You’re right, as a consequence of the power of this new technology to change our life it poses a constant risk to fabric of society and our ability to understand facts about the world.
Discourse and culture are shaped by the structure of these social networks. Those structures are designed to the benefit of a dozen or so specific people. The amount of power that it gives them over all of society is not an amount of power that should be wielded by a private individual.
We wouldn’t let Oppenheimer have an arsenal of nuclear weapons because he was part of the team that invented The Bomb. We recognized, as a species, that this technology was too dangerous for anybody to have (even though we all thought we were the exceptions) and we tightly control access to this technology and stack all kinds of safeguards and checks on their usage as if our lives depend on it… because they do.
We can all see the power of controlling the perception and attention of society. We can see how discourse is shaken and manipulated for views and profit instead of for understanding and knowledge. We need to treat these technologies like they are dangerous cyber weapons. They need to be studied by professionals and the structure of these systems of discourse need to be set for the public good.
Just to head off the obvious attack angle. I don’t mean regulate speech, but the upvote system from Reddit is a terrible way to handle the ‘which comments should we show people’ problem. It’s also probably not a good idea to use machine learning to optimize ‘Engagement’ or other metrics when we know the outcome is that it drives content that creates fear, hatred, disgust and anger. A video recommendation algorithm that prioritizes views and comment engagement over anything else ends of amplifying the viewpoints of the most extreme opinions and this creates a false perception of consensus towards extremism. Allowing programs to advertise themselves as ‘News’ when they’re just ‘entertainment shows’ is about as harmful as letting companies claim their peanut butter is ‘allergen free’.
We’re in the wild wild west with an incredibly destructive technology being driven by a couple of dozen people who appear to have little empathy and a taste for power that may lead them into flying too close to the sun.
You’re right, as a consequence of the power of this new technology to change our life it poses a constant risk to fabric of society and our ability to understand facts about the world.
Discourse and culture are shaped by the structure of these social networks. Those structures are designed to the benefit of a dozen or so specific people. The amount of power that it gives them over all of society is not an amount of power that should be wielded by a private individual.
We wouldn’t let Oppenheimer have an arsenal of nuclear weapons because he was part of the team that invented The Bomb. We recognized, as a species, that this technology was too dangerous for anybody to have (even though we all thought we were the exceptions) and we tightly control access to this technology and stack all kinds of safeguards and checks on their usage as if our lives depend on it… because they do.
We can all see the power of controlling the perception and attention of society. We can see how discourse is shaken and manipulated for views and profit instead of for understanding and knowledge. We need to treat these technologies like they are dangerous cyber weapons. They need to be studied by professionals and the structure of these systems of discourse need to be set for the public good.
Just to head off the obvious attack angle. I don’t mean regulate speech, but the upvote system from Reddit is a terrible way to handle the ‘which comments should we show people’ problem. It’s also probably not a good idea to use machine learning to optimize ‘Engagement’ or other metrics when we know the outcome is that it drives content that creates fear, hatred, disgust and anger. A video recommendation algorithm that prioritizes views and comment engagement over anything else ends of amplifying the viewpoints of the most extreme opinions and this creates a false perception of consensus towards extremism. Allowing programs to advertise themselves as ‘News’ when they’re just ‘entertainment shows’ is about as harmful as letting companies claim their peanut butter is ‘allergen free’.
We’re in the wild wild west with an incredibly destructive technology being driven by a couple of dozen people who appear to have little empathy and a taste for power that may lead them into flying too close to the sun.