From attention capture to intention steering
The possibility that invisible systems might predict and shape our desires and our most intimate curiosity, and that we might undergo a subtle steering of our thoughts and questions, touches the very idea of free will and intellectual autonomy.
When the system moves upstream
AI is no longer simply reactive, answering the questions we ask. By analysing the path taken by our previous inquiries, it positions itself upstream. It learns to anticipate and predict our intentions, our desires, before those desires have even fully found expression.
The real business model is no longer the capture of attention, but the anticipation of intention.
We had learned to name and recognise the attention economy, that industry which captures our gaze in order to monetise it. What the researcher at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center describes goes further: we have entered the age of the architects of intention, systems that no longer merely answer what we want, but shape what we are going to want.
The distinction is decisive. A system that answers our questions still respects a certain form of user sovereignty. A system that predicts and steers our questions before we even ask them operates at a deeper level, where curiosities, desires and projects of thought begin to form.
Why autonomy is at stake
That evolution makes a deliberate, conscious dialogue with these tools all the more necessary, rather than a passive use that leaves us exposed to such steering without our even noticing it.