By Ravee Singh Ahluwalia
In the year 2025, artificial intelligence has quietly woven itself into the fabric of our everyday existence with unprecedented speed and scope. From the moment we wake up to AI-optimized alarm systems to the personalized entertainment recommendations that guide our evening leisure, we are living within an ecosystem of algorithmic decision-making that shapes our choices, preferences, and ultimately, our thoughts.
The statistics paint a startling picture of this transformation. By 2024, 76% of offices worldwide were using ChatGPT, with individual employee usage nearly doubling from 19.1% to 34.9% in just one year. This represents more than mere technological adoption—it signals a fundamental shift in how we process information, make decisions, and interact with the world around us.
Today’s AI systems operate through what researchers call “decision architecture”—sophisticated frameworks that subtly guide our choices without our conscious awareness. When Netflix suggests your next binge-worthy series, when food delivery apps recommend your dinner, or when social media platforms curate your news feed, these aren’t neutral services. They are AI-powered systems analyzing vast datasets about your behavior, preferences, and even your current emotional state to influence your decisions.
The entertainment industry exemplifies this phenomenon. AI algorithms now understand user preferences better than individuals understand themselves, analyzing viewing history, time of day, current events, and even biometric data related to mood to provide highly customized recommendations. Music platforms like Spotify appear to “read your mind” with their playlists, while gaming experiences adapt dynamically to individual player behavior patterns.
This personalization extends far beyond entertainment. AI in our daily lives is growing rapidly, influencing shopping recommendations, navigation apps, and even home security. Email spam filters and smart reply systems powered by AI manage our communications, while voice assistants control our smart home environments based on learned patterns of our habits and preferences.
The corporate world has become ground zero for AI integration, with frequent AI use in the workplace doubling from 11% to 19% since 2023, and daily use jumping from 4% to 8% in just twelve months. Professional services lead this adoption at 34%, followed by finance at 32% and technology at 50%. This widespread workplace integration means that not only are individuals using AI tools, but their professional thoughts, ideas, and creative processes are being processed, stored, and analyzed by AI systems.
The data accumulation implications are staggering. As one study noted, major platforms with loyal users “know those users better than their families and friends do”. Facebook Likes alone can predict with high accuracy users’ sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, substance use, and family relationships. When we consider that this is achievable through something as simple as the ‘like’ button, the extent of data extraction from search keywords, online clicks, posts, and reviews becomes almost incomprehensible.
Perhaps most concerning is how AI systems are creating what researchers describe as manipulation of human behavior through sophisticated data analysis and targeted influence campaigns. Digital firms can now “shape the framework and control the timing of their offers, and can target users at the individual level with manipulative strategies that are much more effective and difficult to detect”.
This manipulation has already manifested in political contexts. AI-driven subversion has been documented in elections across multiple countries, including Kenya in 2013 and 2017, the US in 2016, and France in 2017. Social media platforms, powered by AI algorithms, have contributed to increased polarization and extremist views by creating echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs while filtering out opposing perspectives.
The emergence of what we now call the “Instagram generation” serves as a stark illustration of how deeply AI-powered platforms have penetrated human behavior. Gen Z’s relationship with social media exemplifies this transformation, with 78% using TikTok and two-thirds using it daily. This demographic doesn’t simply use these platforms—they live through them.
As the query astutely observes, this generation “eats on Instagram, parties on Instagram, marries on Instagram, parts ways on Instagram.” This isn’t hyperbole—by 2024, 53% of Gen Z ordered directly through social media, with 58% making purchase decisions based on content in their feeds. The line between online presence and real life has effectively dissolved.
The short-form video content that dominates these platforms is designed by AI algorithms to maximize engagement, creating what researchers call “addictive feedback loops.” TikTok users aged 18-24 spend an average of 1 hour and 19 minutes per day on the platform, during which AI systems continuously analyze their responses to fine-tune future content delivery.
The most alarming aspect of current AI development lies in its potential to influence human consciousness at subconscious levels. Research indicates that only 5% of human brain activity is conscious, with the remaining 95% operating subconsciously. AI systems are increasingly capable of influencing this subconscious realm through two primary mechanisms: creating decision architectures that guide behavior and potentially developing direct neural influence capabilities.
The risk, as one researcher noted, is that “algorithms will have more information about our lives, and creating tools to generate these impulsive responses will be easier… The risk of these technologies is that, just like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, they will make us dance without knowing why”.
The dangers are not theoretical. According to Stanford’s 2025 AI Index Report, AI incidents jumped by 56.4% in a single year, with 233 reported cases throughout 2024. These incidents span privacy violations, bias-related discrimination, misinformation campaigns, and algorithmic failures with real-world consequences.
Despite growing awareness of these risks—with 64% of organizations citing concerns about AI inaccuracy and 63% worried about compliance issues—far fewer have implemented comprehensive safeguards. This implementation gap creates what experts describe as a “dangerous scenario where organizations continue deploying increasingly sophisticated AI systems without corresponding security controls.”
The parallels to social media’s unchecked growth are unmistakable. Just as we now grapple with the societal consequences of platforms designed to maximize engagement over well-being, we risk repeating this pattern with AI on a much larger scale. The difference is that AI’s influence operates at a more fundamental level—not just shaping what we see, but how we think.
Current global AI regulation efforts remain fragmented and insufficient. While the European Union has implemented comprehensive AI legislation, many countries, including major AI developers like the United States, Japan, and Australia, rely primarily on voluntary guidelines and sector-specific oversight. This patchwork approach fails to address the transnational nature of AI systems and their cumulative effects on human consciousness.
India, despite being a major technology hub, currently lacks specific AI governance legislation, though the upcoming Digital India Act aims to regulate high-risk AI applications. However, the scale and urgency of the challenge demands more immediate and comprehensive action.
The solution requires recognizing AI development as more than a technological challenge—it’s a question of preserving human agency and consciousness in an increasingly automated world. As philosophical perspectives suggest, AI must remain under the control of conscious beings, guided by responsibility and wisdom. The goal should not be to replace human consciousness but to extend its highest potential into the tools we build.
Nations must move beyond reactive measures to proactive governance frameworks that address AI’s influence on human consciousness. This includes:
Mandatory transparency in algorithmic decision-making that affects individual choices, particularly in entertainment, news consumption, and commercial recommendations.
Data sovereignty measures that limit how personal behavioral data can be collected, stored, and used for influence purposes.
Consciousness protection protocols that recognize and regulate AI’s ability to influence subconscious decision-making processes.
International cooperation frameworks that address the transnational nature of AI influence systems.
Digital literacy programs that help individuals recognize and resist algorithmic manipulation.
The concept of AI influencing collective consciousness isn’t merely metaphorical—it’s increasingly literal. When billions of individuals receive information, entertainment, and even emotional responses filtered through AI systems trained on similar datasets, we create a form of artificial homogenization of human thought and experience.
This represents what the query insightfully describes as “universal consciousness being altered or influenced by certain events and circumstances.” Unlike natural cultural evolution, this influence is centralized, controlled by a small number of technology companies, and optimized for engagement and profit rather than human flourishing or truth.
The time for action is now, before AI’s influence on human consciousness becomes so deeply embedded that reversal becomes impossible. Unlike social media, which primarily affected how we communicate and share information, AI is reshaping how we think, decide, and understand reality itself.
Digital detox movements are already emerging in response to technology overuse, with research showing positive effects on focus, relationships, and overall well-being. However, individual solutions are insufficient when the challenge is systemic. We need collective action at the national and international levels.
The choice before us is stark: we can continue on the current path, gradually ceding more of our cognitive autonomy to AI systems designed to influence and manipulate, or we can take decisive action to ensure that these powerful technologies serve human flourishing rather than exploit human psychology.
As we stand at this critical juncture, we must remember that AI will not define the future—we will. Whether artificial intelligence becomes a guardian of human potential or a threat to human consciousness depends entirely on the intentions and integrity with which we shape its development today. The question is not whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to.
The Instagram generation may have shown us the destination of unchecked technological influence on human behavior. It’s time to choose a different path—one that preserves human agency, protects consciousness, and ensures that technology serves humanity rather than the other way around.
(The views expressed by the author are personal.)
About The Author
Ravee Singh Ahluwalia is an independent author of “The Mosaic of My Journey.” He is the Founder and CEO of an organization in Special Consultative Status with the UN ECOSOC since 2018. Through his NGO Patiala Foundation, he has been working in the field of social entrepreneurship since 2009 and has issued a written statement on “Right to Walk” at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. A certified practitioner in TM, NLP, EFT, Palmistry and Clinical Hypnotherapy, he helps people through his therapeutic space RAVEE.
