Tag Archives: Manipulation

Trustworthiness

Limits of trustbuilding as policy objective

Yesterday, I attended a virtual event hosted by CIGI and ISPI entitled “Digital Technologies: Building Global Trust”. Some interesting points raised by the panel: the focus on datafication as the central aspect of the digital transformation, and the consequent need to concentrate on the norms, institutions, and emerging professions surrounding the practice of data (re-)use [Stefaan Verhulst, GovLab]; the importance of underlying human connections and behaviors as necessary trust markers [Andrew Wyckoff, OECD]; the distinction between content, data, competition, and physical infrastructure as flashpoints for trust in the technology sphere [Heidi Tworek, UBC]. Also, I learned about the OECD AI Principles (2019), which I had not run across before.

While the breadth of different sectoral interests and use-cases considered by the panel was significant, the framework for analysis (actionable policy solutions to boost trust) ended up being rather limiting. For instance, communal distrust of dominant narratives was considered only from the perspective of deficits of inclusivity (on the part of the authorities) or of digital literacy (on the part of the distrusters). Technical, policy fixes can be a reductive lens through which to see the problem of lack of trust: such an approach misses both the fundamental compulsion to trust that typically underlies the debate, and also the performative effects sought by public manifestations of distrust.

Trustworthiness

Bridle’s vision

Belatedly finished reading James Bridle’s book New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (Verso, 2018). As the title suggests, the text is systemically pessimist about the effect of new technologies on the sustainability of human wellbeing. Although the overall structure of the argument is at times clouded over by sudden twists in narrative and the sheer variety of anecdotes, there are many hidden gems. I very much enjoyed the idea, borrowed from Timothy Morton, of a hyperobject:

a thing that surrounds us, envelops and entangles us, but that is literally too big to see in its entirety. Mostly, we perceive hyperobjects through their influence on other things […] Because they are so close and yet so hard to see, they defy our ability to describe them rationally, and to master or overcome them in any traditional sense. Climate change is a hyperobject, but so is nuclear radiation, evolution, and the internet.

One of the main characteristics of hyperobjects is that we only ever perceive their imprints on other things, and thus to model the hyperobject requires vast amounts of computation. It can only be appreciated at the network level, made sensible through vast distributed systems of sensors, exabytes of data and computation, performed in time as well as space. Scientific record keeping thus becomes a form of extrasensory perception: a networked, communal, time-travelling knowledge making. (73)

Bridle has some thought-provoking ideas about possible responses to the dehumanizing forces of automation and algorithmic sorting, as well. Particularly captivating was his description of Gary Kasparov’s reaction to defeat at the hands of AI Deep Blue in 1997: the grandmaster proposed ‘Advanced Chess’ tournaments, pitting pairs of human and computer players, since such a pairing is superior to both human and machine players on their own. This type of ‘centaur strategy’ is not simply a winning one: it may, Bridle suggests, hold ethical insights on patways of human adaptation to an era of ubiquitous computation.

Surveillance and digital archives

Perspectives on data activism: Aventine secessions and sabotage

Interesting article in the MIT Tech Review (via /.) detailing research performed at Northwestern University (paper on ArXiv) on how potentially to leverage the power of collective action in order to counter pervasive data collection strategies by internet companies. Three such methods are discussed: data strikes (refusal to use data-invasive services), data poisoning (providing false and misleading data), and conscious data contribution (to privacy-respecting competitors).

Conscious data contribution and data strikes are relatively straightforward Aventine secessions, but depend decisively on the availability of alternative services (or the acceptability of degraded performance for the mobilized users on less-than-perfect substitutes).

The effectiveness of data poisoning, on the other hand, turns on the type of surveillance one is trying to stifle (as I have argued in I labirinti). If material efficacy is at stake, it can be decisive (e.g., faulty info can make a terrorist manhunt fail). Unsurprisingly, this type of strategic disinformation has featured in the plot of many works of fiction, both featuring and not featuring AIs. But if what’s at stake is the perception of efficacy, data poisoning is only an effective counterstrategy inasmuch as it destroys the legitimacy of the decisions made on the basis of the collected data (at what point, for instance, do advertisers stop working with Google because its database is irrevocably compromised?). In some cases of AI/ML adoption, in which the offloading of responsibility and the containment of costs are the foremost goals, there already is very broad tolerance for bias (i.e., faulty training data).

Hence in general the fix is not exclusively technical: political mobilization must be activated to cash in on the contradictions these data activism interventions bring to light.

Organizational behavior and reputation

Media manipulation convergence

Adam Satariano in the NYT reports on the latest instance of platform manipulation, this time by Chinese tech giant Huawei against unfavorable 5G legislation being considered in Belgium. There’s nothing particularly novel about the single pieces of the process: paid expert endorsement, amplified on social media by coordinated fake profiles, with the resultant appearance of virality adduced by the company as a sign of support in public opinion at large. If anything, it appears to have been rather crudely executed, leading to a fairly easy discovery by Graphika: from a pure PR cost-benefit standpoint, the blowback from the unmasking of this operation did much more damage to Huawei’s image than any benefit that might have accrued to the company had it not been exposed. However, the main take-away from the story is the adding of yet another data point to the process of convergence between traditional government-sponsored influence operations and corporate astroturfing ventures. Their questionable effectiveness notwithstanding, these sorts of interventions are becoming default, mainstream tools in the arsenal of all PR shops, whatever their principals’ aims. The fact that they also tend to erode an already fragile base of public trust suggests that at the aggregate level this may be a negative-sum game.

Domestic politics and elections

Turning the page on disinformation?

With the inauguration of a new Administration, speculation is rife on the chances of moving on from the more toxic aspects of the political media ecosystem of the past half decade. An op-ed by Rob Faris and Joan Donovan of the Shorenstein Center (Harvard Kennedy School) spells out these aspirations concretely: with Biden in the White House, conservative media such as Fox News have the opportunity to distance themselves decisively from the more fringe disinformation beliefs of the conservative base, and return political discussion to a debate of ideas rather than the reinforcement of antagonistic social realities. In their own words,

The only way out of this hole is to rediscover a collective understanding of reality and to reinstall the mechanisms of accountability in media where they are missing, to ensure that accuracy and objectivity are rewarded and disinformation is not given the space to metastasize.

I think there is good reason not to be particularly sanguine about these goals. Faris and Donovan’s proposed solutions read more as a restatement of the intractability of the problem. For one thing, their discussion is very top-down, focusing on what the upper echelons of the Republican Party, the conservative-leaning media, and their financial backers can do. The trouble with US political disinformation, I would argue, is that at this point in the cycle it is largely demand-driven: there is a strong appetite for it in the (GOP) electorate at large, to the point that one could speak of a general social antagonism in search of arguments. Hence, focusing on the infrastructure of production of disinformation is merely going to elicit creative responses, such as the flight to alternative social media platforms, which will be viable given the size, means, capabilities, and diversity of the public involved.

The alternative, however, is equally fraught. Focusing on the transformation of mass beliefs in order to discourage the demand for disinformation amounts, in essence, to a domestic ‘hearts and minds’ mission. The historical record for such attempts is hardly promising. The trouble, of course, is that political adversaries cannot at the same time be treated as respectable dissenters in the common task of running the commonwealth and also as fundamentally wrong in their factual beliefs: respecting and correcting struggle to coexist in the same interpersonal relationship.

One of the problems with such an approach is that it is incomplete to say that the US media ecosystem is fragmented and siloed:

Since its inception, conservative media in America has operated under different rules […] The outcome: a cleavage in the U.S. public sphere and a schism in the marketplace of ideas. The news media of the center and left, with all its flaws and faults, operates in a milieu in which fact checkers have influence and the standards and practices of objectivity and accuracy still hold sway.

In other words, conservatives have largely seceded from the traditional, 20th-century unified media sphere of print and broadcast outlets, toward a smaller, insular, homogeneous but culturally dominated one of their own. The rump ‘mainstream media’ has maintained its old ‘fourth estate’ ethos, but not its bipartisan audience. Hence, its loss of cross-party authoritativeness.

The accountability void created by this partisan segregation of US public opinion offers concrete inducements to ambitious populist politicians, which will prove hard to resist. The belief that the system contains self-correcting mechanisms appears ill-founded. Yet, it is unclear that the current administration has the stomach for the protracted effort necessary to change mass beliefs, or that it would be supported consistently by external power centers, especially in the business community, in doing so.