If a Machine Could Make You Happy, Would You Do It?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes many claims, some quite futuristic, others just around the corner. Somewhere in the middle lies the prediction of human behavior, with the attendant claim that if people are predictable, this could be the future of well-being.

To predict when someone is going to get angry, sad, afraid, or tense is already well within reach. AI is developing readouts of muscle activity and related bodily responses that indicate what the brain is going to do. Going a step further, at the MIT Media Lab they’ve taken enormous steps into translating thoughts—i.e., words in our heads—into signature brain signals. These signals can be digitized, and suddenly, a thought in your head can be sent to Google’s search engine via Wi-Fi, allowing you to search the Internet simply by thinking.

If you put these breakthroughs together, a new model of human behavior emerges, one based on predictability and reading the signals originating in the brain that attend predictable behaviors. AI experimenters get very excited about the notion that the brain, and the behavior it triggers, can be mathematically reduced to equations that in essence turn people into a complex of algorithms. The excitement is justified, because anything that can be expressed logically is understandable in computer language.

Even though a computer cannot fall in love and arguably could never grasp any emotion, positive or negative, if a certain muscle response triggered by the brain gives a 75% probability that you are about to fall in love, then match.com can be perfected—compatibility will be a numbers game.

Let’s say that AI’s dreams come true in the future. Would it be ethical to plug the brains of criminals into a Wi-Fi network that predicts the likelihood of a crime being committed, so that the police can head it off at the pass? That was the premise of Steven Spielberg’s movie, Minority Report, and in real life we are close enough to science fiction that prisons are working with predictability models to judge which inmates are safer to parole.

As soon as such a possibility is raised, the specter of Brave New World rises, along with the robotic behavior of North Koreans. Mind control is only a step away from mind reading. None of us wants our free will taken away, even if we would behave like happy people. We assume that

North Koreans aren’t robots when they aren’t under threat of reprisal, and this is true. Apparently, the American sitcom Friends has become a cult in North Korea, and despite the threat if imprisonment, tapes of Friends episodes are hot on the black market and constitute a forbidden pleasure for North Koreans.

But let’s go a step farther. What if a computer could figure out the algorithm of specific behavior that you, an average citizen, follows. Much unhappiness is caused by unconscious behavior that is totally predictable, and self-awareness is a rare commodity. If a computer knew you better than you know yourself, it could detect all the ways you make yourself unhappy, and then set out to improve your well-being.

There are lots of ways this might happen. A drug could change your brain chemistry or make your muscles relax. Biofeedback could train your brain to abandon certain self-defeating pathways and build better pathways in their place. Schools and training labs could teach you to recognize when you are about to feel depressed or anxious and then give you meditations that abort the depression and anxiety at a very early stage. The field of bio-manipulation could conceivably end the worst of human suffering, which is mental.

The bottom line right now is that AI plays both sides of the street. While claiming that body-mind responses can be predicted, digitized, and used for all kinds of healing, from repairing spinal injuries to teaching autistic children how to change their facial expressions (the notion being that if the child adopts normal expressions in place of the typical blank autistic mask, the range of the child’s emotions will become more normal at the level of the brain). Simple but profound behavioral techniques such having doctors smile at their patients and touch them reassuringly on the shoulder seem promising in reducing patient anxiety and complaints.

The other side of the street is the claim that “of course” people aren’t going to be turned into robots by AI. But how is the mind to be neatly divided into the trainable part (deterministic) and the creative, liberated part (free will)? If I can be plugged into a device that predictably improves my mood, transforming me from sad and lonely to a happy camper, should I do it? The argument against bio-manipulation is hard to pin down, but not because a future Big Brother is going to turn us into robots.

The problem is that every aspect of mind and body works in a complex fashion with every other aspect. If you “improve” a person’s mood, for example, you might strip away the benefits of anxiety. One marked benefit is the phase that artists and problem solvers go through known as “anxious searching,” where the mind worries over a painting, poem, or difficult problem until the answer emerges. Then the anxiety has served its purpose, and the mind, having reached a creative solution, is actually happier and more contented.

I’ve only scratched the surface of how AI can affect the mind but knowing what’s at stake is important. In future posts the discussion can go deeper. At the moment, there’s no doubt that AI finds itself at the troubled junction point of neuroscience, big pharma, ethics, philosophy, and social engineering. The most basic questions like “Do we have free will?” lead to harder questions still, like, “Is free will hurting or harming us?” It’s likely that issues once consigned to religion and philosophy will loom as practical choices in everyday life. How things will ultimately turn out isn’t subject to an algorithm, even if human behavior is mostly predictable.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

Is There One Best Path in Life?


By Deepak Chopra, MD

Without using the term, everyone has marked out a path in life–a path can be defined as a road map that guides you to a goal. Because every day presents some kind of goal, however small, being on a path is inevitable. It doesn’t have to be a conscious choice. Yet at a certain point it dawns on most people that they have larger goals, even lifetime goals, that require long-term planning. At this point choosing a path does become a conscious decision.

 

On the surface, it would appear that life presents many paths, because so many goals present themselves: finding the right partner, raising a family, settling on a career, pursuing success, earning more money, saving a nest egg for retirement. These are socially shared goals, to which more can be added, such as finding God or writing a novel. But if you look deeper, everything on this list boils down to one path only.

 

This is the path of desire, which is the most natural path, since we all have desires. The impetus that keeps people on the path of desire is universal but also logical. If you want to eat breakfast, make friends, do something you enjoy, or have any other everyday desire, it’s logical that expanding your desires and following a bigger dream should serve as a reliable path in life. In fact, because 99% of the human race follows the path of desire, this should prove how defective it is. The problems of poverty, crime, war, hunger, disease, and mental anguish haven’t been solved around the world, and one or more of these problems reaches into everyone’s life.

 

The irony of turning desire into a path is that no one can validate that desire itself is positive. Shattered dreams are at least as common as dreams fulfilled. Psychological studies show that human beings are very bad predictors of what will make them happy. A young woman who deeply desires to have a child will confront the fact that being a new mother is one of the most stressful times of life for many women. Having more money increases happiness up to a certain threshold when you feel financially secure, after which having more money has diminishing returns. Unchecked impulses are a major aspect of things like the obesity epidemic, huge credit card debt, and criminal behavior–in a word, we desire lots of things that are self-defeating.

 

If there is a best path in life, the path of desire isn’t it. But how do you get off this path, which is so ingrained and occupies every waking hour from infancy onward? One insight is that desire comes from a shallow source. A restless mind leads to restless desires, which plays a major part in the pattern of endless desires that never seem to reach inner fulfillment even when the outer goal has been attained. If this is true, then going deeper into the mind to find a place of inner fulfillment opens up another path.

 

For just this reason millions of people have started to meditate and do yoga, and for the most part they discover the satisfaction of stepping out of the demands of desire. But still this doesn’t constitute a new path; it is more like a glimpse of a new path.  After meditation and yoga class come to an end, it’s back onto the treadmill of desire. Seeing the downside of the path of desire doesn’t free you from the problems created by desire. Since these problems are mixed in with the pleasure and delight of desire, countless people remain confused, conflicted, and at a loss.

 

The basis for confusion comes down to either/or thinking. There’s a time-honored belief that the worldly life and the spiritual life exist as opposites, the worldly life being defined by desires and the spiritual life by selfless abstention.  Yet even if you could persuade yourself that you are renouncing desire, that itself is a desire–you still want to be happy and fulfilled, even though your attitude is higher and holier than people who pursue happiness by taking a vacation in Las Vegas or Disney World.

 

The best path in life begins by abolishing the separation between worldly and spiritual aspirations. Such a path allows desire to play out its natural course without running wild, while bringing experiences of love, joy, truth, beauty, divine presence, or whatever else you consider higher and spiritual. In other words, the best path in life should aim for the goal of wholeness. Being human is complete and whole when we are not self-divided by conflict, confusion, frustration, and the constant demands that pull us in opposite directions.

 

To be self-divided is the product of blindly accepting that your desires will get you where you want to be. Even when one cherished goal is attained, that still leaves untold potential that lies unfulfilled. The only way to lead a whole and complete life is to be whole and complete yourself. This, finally, is the best path in life, which can be called for the sake of simplicity the path of the self. I’m not endorsing selfishness and egotism. The path of the self is a lifelong quest to discover who you are, knitting together the glimpses of fulfillment that occur in everyone’s life.

 

The great discoveries that dawn on this path are “I am enough. Being here is fulfilling. Existence unfolds inner potential without end.” Being human isn’t complete without these discoveries, and they cannot be found through desire. To know that you are enough, and that existence will unfold your inner potential transforms daily life in profound ways. But transformation cannot be a goal. It is the fruit of being on the path of the self. All such discoveries happen spontaneously, on their own time schedule, under the guidance of an intelligence that transcends the everyday thinking mind.

 

The path of the self has always been open to everyone, and meditation takes you through the door. Then it is necessary to have a vision and a long-term intention, in this case, to find your true self. Along the way choices have to be made about your beliefs, guiding principles, personal relationships, and so on–but these are secondary. What is held before you every day is finding the way out of self-doubt, confusion, inner conflict, and divisive desires that keep you entangled in a state of separation. The divided self is easy to spot, and its consequences litter our lives. So there’s real work to be done on the path of the self, only it is the effortless work of going inside, adopting the next step of self-awareness, and identifying with a level of mind deeper than the restless, superficial mind.  When you see the value of this project, you have taken the important first step that brings the path of the self into view.

 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com

Want to Lead a Happier Life? Talk to Your Genes

 

wellbeingBy Deepak Chopra, MD, Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD

 

Genetics may be on the verge of solving a very complex question in a revolutionary but quite simple way. The question is, What does it take to be happy? The question never goes away. It hangs over our heads every day. The possible answers are many, but they follow two general trends whose results, frankly, have been disappointing. One trend is psychological, holding that happiness is an emotional state. The other trend is philosophical, holding that happiness is a mental state. When someone is unhappy, psychologists aim to improve their mood, largely by addressing anxiety, depression, and various psychological wounds from the past. A philosopher, on the other hand, would examine the underlying idea of happiness itself and why it is or isn’t feasible. In the end, happiness is all about health and wellbeing.

 

Yet after thousands of years of deep thinking and a hundred years of psychotherapy, the condition that the vast majority of people find themselves in is marked by total confusion. We muddle through on a wobbly combination of wishful thinking, hope, bouts of high and low spirits, denial, family ties, love, distraction, and the constant pursuit of external pleasures, as if happiness can be cobbled together more or less randomly.

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Happiness for the Holidays? Try an Experiment

By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP

 

The holidays, officially a time of good cheer, have become instead a byword for stress, overeating, running up bills, and enduring one’s relatives. This falls in line with the last two posts on happiness and our dubious relationship to it. It’s hard to find to define a greater goal in life than lasting happiness, yet modern psychology, with its notions about happiness being incidental and unpredictable, discourages us form believing in lasting happiness.

Dead bird with flies

What’s the solution? Let me suggest returning to a simple but profound idea that has endured in every spiritual tradition. Unhappiness means that you are not being yourself. When you are being yourself, happiness is permanent because the “true self” is by nature at peace, blissful, and undisturbed by the ups and downs of daily life. (more…)

The Future of Happiness – Up or Down?

The Future of Happiness – Up or Down?

By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP

03-relaxationIt’s unsettling that so little is known about what it takes to be happy, and a lot of what we do know is contradictory. On the one hand, most people report that they are happy when asked by pollsters – up to 80% in most developed countries. On the other hand, psychological studies and various reports don’t share such a bright picture. The following things make happiness a problem:

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