Democracy is in peril
"Democracy is in peril" these are words I read in a tweet recently. But, that's nothing new right? I mean, someone's always trying to "grab control" somewhere and when they do the people will rise up in mass protests or band together and fight a war, right? Well, maybe, maybe not and maybe even if the people want to they wont be able to. It's this last possibility that worries me the most. This is because technology enables change and advancing technology accelerates the pace of change. We're moving into a period of history where the acceleration of change is now heading into the "exponential" part of the curve where even the "cool kids" are getting worried.
What worries me is the disruption and corruption of democracy at scale and pace enabled by technology in a way where traditional responses fail spectacularly. For example QAnon emerged in 2017 and four years later various QAnon-affiliated protesters participated in the storming of the United States Capitol. QAnon is a conspiracy theory amplified through the use of social media. What if QAnon, was not just amplified by social media, but also accelerated by, oh I don't know, maybe AI, where machine learning algorithms that can impersonate the style of speech of specific individuals or groups are used to create a far more credible and believable back-story, supported by "actual" (AI generated) photographic and other media (e.g. a fake audio recording) evidence? The answer is a conspiracy theory that is more mainstream, with wider reach, disrupting more lives and institutions faster and more effectively than ever before.
Technological change is creating challenges for democracy, let's respond to those challenges not by trying to halt or slow the pace of change but by using technology to strengthen, preserve and adapt democracy to technological change. For example, we could try increasing democratic engagement by mimicking the way social media works. Share updates about laws being discussed and problems governments are facing on a kind of "Government social media platform" where people can comment, like and dislike. Follow Wikipedia's example for a way to bring people together to share their ideas and crowd-source policy creation. Platforms like Slashdot have a "mod points" system to moderate up or down comments thereby highlighting the "informative", "interesting" or "funny" comments, a similar system could be implemented to find and lift a good idea to prominence. Developers use "version control" software to track changes in code through features like branching, merging and pull requests, allowing developers to easily see who made the change, why the change was made and what the difference between the existing code and the changed code is. Adopting a similar approach for tracking law making it possible for individuals to see who changed the law, why the law was changed and what the difference between the existing law and changed law is.
Ultimately, democracy is under attack from multiple sources and to survive the democratic process must become stronger requiring greater transparency, less corruption and more trust. Technology offers a way to accomplish these changes and since many of the threats to democracy are technology borne it makes sense to "fight fire with fire" and use technology to strengthen democracy.
ReplyDelete'Democracy' has been in peril for many, many years, nothing new as you say.
The best indication of the urgency, is the "Cool Kids", being so concerned.
A bit late for them though as they have been prominent among the 'enablers', and have not been prominent with their concerns until now!
From my perspective , you have captured the danger and immediacy, of the exponential rise of AI in the area of Public Policy and discussion.
AI will make current corruption, distortion and mis-information look mild as you indicate.
Most people think in a linear fashion, and cannot get their heads around exponential change.
A good example is the recent Bank failures, funds exit in a matter of hours, not days or weeks, and Regulators were totally unprepared for that.
Politically the malign influences of State Actors, and private 'Influencers' have already been several moves ahead of the mainstream.
I fully agree that such disruptive technology as ChatGPT will only put these issues on steroids+++ (Exponentially)
I previously believed that the most urgent issues our Earth and it's Human population faced were Environmental Catastrophe and Nuclear Catastrophe.
Without careful,and urgent action in trying to manage this exponentially developing technology,
we will find ourselves in even worse peril than we already are.
Have we sown one more seed of our eventual destruction?
The the rate of technological developments in warfare is already very alarming, and that is only what we know publicly.
You have outlined the problem, and proposed a pathway for solutions.
Whilst not being knowledgeable about the Technology for the solutions, your broad strategy seems pretty valid.
Hope you can get some informed feedback, and get a conversation going.
The need to act is urgent, and requires sound thinking, good-will and cooperation, applied with wisdom.
There are many who would be willing and able to act, but they will need an Event, Idea , or Person to act as both a Catalyst and Focus.
As old as I am, I still maintain hope and optimism mixed with infrequent despair.
Much strength to you and your Blog and Ideas.
I hope you can be part if a very wide community for 'Rescue of Society'.