AbstractNudge is a popular public policy tool that harnesses
well-known biases in human judgement to subtly guide people's
decisions, often to improve their choices or to achieve some
socially desirable outcome. Thanks to recent developments in
artificial intelligence (AI) methods new possibilities emerge of
how and when our decisions can be nudged. On the one hand,
algorithmically personalized nudges have the potential to vastly
improve human daily lives. On the other hand, blindly
outsourcing the development and implementation of nudges to
``black box'' AI systems means that the ultimate reasons for why
such nudges work, that is, the underlying human cognitive
processes that they harness, will often be unknown. In this
paper, we unpack this concern by considering a series of
examples and case studies that demonstrate how AI systems can
learn to harness biases in human judgment to reach a specified
goal. Drawing on an analogy in a philosophical debate concerning
the methodology of economics, we call for the need of an
interdisciplinary oversight of AI systems that are tasked and
deployed to nudge human behaviours.
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AbstractNudge is a popular public policy tool that harnesses
well-known biases in human judgement to subtly guide people's
decisions, often to improve their choices or to achieve some
socially desirable outcome. Thanks to recent developments in
artificial intelligence (AI) methods new possibilities emerge of
how and when our decisions can be nudged. On the one hand,
algorithmically personalized nudges have the potential to vastly
improve human daily lives. On the other hand, blindly
outs...
»