Where does choice enter into Buddhist practice?
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.