1. Where We Are Today: Three Daily Pressures from Technology
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) is deeply changing how we work, live, and make decisions. While automation makes systems much faster and more efficient, it also changes the daily reality that every single person has to face. Technology has not removed uncertainty from our lives. Instead, it has created three types of constant, heavy mental pressure:
1. Competition Between People (Running Faster Just to Stay in Place): When AI tools help some people work twice as fast, the standard for the whole society is pushed higher. This does not make work easier for ordinary people. Instead, it forces everyone to spend time and energy learning new tools just to keep their current position.
2. Direct Pressure from AI (Skills Being Replaced and Value Questioned): Modern AI can handle many complex reasoning tasks. This directly threatens traditional professional skills and years of hard-won experience. People not only worry about their tasks being automated, but also feel their unique value is fading, while the real-world cost of making a mistake has become much higher.
3. Complex Systems (Feeling a Loss of Control in Daily Life): As automated systems take over more daily procedures and paperwork, people face an increasingly complex technical environment. Anxiety often comes from feeling that we no longer control the process. When key steps are decided by computer rules, the real difficulties of individual people are easily ignored and reduced to simple numbers.
Together, these three pressures show that anxiety has become a normal, daily feeling in our tech-driven world. In this reality, living with dignity has become very expensive, while true peace of mind and calmness have become very rare.
2. The Limits of AI: Rethinking What Technology Is For
Facing these growing pressures, we must ask an honest question: What should be the true goal of artificial intelligence?
We believe healthy technology must have clear boundaries:
First, technology must not become a tool that speeds up exhaustion and endless competition, squeezing away people's breathing room just to hit higher numbers;
Second, technology must not become a fake comfort that hides real-world trouble behind polite words. Giving people false hope without practical solutions only misleads them when they are in trouble;
Third, technology must never become a system that takes away personal choice. When facing complex life problems, people do not need an algorithm to decide their future for them. Instead, they need reliable support that fully respects their own free will and personal decisions.
3. Where We Stand: Three Basic Principles for Our Research
In our research on AI tools for individual decision support, we strictly follow three simple, down-to-earth principles:
First, you must always keep your own choice (The Autonomy Principle). Technology should be a helpful tool for human thinking, not a master that gives orders. The final choice and the control over your life must always stay in your own hands. Technology must never cross the line to decide a person's path.
Second, dignity is a basic right for everyone (The Low-Cost Support Principle). When people ask for help or look for a way out of trouble, they should not have to give away too much personal privacy or lose their self-respect. Systems should ask for as little personal data as possible, giving people reliable help without prying into their private lives.
Third, help must be based on real facts (The Real-World Feasibility Principle). Truly useful support must be grounded in real facts, legal deadlines, and practical resource limits. We refuse to use polite flattery to hide real risks, and we aim to provide solid support that works in real life.
4. Our Hope: Quiet and Solid Strength
The true value of technology is not in showing off grand, complicated systems. Its real value is whether it can give people quiet, calm, and solid strength when they feel most helpless and need support the most.
Through honest academic work, we hope to put these principles into practice. We want to provide reliable, calm, and dignified support for everyday people living in an uncertain world.