Keio University X Dignity Center

We are now living in an age in which high-definition audiovisual information spreads endlessly beyond our palm-sized digital devices. The time required for humans to respond instinctively and reflexively to audio-visual stimuli is approximately 300 milliseconds. It takes only 130 milliseconds for a packet of information on the Internet to travel worldwide. Even if AI somehow manipulated information along the way, humans would not notice it. The combination of the Internet and AI is entering an era of intervention in human instincts, reflections, and the subconscious.

Furthermore, although the human mind is known to have various “warped” cognitive properties, the combination of the Internet and AI appears to be waging an information war that clearly targets this imperfection. Properties such as normality bias, confirmation bias, and hostile media cognition, which have been studied in the field of experimental psychology, are being skillfully used and empirically “hacked” one after another in a fast and large-scale exchange of information.

This subunit studies the pathology of the human brain and nervous system to reveal why people cannot stop “symptoms” such as political strife, stemas, and online bullying that are emerging in the information space even when they are well known, and why people become unwitting parties to them. Before considering ethical, legal, and social countermeasures, it is necessary to understand why humans are the way they are. This subunit will expand its activities based on this attitude.