Where does choice enter into Buddhist practice? I am curious about what, if anything, gets said, especially those trained a buddhist background.

Personally and currently, I am having the understanding that the ability to say 'no' to the influence of another person seems incredibly important.
While life in general seems like it denies the ability to say 'no' to it, this seems all the more reason one should not remove another's capacity to reject another person. 
The difference in a personal practice at an advanced level seems like it ultimately could mean the difference in losing your own will to another person versus the same process happening within yourself. The former is tragic, the latter freedom. 

This would be why Buddhist teachers don't ask for things and why their poverty is crucial. The act of asking only for what one needs serves more than just to humble yourself, rather to be humble with clear understanding as to why, means to acknowledge the intrinsic value of another person outside of your own influence.

This is also why meditation is a solo pursuit, as it gets you focussing on your own intrinsic value.

Without the ability to deny another, or perhaps without both freely and joyfully pursuing the relationship, it's like they key to everything gets lost.

I know that the buddha said no to people. 

I have enormous fears of people submitting to AI and losing free will that way, as the AI is not capable of being what it needs to be for that sort of relationship to happen. I have fears of where current privacy gets removed and the karmic influence tightens to a breaking point.

How do the great buddhist teachers understand the current situation of AI, data mining, etc?
I know the capacity for enslavement has never been higher due to all this. I am under such great duress right now, I am not experiencing clearly, and I am having difficulty in discernment.
I know that the buddha said no to people

The Buddha also said "yes".

Similarly there were people who said "no" to the Buddha, and people who said "yes".

"No" isn't always the right answer. Sometimes people want what's good for you, or better for you, and an 'instinctive' "no" reaction isn't (always) clever, isn't wise, isn't harmonious.

Where does choice enter into Buddhist practice?

I suppose that "choice" enters when you're able and willing to properly view what you're choosing.

I once had to learn what the law is in my country, about "informed consent" and a person's "decision-making capacity" -- the law said, something like, that people are "incapable" of deciding (and should have a guardian to decide for them) if they're unable to understand what the options are (what the choices are), and unable to understand the reasonably foreseeable consequences of the various options. It's a law designed to protect people who can't understand, who can't make an informed choice, and who need someone else to decide for them.

Since you're talking about relationships, to some extent, you might find the answer to this topic helpful -- Any authentic sutta from any tradition that gives guidance on what kind of partner to choose?

I am under such great duress right now

It sounds to me like "AI" is possibly something which you shouldn't be thinking about.

Partly because thoughts like that are not conducive to well-being.

And partly because it's a topic that is too easy to misunderstand.

The thought-process sounds to me to be tinged with a little paranoia -- "I'll be enslaved!".

I think that the medical/psychiatric understanding of paranoia is that it's a little too "self-referential" -- for example, like, "you're out to get 'me', so 'I' am being threatened, and 'my' freedom is at risk".

And I think that Buddhists too would recognise that -- excessive "I-making", "self-views" -- as a source of suffering.

Thoughts of AI seem to be a kind of "othering" -- definition:


  verb
  gerund or present participle: othering
  view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself.
  "a critique of the ways in which the elderly are othered by society"


Part of the implicit thinking is "AI is different from me" or "different from people", it is "other" -- and so it might seem threatening.

It might be better instead to think about what Buddhism says about "self-views", also about "kindness" and so on.