The New Human: Homo Algorithmus

How Big Companies Are Changing The Human Psyche

In the week gone by, Zomato, an Indian food-tech company announced that it will start delivering food within 10 minutes of order in certain locations across the country. The announcement created quite a buzz since until then, 10-minute deliveries had only been limited to groceries and even they were criticized for putting the lives of the delivery people at risk.

Zomato’s promise was different. They promised the delivery of food (cooked, fresh food) within 10 minutes of an order. How could this be? How would they even manage that? The answer to those questions is what inspired this issue of Psychology with Arjun.

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Imagine there was an app that could tell you what you are going to want to eat tomorrow. This app doesn’t know what you will eat tomorrow but it can predict what you will want. How does the idea sound? Creepy? Fascinating? Amazing? Nearly 2/3rd of my followers on my Instagram thought this was a creepy idea, the other third found the idea amazing. To the two-thirds I want to say, this app is no imagination, but a reality.

That is how Zomato plans on achieving its aim of 10-minute deliveries. They have been collecting data on what people’s eating habits for years. With a user base of around 32,000,000 people as of 2021, they might have the largest data-mine on people’s eating habits in human history.

And what do we do in a mine? We dig.

Using this data, Zomato will identify which areas order which food frequently in specific locations across the city. In tie-ups with restaurants, these specific food items will be considered high-priority dishes, to be kept prepared (or ready to be prepared) for as quick a dispatch as possible.

They will also offer incentives like discounts on these items as well as the promise of quick delivery. Naturally, people are more likely to order these items unless they have a very very specific need that cannot be fulfilled in the timeline. (For eg. I only want to have a chicken Taco from Dominos not from someplace else even though the other place might fulfil it quicker.)

So basically, they used order history to predict what item you would like to have, offered the thing cheaper and quicker and nudged you towards buying the said item. Thus the circle is fulfilled. But that is not what the problem is. The problem is much deeper.

Think about it for a second. Should a company really know what you would want to eat in a day that you haven’t even lived yet? Should we really let AI and algorithms take over that aspect of our lives?

Article continues below

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Homo Algorithmus

The use of algorithms and data mining to nudge users towards favourable outcomes is nothing new. Tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter and Youtube have been doing it for years.

In late 2016 and early 2015, Twitter and Facebook declared that the news feed that its users engage with would be created by special algorithms designed to increase engagement instead of a simple listing of all posts in chronological order.

The algorithms had been a long time coming. Facebook had conducted extensive market research into manipulating its users into buying products that were advertised on the social media platform.

A pilot study conducted by Facebook came into the mire of controversy when it was revealed that they had been changing the news feed of its users to see if the news consumed would have an effect on the happiness/sadness of its users. For Facebook, this was simply an activity in psychological research. The people affected by it ( who did show considerable change in mood depending on the news they saw) didn’t even know it.

In today’s world, these algorithms are used by almost every tech company to enrich user experience based on the data they collect from the users. My niece has been using Youtube since before she could understand how to use a phone. Youtube now knows what she likes and the algorithm decides which video plays after one has ended.

Youtube has become such a mainstay in her life that what she wants to buy, how she talks, what she likes, what she dislikes and even her accent of speech is heavily derived from the content consumed on Youtube. It is quite possible that the algorithm knows more about her than she probably knows about herself. The Youtube algorithm probably knows what she will grow up to be simply on the basis of what they have fed her in her formative years.

This new form of brainwashing starts right in childhood, and it never ends.

When she grows up and starts using Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, the algorithms of these companies will collect data about her too. Zomato will collect data on what she eats, Spotify will know what she listens to, Google will know how much she moves (Fit) her active and inactive times (Android usage tracking).

So who really influences what my niece will grow up to be? Earlier our friends and family used to have a huge influence on who we grew up to be. Today, algorithms decide who our friends should be. The next generation is going to be the product of constant algorithm-driven interaction with the world. Algorithms will decide who they become.

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A Psychographic Dystopia

Currently, the Census, conducted every decade, collects data about your demographics. This includes your caste, sex, education status, marital status etc. This data is then analysed to drive government policy aiming for public betterment.

Big Data is, daily, conducting a psychographic census into our minds. They collect data on what we like, what we save, what we share, what we don’t like, what we scroll past quickly on, what we spend time on, what we say and what we write. For a psychologist, data in this much detail and volume is a wet dream come true. For these companies, it is just another Tuesday.

Every single aspect of your inner psychological world is mapped onto by one or the other tech company.

What do these companies use this data for?

Public betterment? Not really.

It usually goes into making it easier to make advertisements that make you buy things.

I remember buying a small bottle of coffee simply because of how much it was advertised to me across social media apps. All because I constantly share how much I enjoy coffee on my social media handles. I had no idea about this brand. I had never heard about it but I still spent money on it because it had managed to grab my attention purely through repetition.

Every single paisa that a company spends on its marketing budget is spent trying to win your attention. Attention is the political and digital currency of the present and the future.

So what happens when huge companies fight for your attention?

Everything becomes a competition of attention-seeking. Outrageous comments that divide people garner more attention than a nuanced and balanced take. The algorithm pushes the extreme view because it gets more clicks, and more clicks mean more revenue. Everything ultimately becomes about profit, even at the cost of social peace.

So what does a future like this look like? Will we really have a choice in the future to choose what we want or will our wants and desires be determined by the algorithm overlords?

Will we still be human? Or will we be consumer zombies, buying whatever is shown to us?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. What I do know is that the questions are dystopic in themselves.

No matter how much the digital world tries to sell itself as a utopia of global connectivity, it is actually a dystopia of global surveillance and psychological oppression. That too unconsciously.

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Question of The Week!

Has it ever happened that you were talking about something with your friends and you suddenly saw an ad for it later in the day? Do you feel those ads enrich your experience or invade a very personal space for you?

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And that is it for the week! I have been juggling so many things recently but am really glad I managed to get this story out. I feel like it is an important story. What did you think of it? If you liked it, be sure to like and share the article. After all, I am also fighting for your attention and am lucky to hold it :)

-Arjun Gupta