Media channels sharpen society’s tribal cleavages – thus eroding governance – by making news reporting an exercise in judging.
While AI adoption poses grave dangers, it also has much potential to overcome systemic risks stemming from widespread governance shortcomings. Many educators, journalists and social media platforms encourage people to criticise while seeking to validate shared biases. AI can counter how this leads to challenges being depicted in ways which deprioritise understanding and solving.
Experts can, on rare occasions, enshrine democratic values within a constitution. Conversely, elites pursuing power by corrupting institutions has become an everyday ritual. Organising protests and influencing elections is easy when citizens favour having their biases validated over becoming well informed. The effectiveness of governments is now routinely eroded through public discourse being framed around oppressor-versus-oppressed narratives.
While reasoning and communication skills led to our becoming the dominant species, like other great apes, humans are highly emotional and we seek to form packs. As recently as two hundred years ago, nearly 90% of people were extremely poor. Life for humans, like other species, was defined by survival pressures. Today, with less than 10% of the global population being extremely poor, our concerns are shaped by algorithms.
Many older people still presume legacy media outlets seek to be non-partisan. Meanwhile, billions of people are easy to manipulate because they spend so much time scrolling. The what, when and how of displaying ads is not random. We willingly reveal our buying interests and prior to displaying a targeted ad, the algorithms of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube deliver videos to stir our emotions – cortisol spikes – followed by soothing videos thus pre-conditioning our receptivity for a product we have been craving. Political messaging follows similar patterns.
The paucity of non-partisan news outlets lowers the bar for manipulating public opinion. The term “infotainment” speaks to how news organisations today must compete for the attention of viewers. And notwithstanding subscribers to publications catering to business people and investors wanting unbiased reporting to inform their decisions, it is easy to spot political biases on the pages of titles no less renowned than the Economist or the Financial Times.
A Cold War that pitted Marxists against proponents of classical liberal values dominated the geopolitics of the last half of the last century. In the real world of global politics and economics, the Marxists were decisively defeated. Meanwhile, the elites who control key institutions across the West embraced Marxist beliefs repackaged using postmodern cynicism to create woke-styled culture clubs. The “long march through the institutions” resembles a conspiracy “theory” yet it is exceptionally well documented.
The idea, spawned in the 1960s, was that leftist intellectuals should seek domination of elite institutions, particularly in education, media and entertainment. Their broad successes were then amplified when the internet disrupted the news reporting landscape leading to most people gravitating to sources aligned with their biases.
While targeting those who share their political biases, news outlets lure them with headlines which invite them to judge. As the news item is then reported in ways that validate their shared biases, it validates the viewer in ways which become addictive. This is very different from seeking to inform and expand understanding in a non-partisan manner.
Are societies, in the aftermath of COVID, better prepared to deal with biological threats? The correct response to a severe biological threat could be aggressive restrictions of social activities, that is, a lockdown, and mandatory vaccinations. Alternatively, the pursuit of herd immunity despite very high death rates among certain demographic groups – whose members could vaccinate and self-isolate – might be better justified. The facts and options need to be rationally assessed.
COVID was a serious public health challenge yet almost all societies managed it poorly. What is even more disturbing is that if a far more fatal and contagious outbreak were to threaten the world tomorrow, the response of most societies would probably reflect political factions being polarised to the point of inducing irrational government decisions. It is not unreasonable to expect AI to lead to our becoming a more rational species.
Nuclear war features prominently on lists of scenarios leading to humanity’s collapse. Yet many influential voices publicly support Ukraine continuing to attack targets in and around Moscow and St Petersburg. That could cause Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to end the war on terms favourable to Ukraine. Such thinking is consistent with focusing on best-case outcomes that support left-leaning biases while ignoring major risks – such as a nuclear war.
It is vastly less risky to try to entice Putin with economic incentives. However, such efforts elicit sharp criticisms from those whose news sources routinely contrast practical solutions with ideal – that is, unrealistic – outcomes. Instead, they react positively to articles pillorying Putin as a war criminal as this validates their perceived virtuousness. If news reporting became much less of an emotion-inducing exercise due to AI routinely providing rational and balanced perspectives, would this not make the world safer?
Also high on the list of existential risks to humanity are highly contagious deadly pathogens – whether developed in a lab to be weaponised or emerging naturally. Had COVID been delayed by, say, five or ten years, it is reasonable to presume that people being conditioned to use AI to fact-check claims would result in societies reacting more rationally and people becoming better able to assess response options.
It is not however clear how broadly or rapidly AI will condition people to routinely fact-check questionable claims or to get up to speed on key background considerations. Among the underlying factors that benefited ‘the long march through the institutions’ is that it is far easier to judge than to seek understanding.
Climate activists have wanted us to believe global warming is the greatest risk to humanity. While their concerns are not unfounded, their credibility has suffered due to nuclear power being rejected by so many of them. As AI data centres are now leading to much greater acceptance of nuclear power, climate activism looks more like a vehicle to pursue political power not unlike efforts to cancel opposition voices – particularly in key institutions.
We can currently employ an AI model to learn about all the interconnections and rivalries among countries in the Middle East. Within less than five minutes it becomes obvious that mainstream reporting on fighting in the region provides the most superficial of background summaries. More humility and less of a rush to judge would be helpful – and AI can help us to evolve in that direction.
As we face far weaker survival pressures than prior generations, we must find a way to offset the resulting willingness to collectively indulge dangerous biases. Rather than being a threat to humanity, AI could – and should – provide the information guardrails we need to navigate tomorrow’s challenges.
[Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AI_Artificial_Intelligence_concept_%2852917075159%29.jpg]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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