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Artificial Intelligence

Over fifty years ago I was working with others on a large computer system. Access to the system was through a terminal and keyboard. As a practical joke on one of the guys we changed the error message in the code to read “It must have been Joe who typed in that messed up message” When Joe sat at the terminal he eventually got a keystroke wrong and the message came up. He knew that it was not the computer that was teasing him.

Technology has advanced in the last fifty years. Now it is routine for people to talk to their cell phones and receive information. Since what is heard is usually taken as truth, those who control what is said have unprecedented power. Joe knew that it wasn’t the computer that was giving him a hard time. However today most people have no idea that the thing talking to them is constructed and programmed in a similar way.

In the past in order to manipulate someone through lying you had to actually talk to them. With mass media came opportunities like advertising which could be used to sway large numbers of people in whatever direction one wanted. However, advertising campaigns were limited in their effectiveness because a single message may not be as effective for everyone in a group. With microchips capable of synthesizing the human voice, the effectiveness of person to person lying can now be more fully simulated.

The effectiveness of a lie is in proportion to the trust one person gives another. Most people trust the information they get from a search engine or web site that always seems to be helpful. The trope of a country bumpkin being robbed in a visit to the big city has an application here. Being unaware of potential harm makes one vulnerable. Many people rely on physical “tells’ that can raise suspicion of lying or misleading communication. These are absent with AI.

There are additional vulnerabilities as each of us has peculiar idiosyncracies that are deduced from the searches and inquiries we make. These are accumulated to build a model of us more in depth than a best friend would know. The obvious use of this information is targeted advertising as we can be moved in directions that will profit others. However, as many companies have shown themselves aggressive advocates for various political and social issues, it should be expected that those who control access to information will do so in a way that achieves their objectives. Customers become simply pawns to be manipulated to achieve desired outcomes.

In primitive societies a priestly class would arise that would declare the favor or disfavor of the gods. It was an interesting scam in that even if they made predictions that did not come true, they could blame the people for having made some failure. In this way whatever they said could be managed. These “priests” could live labor free off the productivity of those they manipulated. Manipulation was achieved by control of what people thought was true.

As a society we have already come to the point where a high percentage of the population actually believes men can become women and women can become men. This is a populace primed to be told what is true by machines programmed to lead the gullible. The solution is real truth which is getting increasingly hard to find.

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