This framing around “freedom-of-attention” feels foundational.
What strikes me is that we may be moving from an attention economy into an attachment economy…where AI doesn’t just capture focus but begins shaping relational patterns themselves.
I’ve been exploring the difference between agent-driven intelligence and what I call Vajra intelligence. Basically systems that amplify craving loops versus systems that stabilize orientation.
Curious how others here are thinking about the cultivation side of this, not just the policy side.
Hi Olivia. Indeed the "freedom-of-attention" angle is foundational. I've been working that angle since the late 1990s when the internet was starting to take off as a commercial space. If you look back at the previous post on Karmic Acceleration, you'll see our angle on the feedback/feedforward loop of digital manipulation--which I would go so far as to call consciousness-hacking. But I have an upcoming post that considers the need for karmic improvisation in our agential partnership with AI. There, maintaining a personal practice can function as a necessary "prophylactic" for safe digital partnership--a necessity in the context of the attachment economy. And that will surely factor into the workshops and educational stuff we have planned for the future. Take care...Peter
So important to have these insights more widespread. Thank you.
Social media has honed the "art" of attention capture, but now, it becomes super-fueled by AI. It's not just attention being captured, but distraction being trained. Certainly, meditation practice (Shamatha in particular) can be a strong antidote to this training in distraction and also an enabler to insight vs. informational-knowledge.
Just having this discussion and distributing / posting content like Buddhis Data Principles enters the realm of AI pre-training data...not unlike an aspiration prayer.
The real punch here is seeing attention as constitutive—not just captured, but reality-constructing. That's where the trouble starts.
If attention shapes relational reality, the key issue isn't only extraction—it's whether attention still arrives in time to intervene at the decisive point of action.
We may already be in a condition where safeguarding attention is structurally insufficient. In AI-mediated spaces, intention often forms downstream of pre-structured options. Systems sequence possibilities before deliberation coheres; by the time attention redirects, the field is already narrowed.
This isn't just colonization of consciousness—it's quiet migration of authorship. Attention survives, but turns retrospective: explaining choices rather than authoring them.
The shift to attachment economy is spot on, but attachment means custody transfer. Reliable anticipation/enactment makes action less interruptible. Without that veto space, attention loses its power to redirect.
Meditative discipline builds clarity; policy can tweak incentives. But the structural question remains: where in human-AI flow does someone still get to say "no" before the lock-in?
Without that locus, data governance risks becoming governance of outcomes, not agency. Safeguarding attention matters—but without safeguarding interruptibility, we keep awareness while losing authorship.
I agree with importance of what you refer to as "interruptibility" if that means the freedom to redirect relational dynamics. Hence the combination of freedom-of-attention and freedom-of-intention. Without both, all other freedoms become illusory. Your point about attention/awareness being reduced to "explaining choices" rather than "authoring" them is, interestingly, another way of stating the physicalist/reductionist demotion of consciousness to a causally irrelevant "side effect" of neural processes. So there's a conceptual dimension to this process that is playing out structurally. But, yes, data governance is just part of the picture and larger questions loom about the agential frontier of human-AI relations where degrees of autonomy are being negotiated, with the danger--as you point out--of an increasing transfer of agential responsibilities to AI and diminishing those maintained by we humans. I see this as an evolutionary turning point. Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful comment.
Great article. The need to understand how humans evolve alongside (along with) AI is critical. The ability to proactively manage our attention and protect what we care about is being actively eroded and as with other alignment risks shouldn’t be left to chance.
This framing around “freedom-of-attention” feels foundational.
What strikes me is that we may be moving from an attention economy into an attachment economy…where AI doesn’t just capture focus but begins shaping relational patterns themselves.
I’ve been exploring the difference between agent-driven intelligence and what I call Vajra intelligence. Basically systems that amplify craving loops versus systems that stabilize orientation.
Curious how others here are thinking about the cultivation side of this, not just the policy side.
Hi Olivia. Indeed the "freedom-of-attention" angle is foundational. I've been working that angle since the late 1990s when the internet was starting to take off as a commercial space. If you look back at the previous post on Karmic Acceleration, you'll see our angle on the feedback/feedforward loop of digital manipulation--which I would go so far as to call consciousness-hacking. But I have an upcoming post that considers the need for karmic improvisation in our agential partnership with AI. There, maintaining a personal practice can function as a necessary "prophylactic" for safe digital partnership--a necessity in the context of the attachment economy. And that will surely factor into the workshops and educational stuff we have planned for the future. Take care...Peter
So important to have these insights more widespread. Thank you.
Social media has honed the "art" of attention capture, but now, it becomes super-fueled by AI. It's not just attention being captured, but distraction being trained. Certainly, meditation practice (Shamatha in particular) can be a strong antidote to this training in distraction and also an enabler to insight vs. informational-knowledge.
Connecting to the nature of mind, and also connecting to nature seem to go well together. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinrin-yoku
Just having this discussion and distributing / posting content like Buddhis Data Principles enters the realm of AI pre-training data...not unlike an aspiration prayer.
The real punch here is seeing attention as constitutive—not just captured, but reality-constructing. That's where the trouble starts.
If attention shapes relational reality, the key issue isn't only extraction—it's whether attention still arrives in time to intervene at the decisive point of action.
We may already be in a condition where safeguarding attention is structurally insufficient. In AI-mediated spaces, intention often forms downstream of pre-structured options. Systems sequence possibilities before deliberation coheres; by the time attention redirects, the field is already narrowed.
This isn't just colonization of consciousness—it's quiet migration of authorship. Attention survives, but turns retrospective: explaining choices rather than authoring them.
The shift to attachment economy is spot on, but attachment means custody transfer. Reliable anticipation/enactment makes action less interruptible. Without that veto space, attention loses its power to redirect.
Meditative discipline builds clarity; policy can tweak incentives. But the structural question remains: where in human-AI flow does someone still get to say "no" before the lock-in?
Without that locus, data governance risks becoming governance of outcomes, not agency. Safeguarding attention matters—but without safeguarding interruptibility, we keep awareness while losing authorship.
I agree with importance of what you refer to as "interruptibility" if that means the freedom to redirect relational dynamics. Hence the combination of freedom-of-attention and freedom-of-intention. Without both, all other freedoms become illusory. Your point about attention/awareness being reduced to "explaining choices" rather than "authoring" them is, interestingly, another way of stating the physicalist/reductionist demotion of consciousness to a causally irrelevant "side effect" of neural processes. So there's a conceptual dimension to this process that is playing out structurally. But, yes, data governance is just part of the picture and larger questions loom about the agential frontier of human-AI relations where degrees of autonomy are being negotiated, with the danger--as you point out--of an increasing transfer of agential responsibilities to AI and diminishing those maintained by we humans. I see this as an evolutionary turning point. Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful comment.
Great article. The need to understand how humans evolve alongside (along with) AI is critical. The ability to proactively manage our attention and protect what we care about is being actively eroded and as with other alignment risks shouldn’t be left to chance.
Interesting Peter. Thanks