Why Computable Reality Fragments Consensus Reality
Some real thoughts on fake news...
I was recently asked by a reporter why fake news is on the rise and what AI has to do with it. Also, he asked what will happen in the 2024 Presidential Election. Here’s my answer:
I think the 2024 Presidential Election will not be mildly, but rather it will be WILDLY influenced by AI generated content. I think that as generative AI meets cheap deep fake this will be the first presidential election with lots of little movies, fake speeches, composite “false flag” operations and the social media geniuses who are entrenched in all modern campaigns will take us to new places. Deep fakes will be made as controversial and interesting as possible so they will be carried on the “real” news — because they are so popular. No need to repeat here the reasons/speculations we, as a species, react more strongly to the negative than the positive (e.g. helped us survive, etc, etc.). Ironically, a negative story about fake news is like Jolt Cola — twice the caffeine, twice the sugar — on the negative dimension.
The reasons fake news is a problem today I think has at least three fundamental reasons. The first is the long term trust in institutions has been on a 40+ year slide. This trend had lots of “punctuation points”. A recently deceased friend of mine professor Marvin Zonis ex of U Chicago believed that rage comes from being humiliated and America’s sense of itself has been humiliated a number of times in the recent decades: the internet bubble, 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — widely seen as failures for a country that “Never lost a war” (I know Vietnam, Korea?). China’s rise, financial melt down, Bush/Gore contested election, Biden/Trump contested election. All hugely embarrassing blows. Add Justice Thomas’s “down home” luxury RV, jet rides, yacht jaunts, free home for his mother, free tuition for his nephew, etc., etc. and Justice Robert’s Alfred E. Newman, “What me worry?”, response, and it’s no wonder it feels like a lot of fakery going around. Last but not least, climate change will bring out (is bringing out?) a new breed of anti-scientific Luddite-ism that will swamp Ned Ludd’s wildest dreams of influence. The broad attack on scientific reasoning is only beginning and this is part and parcel of computable reality breaking apart consensus reality — more below.
The second major trend has been widely cited too: we live in our own thought bubbles/echo chambers. However, I think there’s an even deeper thing going on here which is as reality becomes more “computable” by AI, AR/VR, Social Media, etc. it puts a strain on “consensus reality”. Social media creates a computational model of individual and social cognition. Add generative AI and we now have cheap, easy access to the operating system of civilization — e.g. dialog and story (see Harari). Put another way, the bedrock of civilization and all its instruments (law, politics, religion, etc.) runs on dialog and stories. Now, we have tools that allow people to bring at scale attacks on the very foundation of our collective belief in society. Moreover, the visual, audio, motion, verbal quality of these new mega-memes will be as different from today’s media as Soviet TV was from TikTok. Hyper-segmentation enables precision messaging on the most amygdala driven issues which is they way modern political “coalitions” can be collected. Pepsi has to drive an increase in over 30 brands to replace a 1% decrease in Mountain Dew sales. This is also largely true of politics and drives even more fragmentation.
Last but not least, the doyens of dopamine have their hands on the tillers of some of the world’s most powerful and valuable firms. It is worth remembering the scale of this corporate power. The capitalization of the entire French stock market is just under $4T. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/france/market-capitalization As of today, MSFT is $2.41T, GOOGL $1.66T (e.g. Two firms = France. A pause-worthy factoid...) Even Andrew Carnegie, who sold US Steel for 1.5% of the US GDP would be jealous. Miles Everson and I wrote an article on the bionic organization (six months before BCG) https://www.strategy-business.com/article/The-Bionic-Company In it we argue that there are three new forms of capital. The old ones are: labor, money, resources. The new ones are behavior, cognition and network. FB, GOOGL, AMZN, and parts of MSFT (maybe only a Trillion worth) are built on these new forms of capital. Anti-trust is asleep. Heck, Clinton stopped even collecting concentration ratio data. So, these big firms have wide lanes of power. And they have masses of behavioral, network and cognitive capital which are the steam engine, dynamite, and structural steel of fake news. It’s old news that FB makes money on dwell time, not truth.
In terms of AI’s role to help? I think one future might be that we will evolve co-pilots to digest, summarize, create and serve news. We are now in dialog with our silicon partners. (BTW I don’t think machines are conscious, nor a fundamental threat — except for how humans use them to hurt other humans — which can be really dangerous.) See https://johnsviokla.substack.com/p/what-does-it-mean-to-be-in-dialog. AI won’t be able to tell “truth” from “fake” because the fakery will always improve, and fast. However, we may have our own “silicon angels” sitting on our shoulders whispering to us what to believe and not believe, and that will be part of our ever more fragmented sense of collective reality. Who knows... One thing I’m sure of, we are in for a rocky ride.
I am optimistic that the teeming innovation cauldron of generative AI tools and augmentations will empower self organizing citizens to create new ways to vet facts versus fiction. Little steps like verification on LinkedIn with Clear is a step in the right direction because personal accountability is a critical step in cyber civility. Also, if we begin a new conversation about the nature of property in cyberspace I think that a combination of blockchain and multi-factor authentication could enable access to cognitive, behavioral and network capital in new ways. Perhaps we can create a new set of “community banks” and “shared stock companies” that can unlock the potential of these new capabilities in a more decentralized and democratic (or at least decentralized) way, as did the create of the shared stock companies of old. These in turn may help fight fakes and fakery as part of their commercial goals and customer benefit. As the old saying goes, let’s not waste a crisis… Thoughts, disagreements and commentary always welcome.