There is a massive and growing AI influence in media and social media.
AI is behind every search request and query on your favorite search engine. In the social networks AI governs what you get to see and what not!
These intelligent algorithms constantly analyze what you click on, how long you stay on a certain post, what you like, what you reblog or retweet and of course what you share.
Based on this analysis your “personalized” feed is generated and ads are selected that you are exposed to with high probability that these fit your profile.
But there are even bigger problems with this.
You heard about “fake news” for instance right?
The trading with our data has become a big business meanwhile. You with your data are a commodity! IT businesses have moved up into the list of the top 10 the most valuable companies worldwide.
Here you’ll find especially media, social media, communications, online merchants and search engine providers.
Others in that space seem to have missed this trend, IBM for instance.
Facebook, Youtube and Twitter have changed the media landscape dramatically. What is the significance of AI powered algorithms in the spreading of information and fake news for this matter?
A team of scientists in Boston has analyzed the spreading of fake news.
Prof. Sinan Aral with the Sloan Management School MIT has publicized the biggest study on the matter of fake news that was published in Science Magazine.
He explains this along these lines...
While information is abundant consciousness is a scarce resource. There’s so much Information out there that we simply can’t process/handle. The social media platforms “help us” to sort and prioritize this information. They decide on what we get to see and what not! There are intelligent algorithms that decide on what you’ll be shown at first, second or third place and what is shown at all and of course what you’ll never see. Not everyone sees the same information. It’s simply not the case that every piece of information is shown to everyone.
But by which criteria are these smart algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube programmed?
The coders that write those algorithms orient themselves by the business targets of the companies they are working for.
These business targets of course abide to an economical model that is built to ensure user loyalty and user engagement. The more intense the platform is used by the users the more opportunities are there to show advertisements to them and the more money the company makes.
But the second important thing they pursue is to learn as much as possible about their users. The more intense you use a platform the more they learn about you, the user and all that you like to individual tailor the advertisements shown to you.
User engagement is key to the economic success of the social media industrial complex!
Good thing for them… the daily internet usage rises worldwide!
We are talking numbers here that range from 3-4 hours a day up to 6 hours a day for younger people (Western and some Asian societies).
Things that are exiting, things that are novel, that are surprising, things that possibly are shocking… generate more user engagement are clicked oftener, read, liked and shared again.
These things boost the user engagement so the models by which the AI powered selection of feed to you are built on reflects that.
What can happen with “fake news” is impressively shown in the following case.
Japan and cervical cancer induced by HPV …
Not too long ago a bunch of videos went viral showing women that were allegedly victims of side effects of an HPV prevention vaccination. Shortly after unreviewed “scientific” reports start showing up in the internet. Both is picked up by television even which triggers an unprecedented wave of anti -vaccination behavior in Japan.
The anti HPV vaccination rate drops from over 70% in 2013 to under 1% (!!!) in 2015 (Source “Nature”).
How can it be that triggered by false information an industry nation like Japan refuses a worldwide accepted, and known to be effective in preventing cervical cancer, vaccination?
Let’s look at Ricu Muranaka (medical doctor and publicist). She, being an md, she tried be rising awareness to counter the anti-vaccination hysteria and made herself a target by doing so.
She was harshly attacked personally in the social media when she wrote about the safeness and effectiveness of the HPV vaccination. They even threatened her and her family by sending blackmail messages to her or her family.
But she didn’t stop. She fact checked the information of those opposing vaccination and verified the scientific methods of regarding experiments and published her findings in a book.
After the book was published a storm of indignation broke loose. She decided to lay low for a while and disabled her twitter account (
).https://twitter.com/rikomrnk/status/908470939163156480
- rikomrnk
But when she received the John Maddox prize in 2017 her story/book was even a twitter trend in Japan.
[SRC](John Maddox prize 2017]
But even that didn’t change the opinion of vaccination opposer's in Japan.
Even the fact that many renowned scientists and medical experts agreed with her findings did not change anything in terms of the HPV vaccination rate in Japan.
She loses the fight against fake news and HPV vaccine misinformation.
More information and background on this...
https://www.skeptical-science.com/people/the-2017-john-maddox-prize-winner-riko-muranaka/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/30/doctor-wins-2017-john-maddox-prize-countering-hpv-vaccine-misinformation-riko-muranaka
https://www.immunology.org/news/vaccine-campaigner-wins-john-maddox-prize
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7gq6e1/doctor_wins_2017_john_maddox_prize_for_countering/
They accused her of being biased because my information was allegedly wrong and that she tried to hide “the truth” to mislead society.
But it’s the other way around, she tells the truth and the opposers accuse her of lying/hiding the truth.
WHO sees vaccination opposers as a worldwide threat (vaccine hesitancy)!
In Japan there will be at least 3,000 women deaths yearly from cervical cancer because they’ve resisted an HPV vaccination.
Fake news has fatal consequences!
False news/fake news move/spread with light speed through our digital societies while the truth slowly like an syrup moves from person to person.
The spread of fake news (correct information blue, false information orange). No one has researched the spreading of news in twitter to such degree of accurateness like Sinan Aral.
His findings…
- False news spreads further, wider and deeper than correct information.
- Sometimes the difference between false and correct information was that false information spread 10 times more than correct information.
- This is especially true for political news.
- This was the most viral category of any they’ve looked at.
Fake news has changed the worldwide political culture dramatically.
Social media with their intelligent AI powered algorithms amplify the division of our societies.
They are campaigning for our attention and engagement. They feed us with exactly the information that we like. What really counts are click rates, quotas and retention period and not the truthfulness of a message!
This manipulated communication/information divides our society.
Social networks exactly profile every user depending on what he clicks, sees and reads.
Who is profiled into the “red group” in this example will increasingly see information that fit the “red profile”. This way over time a filter bubble forms.
Everyone lives in his network, his filter bubble.
The own opinion is confirmed and reflected by like minded people the arguments of others won’t come through anymore they simply won’t be seen.
These filter bubbles are poison for a democracy because she needs the open discourse and exchange of opinions.
But the AI powered “excitement management” destroys this open discourse and wide interacting with each other.
What’s left of the “we” when these algorithms prevent pluralism and opinion diversity?
Some public legally broadcasting institutions still abide to pluralism commanded. But if you try to impose things like that to modern social media your fighting on a lost post.
Everybody hates filter bubbles but if the own filter bubble is touched the indignation is unbearable.
Look at the before used example of vaccination opposers. If pluralism and open discourse would be enforced you would, as a vaccination opposer, also see a post or message in support of vaccination and the other way around as well.
Media should mirror our societies but AI powered algorithms distort our opinion making process.
My two Satoshis on this again...
Maybe media is too important to just leave this to profiteers!?
This all gets topped out by other lingering issues with the information flood and targeted feeds like freedom of speech, censorship and so on.
Imagine what you can do if your one of these powerful social media oligarchs that has these technological powers at his fingertips. Maybe push your own agenda a "little" and influence public opinion in favor of your political beliefs and simply widen your reach and power...
Seems not to be too far fetched, right?
After all, you became so rich and powerful because you are smarter then the rest of us so you probably know what's best for all and yourself of course.
Anyways, it's powerful and manipulative what these AI powered algorithms can do for public opinion making, your likes and dislikes and your shopping of course.
Orwell's dystopian 1984 seems almost like child play compared to these technological possibilities.
It is in fact like weaponized media and propaganda.
Articles in this series so far:
AI in the now... China, "security" and "efficiency" vs individual freedom?
AI in the now… autonomous driving cars… status quo... ethics?
Idea, credits...
I've been researching in this field out of pure curiosity for the last years with some, not much, effort.
I've read a lot of different papers from researchers/universities all over the world for ongoing research in AI.
Because of a lot points of contact to my day job in information security I also always try to look at this from an infosec/opsec/privacy perspective.
BTW...
I've found a recent documentation about this field from Ranga Yogeshwar and the German public broadcasting service NDR very interesting and balanced.
I picked up their red thread for this series of articles.
Here the links to their 2 part documentary (in German):
Künstliche Intelligenz und die Veränderungen im Alltag (1/2) | Doku | ND... 
Künstliche Intelligenz und die Veränderungen in der Gesellschaft (2/2) |... 
Please let me know what you think about this in the comments or in an tweet reply!
Gif from my friend https://twitter.com/smilinglllama!