Propaganda, Hate, Social Media and AI

Throughout history, propaganda and hate have existed. Is social media just a new vehicles for what’s always been there? Or is it different/worse, asks Yuval Noah Harari in Nexus.

 

Yes, he says, social media is different. Because what is seen/shown is determined by non-humans, i.e., algorithms. AI has only added fuel to that fire, but the problem was visible even before AI. Algorithms, for example, auto-play the next video in your feed. They decide what to show you based on what you’ve already liked and seen. They show more of content that provokes outrage and anger. Why? Not out of malice, but because they want to maximize the time you spend online (More time online = more ads = more money).

“In a completely free information fight, truth tends to lose.”

This is why Harari believes that more information doesn’t always lead to good outcomes. It was true up to a point – countries with free press were better than dictator-controlled news systems. But no more.

 

Over time, anything that got viewed was promoted by the social media algorithms. Fake news and conspiracy theories included. AI is the accelerant to this fire. Because it can create content, not just decide what to show you. Plus, AI’s can be told a goal and then left to figure out a way to achieve it (Unlike algorithms where the steps to achieve the goal have to be told). And AI’s have repeatedly shown that they can come up with new, unimaginable ways to achieve goals. Sometimes good, but more often with totally unintended side-effects.

 

Social media, writes Harari, creates new forms of “influence” peddling, never seen in history. Say a Uruguayan politician wants to promote digital transactions. Google, a provider of such a system, could offer that politician to show favourable writeups of the idea + the politician across all their apps – search, YouTube etc. They could also offer data on the preferences and tendencies of voters. In return, Google would be allowed to function without too many constraints to maximize their profits and declared the sole/preferred provider of digital solutions in Uruguay. See what’s new here? No money changes hands, just information (what to show, whom to show etc) exchanged for favourable policies. Most countries don’t even have laws to call out what is illegal in this imagined scenario. Equivalent scenarios are commonplace today.

“If we are indeed shifting from an economy dominated by money transactions to an economy dominated by information transactions, how should states react?”

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