Why AI can destroy democracy (and what we can do about it)
#421
Friend of Democracy,
If people are increasingly turning to AI for information, and if AI companies continue not to pay those who collect, evaluate, and publish Information, then, sooner or later, there will be no solid information anymore.
Simply because trustworthy information will no longer be produced. Can’t be produced anymore. Because there is no one to pay for.
(By the way, the problem is exacerbated by social media platforms. Because the algorithm there is optimised to keep people coming back for more, consumers no longer go directly to news sites.)
So AI is killing trustworthy information; it systematically produces more disinformation and less truth.
This is how the market works today.
The winners: Digital platforms, as well as the misinformation producers that flood the internet with cheap AI-generated content and profit from engagement.
The losers: Quality news, public-interest journalism, and the public that depends on them.
But democracy needs informed citizens, right?
So what to do?
We have to change the rules of the market.
As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his Columbia University colleague Maxim Ventura-Bolet have written in a paper called (The impact of AI and digital platforms on the information ecosystem) we don’t have to accept this situation.
But: The market will not self-correct because nobody is incentivised to act differently.
Only government intervention can stop the downward spiral.
Stiglitz and Ventura-Bolet argue that this should include
regulated platform accountability for content amplification,
enforced obligations to address coordinated disinformation campaigns, and
intellectual-property protection for news producers.
Today, the information landscape is becoming increasingly polluted, fragmented, and manipulative.
This is the bad news.
The good news: We can change for the better. With better rules for information markets.
Some will warn against interventions in free markets. Others simply term such helpful regulations a social market economy.
See you in democracy,
Johannes Eber
If you don’t want to read the Stiglitz & Ventura-Bolet paper, Meg Tapia has written about the paper here. Tapia is the managing director of the national security consulting firm Novexus and an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.
Given the far reaching impact of AI on society it may be the generational task to separate the AI wheat from the chaff. Tremendous advantages come in one package with equally tremendous risks.
Last semester I had enrolled in a class titled "The Ethics of AI" at the Munich university (LMU). The class has been offered by the faculty of philosophy. Very interesting!
One day I sat next to a gentleman who had enrolled in a class on the same topic the year before at the Munich Technical University (TUM). It had been offered by the faculty of information science.
His statement: Two completely different approaches, two completely different perspectives.
Why am I writing this? We have yet a long way to go to understand how AI will influence our society, what the net impact will be. And as usual in fast moving developments like this, regulators certainly will be vastly outrun by the speed of AI development.
In addition we don't only have to deal with the pros and cons of AI technology alone. We also have to deal with the tremendous power the owners and makers of this technology are accumulating. By setting the parameters of their technology as well as by employing the staggering wealth they are earning and using to influence the flow of events and our lifes (beyond any democratic control).