2-10-2020

Information overload

AI forces you to conform to existing ideas

AI must be trained to provide counter views as a feed

It will turn all to nervous wrecks.

Information is only as reliable as the people who are receiving it. If readers do not change or improve
their ability to seek out and identify reliable information sources, the information environment will
not improve.

Ignorance breeds frustration and ‘a growing fraction of the population has neither the skills nor the
native intelligence to master growing complexity’

In an era of social, democratized media, we’ve adopted a strange attitude. We’re simultaneously
skeptics and true believers. If a news story reaffirms what we already believe, it’s credible – but if it
rails against our beliefs, it’s fake. We apply that same logic to experts and sources quoted in stories.
With our limbic systems continuously engaged, we’re more likely to pay attention to stories that make
us want to fight, take flight or fill our social media accounts with links. As a result, there are strong
economic forces incentivizing the creation and spread of fake news. In the digital realm, attention is
currency. It’s good for democracy to stop the spread of misinformation, but it’s bad for business.

It is not in the interests of either the media or the internet giants who propagate information, nor of
governments, to create a climate in which information cannot be manipulated for political, social or
economic gain. Propaganda and the desire to distort truth for political and other ends have always
been with us and will adapt to any form of new media which allows open communication and
information flows.

Internet technologies permit anyone to publish anything. Any attempt to improve the veracity of news
must be done by some authority, and people don’t trust the same authorities, so they will ultimately
get the news that their preferred authority wants them to have. There is nothing to stop them choosing
an insane person as their authority.

Rogue regimes like Russia will continue exploiting the information environment to gain as much
power and influence as possible. Jurisdictional constraints will make intervention less practicable.
Also, whilst the overall information environment in English-speaking countries might improve due to
the employment of artificial intelligence and easier neutralization of bots, this may not necessarily be
the case for small nations in Europe where the environment is compartmented by language.

The information superhighway’s very speed and ease have made people sloppier thinkers, not more
discerning.
There will always be a demand for trusted information, and human creativity will continue to be
applied to create solutions to meet that demand. The careful optimist.