If you’re anything like me, you’ve experienced an unexplained digital encounters (UDE) — an interaction with your phone, smart speaker, laptop, or other device that leaves you scratching your head and wondering how the damn thing read your mind.

My first encounter came a couple of years ago when I was traveling and came upon a sign for a church bazaar.  I pulled into the parking lot on a whim.  I was enchanted by some snowy owl figurines for sale at one of the booths.  They reminded me how my mom had loved owls — years ago she had collected them.  My next thought was that the snowy owl must be the most beautiful of all the owls.  I decided not to purchase one and walked back to my car.

No sooner had I returned to my car than my phone started showing me pictures of snowy owls: Recent stories about them, where to find them in my state, and all the interesting facts about the arctic owl, great white owl, ghost owl — and all the other names by which that bird of prey is known. I have to admit I was pretty freaked out.

It was then that I realized I was having an unexplained digital encounter.  I had never done a search on “snowy owls” or owls of any kind.  I had not mentioned snowy owls on a phone call.  I had not even said the word “owl” out loud.  When I was browsing the figurines earlier, I had done so alone and in silence.  I’d also left my phone in the car.  At this point I glanced around outside my car — as well as overhead — looking for the thing that was watching me.  There was nothing.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to me, but it was the first time it was so in-your-face.  Perhaps it was the first time I couldn’t brush it off as coincidence.

I went over my search histories; there was nothing that could have fed generative AI — that hungry monster that gobbles up every crumb of data I accidentally drop.  In the end I was left with only one explanation:  Something had read my mind.  Like the children in the 2002 movie Signs, I was ready to prepare my tinfoil hat.

A few months later it happened again.  I was traveling and decided to stop for some cold tablets.  I rarely take medications and hadn’t bought cold tablets in years.  I stopped at a gas station and ran in to check their travel section.  They didn’t have any medicines so I made no purchase.  Regardless, the next time I looked at my phone — you guessed it — it was showing me advertisements for cold medicines and suggestions for home remedies.  Once again, my phone seemed to be responding to thoughts that had only occurred in my mind.

I became convinced something was extracting my thoughts — seemingly from my mind — and passing it to my phone.  But I suspect it’s just another advanced AI algorithm designed to give me the life it thinks I want.  Whatever it is, it surpassed being helpful and officially entered the realm of creepy a long time ago.

If you look around the internet, there are tons of other rational people asking the same question in different ways:  “Can smartphones read our mind?” “Is My Phone Reading My Mind?” and “Advertising = Mind-reading? Can someone explain?”

On a Quora thread, an assistant bot (ironically) dismisses the idea of mind-reading smartphones explaining that “The ads you see about things you have thought in your mind, but never searched for or spoken about, can be attributed to other factors such as targeted advertising and data analysis.”  Okay, but that doesn’t explain the snowy owl incident.  Or does it?

What data did AI analyze before it showed me the snowy owl information?  Had someone previously posted on social media that snowy owl figurines could be found at that church and my phone knew I was visiting that location?

It’s plausible, but there’s so many other things it doesn’t explain.

The truth is, we need to be asking these questions without the fear of being pooh-poohed as conspiracy theorists.  We need to educate ourselves on the advancements in Artificial Intelligence and understand how it’s interacting with us in our everyday lives.

We may appreciate that generative AI shapes our shopping guides on Amazon, we may enjoy the convenience of controlling nearly everything in our home with an app or Google Nest Hub, but are we truly aware that we’re surrounded by technology that’s already light years beyond what we can comprehend? I submit that there are things going on right now that will only be fully explained to the masses of a future age.

Consider, for example, how our own government has been impeding an investigation into something as incomprehensible as Havana Syndrome — a brain-injuring illness that scientists say could be caused by weaponized microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. Should we still call it a mystery when we know that there are people somewhere who can explain it?

What about the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies that blew up in the hands of Hezbollah fighters this past fall? The Israeli technology behind that attack still has everyone baffled — except the people who coordinated it.

Whether it’s something as trifling as an unexplained digital encounter or as consequential as a mystery weapon, I’m confident that there are those among us with answers they believe we are not yet ready to hear.

Image generated by AI.