
The pressure for our own AI filters is only going to grow. Soon the messages, calls, and pitches aimed at you will be written by AI too, each one tuned to your online persona and nearly free to send. No person can screen that much persuasion alone. A defense has to work at the same speed and scale as what it's defending against.
An AI like this can't be owned by a multi-trillion-dollar company. It has to be owned entirely by us, because that is the only way to guarantee its incentives stay aligned with ours. Whether that future arrives is still up to us, and we should do everything we can to make it so.
