Jacob Ward is a technology correspondent for NBC News and previously worked as a science and technology correspondent for CNN, Al Jazeera, and PBS. The former editor-in-chief of Popular Science, Ward writes for El neoyorquino, Con cable, y Men’s Health. He is also the host of the 10-episode Audible podcast series Complicated and the four-hour PBS documentary series Hacking Your Mind, which discusses fundamental scientific discoveries in human decision-making and irrationality. Artificial intelligence is going to change the world as we know it. In The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back (Hachette Books), Ward argues that the real danger isn’t some robot enslaving us: It’s our own brain. Our brains constantly make decisions using shortcuts, biases, and hidden processes – and we’re using those same techniques to create technology that makes choices for us. Be it the biometric surveillance state in India to the risky multiple-choice simplicity of automated military action, we are poised to build our worst instincts into our AI, creating a narrow loop where each generation has fewer predetermined and even dangerous choices. AI, says Ward, is poised to use our decision-making patterns to manipulate us.