Below is my column in the New York Post on the call of Bill Gates to use Artificial Intelligence to combat “political polarization” on the Internet. It turns out the problem on the Internet is those pesky humans “who want to believe … things” that they should not. Enter the new AI Overlords to bring collective peace and tranquility through content assimilation.
Here is the column:
“We are the AI.” That Borg-like greeting could be coming soon to the internet in the form of new AI overlords. In a recent chilling interview, Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates called for the use of artificial intelligence to combat not just “digital misinformation” but “political polarization.”
He is only the latest to call for the use of either AI or algorithms to shape what people say or read on the internet. The danger of such a system is evident where free speech, like resistance, could become futile.
In an interview on a German program, “Handelsblatt Disrupt,” Gates calls for unleashing AI to stop certain views from being “magnified by digital channels.” The problem is that we allow “various conspiracy theories like QAnon or whatever to be blasted out by people who wanted to believe those things.”
Gates added that AI can combat “political polarization” by checking “confirmation bias.”
Confirmation bias is a term long used to describe the tendency of people to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms their own beliefs. It is now being used to dismiss those with opposing views as ignorant slobs dragging their knuckles across the internet — people endangering us all by failing to accept the logic behind policies on COVID, climate change or a host of other political issues.
This is not the first call for AI overlords to protect us from ourselves. Last September, Gates gave the keynote address at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy. He told his fellow billionaires that “polarization and lack of trust is a problem.”
The problem is again … well … people: “People seek simple solutions [and] the truth is kind of boring sometimes.”
Not AI, of course. That would supply the solutions. Otherwise, Gates suggested, we could all die: “Political polarization may bring it all to an end, we’re going to have a hung election and a civil war.”
Others have suggested a Brave New World where citizens will be carefully guided in what they read and see. Democratic leaders have called for a type of “enlightened algorithms” to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) objected that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.”
Warren blamed Amazon for failing to limit searches or choices: “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.” In her letter, Warren gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views.
Social media responded to such calls and engaged in widespread censorship of those who held opposing views of mask mandates, vaccine safety, school mandates, and the origin of COVID-19. Many of those criticisms and views are now acknowledged as plausible and legitimate, but scientists were banned and censored. There was no “polarization” allowed. The public never was allowed to have that full debate on social media because such views were declared disinformation.
President Biden joined in these calls for censorship, often sounding like a censor-in-chief, denouncing social media companies for “killing people” by not blocking enough. Recently, he expressed doubt that the public can “know the truth” without such censorship by “editors” in Big Tech.
They found an eager body of censors at companies like Twitter. After taking over as CEO, Parag Agrawal pledged to regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.” Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”
That view was echoed last week in the first hearing on Twitter’s censorship program. Former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on what she repeatedly called the “nuanced” standard used by her and her staff on censorship. She explained that they did not just balance free speech against public safety in deciding whether to allow someone to speak. Rather censorship depended on the persons involved: “Whose free expression are we protecting at the expense of whose safety and whose safety are we willing to allow to go the winds so that people can speak freely?”
All of that could be much easier with an AI Overlord that can protect us against our own doubts and divisions. Currently, Microsoft, the company Gates founded, uses NewsGuard, a self-described arbiter of misinformation, which rates sites and has been widely criticized for targeting conservative media.
Now, this work could be turned over to an AI Overlord. Of course, the intelligence remains artificial. A human has to program what is truth and what is intolerable “polarization.” It would be a ramped-up version of ChatGPT, the popular AI service that Microsoft just incorporated into its Bing search engine. It censors “offensive” content and bars certain viewpoints because it was told to do so.
AI enforces the collective truth that needs to be amplified for a greater good as determined by figures like Gates.
We are clearly not facing a giant menacing cube circling our planet (No, the Chinese balloons don’t count). Yet, after years of censorship, you would be forgiven if it all sounds chillingly similar to “Lower your shields and surrender … Resistance is futile.”
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and a professor at George Washington University Law School.
@Turley,
As someone who is in the data space, I can tell you that what Gates and others have proposed doesn’t work.
Will never work.
All it will do is impose the trained bias.
Gates should know this, however, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt because many in the field still don’t get it.
ChatGPT will crowd source an answer. There is no real way to test the veracity of the response.
So if 100 people say X, but then one person says Y… and Y is the correct answer… ChatGPT will ignore Y and will go with X.
Turley could do a thought experiment with his students and other law students around the country to show how this could happen.
(e.g. Create a fake case and have 100’s or 1000’s of student write about it expressing the same opinion. Then have Turley write an essay about the fictional case saying the reverse. )
-G
Gates is totally opposed to salacious commentary about his personal life which appears from time to time. E.g. his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. He doesn’t deny details that appear.. just refuses to talk about it. Another example — the questioning of his hypocrisy by flying private jet to meetings to promote a green world. He claims he is relieved of guilt because he does so much else. The identical theory of “indulgences” in the middle ages.
I would not doubt these irritations motivate him to ignore the free speech rights of everyone else.
Gates is a monopolist, posing as a humanitarian. Gates invested in “vaccines” where he called it one of the best returns on investment he’s ever made. Oh but he wants the world to believe he is some kind of humanitarian. He is not. He is often referred to around the world as “the Gates of Hell,” for good reason.
Computers is what Gates knows. The ‘surveillance under the skin,’ or implanted chip, that we hear being discussed at the WEF, is what I think they are experimenting with on us humans — by way of forced covid “vaccines.” I think Gates and Epstein were experimenting on humans in the creepy temple we see in the photos on Epstein island.
Above YouTube link is ‘Five Times August’ music video called ‘Gates Behind the Bars’ …..you have to be signed in to watch it.
Joining humans to the internet of things, or AI, is what the covid “vaccines” are attempting to accomplish, imo. Time to wake up and pay attention, people. Also, the supply chain issues are not solely the result of covid. It is planned. French pres. Macron said last year, “the time of abundance is over.” What he meant by that is, in part, the empty shelves we now regularly find in all our stores. This is to get people used to the convenience of buying on Amazon, etc, and no longer using cash. Convenience is the big carrot they are dangling before us in order to usher in a cashless society, thus giving the elite totalitarian control over us. Crazy conspiracy theory? Not if you are paying attention. This is why they want to censor the truth.
“Gates calls for unleashing AI to stop certain views from being ‘magnified by digital channels.’”
You, the unwashed masses, are incapable of independent judgment. You are too weak and pathetic to make your own decisions and guide your own life. Gates is the Philoropher King, with a special faculty for seeing the “truth.” He, with omnipotent powers, will protet you from yourselves.
Feel better, now?
Bill Gates — the same guy who wants us to eat bugs and fake meat, and walk to work. He’s the biggest land owner in the country. One wonders what he plans to do with all that farmland? Maybe he’ll make it a “Democrat sanctuary zone” after the revolution.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. Patrick Henry
If you wouldn’t accept an algorithm determining your security in other natural rights, then you have no legitimate argument to support AI censorship.
Another civil war, as suggested by Gates, is horrific to consider and exceedingly unlikely. If such a thing were to happen, however, it is important to note that the blue states are filled with Trump voters. In 2020, for example, California had more Trump voters than any state in South. New York had more Trump voters than any state in the South except two, barely falling short of the counts in Texas and Florida. It also might be wise for Gates to consider which side would be more capable and more motivated.
Miller,
I have stated on this blog before we must not go down the path of Civil War 2.0.
Not just for the fighting, but for the disruption it would cause to our Just In Time businesses system would fail. Millions would die in the first month if the trucking industry stopped.
If you were a trucker, would you willingly drive into a combat zone?
If you were a trucker, would you willingly drive into a combat zone?
In the immortal words of James Clapper: not wittingly.
Sounds horrific.
It is a revolting idea that there is a group of people who are so enthralled with their own sense of superiority that they believe they can make decisions for everyone, and have the financial and political muscle to do it. They are authoritarians in every sense of the word.
Gates is a perfect example of a person who had one good idea, then spent the rest of his life perfecting the Art of Being an A**hole.
Gates bullied using the leverage he had to gain more leverage. Windows is not that great of operating system. But GatesSuper power was building his market share until it so dominated that virtually all computers come with Windows or Apple operating systems.
Gates has burned $billions on bad decisions. Not sharpest knife in the drawer.
If the words “megalomaniac” and “dorkwad’ didn’t previously exist, they would have to be separately invented and then welded together to describe Gates.
@Ralph
That’s the thing, and not trying to sound like a know it all, but – he never even had the single good idea, unless you count reverse engineering someone else’s technology and then releasing his own version of their product as a good idea. He has been a complete shyster from the very beginning, and he is not a ‘rags to riches’ story. Microsoft didn’t really ‘invent’ anything either – they pilfered just shy of the line or bought other companies outright. He made a cheap knockoff of someone else’s product and did it with good timing, that’s it (Zuckerburg got lucky in a similar fashion, as did Google. Would have been fine if they had any ethics to speak of). Early versions of Windows were an exact mirror image of the Xerox/Mac OSes to avoid intellectual property issues (it’s why icons are on the left of the screen in Windows, recycling bin instead of trash can, etc.), and those early versions were absolutely terrible because they were reversed engineered on a code base that wasn’t designed for the implementation. Some of that spaghetti code lingered in Windows until fairly recently Later, Microsoft used its wealth to aggressively undercut their competition because they could afford to lose money as long as it took, and that is a strategy that much of that culture has adopted, rather than offering value for money. He hasn’t changed one bit over the years, I’ve at times thought he might even be a legitimate sociopath. If not, he sure does a good impression of one. All of these folks do.
Upvote, because I’ll take your word for it — all of it — since my knowledge of Gates’ “accomplishment(s)” is mostly reverse engineered, starting with his tremendous wealth, and working backwards — building on the assumption that there must’ve been a “good” idea in there somewhere — if “good” is defined as monetary success, similar to Edison, who didn’t actually invent that many of his own “inventions.”
I recall reading somewhere that Gates’ real success was hanging on to rights to Windows based upon Windows Updates, without which the government would have assumed ownship of whatever Gates “invented.” But that memory is sketchy, at best, and might not be accurate, as aside from the passage of time, I’m not generally into reading biographies. Gore Vidal’s Lincoln and Burr were the only two biographies that I recall enjoying. As for Gates: I’d probably prefer reading the biography of Pee Wee Herman (and wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be similar to Gates’ biography).
@Ralph
I owe you an apology, too – I ‘m sorry for the initial knee-jerk reaction. Yes, most of Gates’ success has been something along those lines. He happens to come from my own birth state of New Mexico, and his parents were *not* poor. The real innovation, even if it wasn’t profitable, was not happening at Microsoft in those days, indeed, it is not happening there now; they were just so omnipresent and let’s face it – rich – it was difficult for others to get a foothold, and for a very long time. This is not a new battle, just more public thanks to mobile technology that is in almost quite literally everyone’s hand. This includes AI – this is essentially automation, and it has been available in (formerly very expensive) pro applications for some time, did not used to be available for free on the web. Hence, the non-pro users are a bit shocked. Nevertheless, computer algorithms are nothing new, and the term ‘AI’ in its truest sense, is a misnomer and a canard. We are not dealing with HAL, and web 3.0, if anyone is familiar, is not actually a thing, just a concept, at this point, and the juice required to power something like quantum computing, which *might* make true AI a possibility in the sci-fi sense, is far, far out of reach. When someone like Musk warns of the dangers, he is referring to unethical human beings that will exploit what we *do* have to their benefit, not Star Trek level technology.
There are still the stalwarts that believe in free and open technology, though. I agree with the other technically minded posters here, AI is no panacea, is only as good as its programming, and if bias is there, then bias is what it will do. Algorithms do not ‘think’; they do what they are programmed to do, and it isn’t 21st century mysticism – all a hashtag is, is a way to perform a search inside a database (in that case, one generated by the community of users and whatever data the bots have sucked up. Used to be just a way to look things up inside databases). Breaking them is actually trivially easy given that the laws of mathematics upon which they are based are absolute. That does not help when the people pulling the strings are of a mindset like Gates and others and manipulate the code to adhere to their personal beliefs. Technology will never supplant the human brain, which can make decisions independently of its previously stored knowledge. We used to call this being human.
As with so many other human endeavors, technology requires a human compass to guide it, and that seems to be in limbo at present. Sorry for the length, but thank you for your reply.
I’ve at times thought he might even be a legitimate sociopath. If not, he sure does a good impression of one. All of these folks do.
James, I believe that to be a fair assessment. I would have to include narcissitic personality disorder. As for “all these folks;” those in the government are far more problematic. In retrospect, how much different would things be if they forfeited certain rights as private citizens when acting in their capacity as public servants? The first one that comes to mind for me is the presumption of innocence. So flip the script and they are assumed to be guilty until they can prove their innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“Narcissism is an exaggerated sense of self love while megalomania is an exaggerated sense of self worth based on fantasies of power, attractiveness and other physical or psychological attributes and, therfore, all megalomaniacs are narcissists, but not all narcissists are megalomaniacs.”
https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/8976/what-is-the-difference-between-megalomania-and-narcissism#:~:text=Narcissism%20is%20an%20exaggerated%20sense,not%20all%20narcissists%20are%20megalomaniacs.
I’ll stick with “megalomaniac” — which doesn’t disagree with your diagnosis of “narcissitic personality disorder,” but is more specific.
🤙
The real question is “Is Bill Gates the Borg Queen”, played so well originally by Alice Krige. What with all the gender fluidity of the day, one must ask the question. Bill Gates is quite a character, writes Ms-dos all those years ago then builds his empire on a GUI that he stole from Apple (who also appropriated it from Xerox). And we now have the all knowing Bill Gates of today. AI is still a program and reflects the biases of its programmers and it will think the way you tell it to think. He is an Ass and never exhibited the true Brilliance of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who created the tech world we now live in. For decades the most dreaded words in the computer world was a new “Windows Update”, guaranteed to suddenly hide your disc drives and remove access to your printers and be incompatible to half your equipment and vulnerable to all sorts of new viruses. And we should defer to his judgement on AI. I don’t think so!!!
For transparency I am a Mac Acolyte but I wrote programs that could work on Windows and Mac OS.
@GEB
Sounds like you are already familiar, but in a great, generational stroke of irony, the tech websites that are now nothing but leftist drones (not surprisingly, after many of them were bought by media companies) literally used to depict Gates in Photoshopped glory as a member of the Borg collective and regarded Microsoft as such; real geeks were Linux, UNIX, and/or Mac aficionados. Those were the days. The images are likely still floating around in an image search.
Very much agreed about Jobs, Woz, and a few of the other founders. There would not be a WWW as we know it without them.
GEB,
Linux user here.
@Upstate
There are definitely some very, very good Linux distros these days.
The smartphone has become an appliance, though – these days, very few of us seem to think about these things, and I loathe the fact that you can use Android and be spied upon by Google in every single app you use and every tiny action that you take, or hamstrung by Apple, though I think their model is better overall, personally. I have conjectured that if the modern smart phone had existed in the 90s (we had Blackberries then, or for the truly righteous, Newtons), the PC revolution of that time (Dell, Microsoft, et. al.) would never have happened, people just wanted access to the web, in whatever form. Had that been the case, people would have used their phone or their iPad like they use their blender – without a single thought, and indeed now, after generational exposure to these devices, they do. Those of us that understand the underpinnings – I don’t know what to tell anyone. Might as well try to explain the Rosetta Stone to someone that doesn’t understand that people couldn’t simply fire up an app in the past to decipher a foreign language. Additionally, we have technologies available freely on the web now that were not even possible so much as ten or fifteen years ago with basic HTML.
The same people that do stupid things on social media are going to do stupid things with all this stuff. It is where Sir Tim Berners Lee and his colleagues went wrong – the projection that everyone shared their ethics. They don’t, and not by a long shot. This is all very much a Pandora’s Box, IMO. We will have to bring it back with our humanity, or not at all.
James,
Well said.
Looking into Ubuntu Touch for my next smartphone.
Otherwise, my current one generally sits next to the radio most of the day. I like to think it is eating up gigbytes of Google data storage of classic rock. 😉
Pre-pandemic, the wife and I flew to Chicago for a small family reunion. Out of habit, I sat with my back to the subway wall, and kept watch for threats (OPSEC). What I noted was I was the only one who was not staring into a smartphone.
Even the panhandlers had smartphones.
Assume the impossible . . . what if an algorithm could be created that actually prevented, “political polarization” speech from being published. The entire WOKE, CRT, 1619 Project, BLM, ANTIFA, Congressional Black Caucus, the Pro Life Movement and dozens other far left hate groups would be silenced. Suddenly doesn’t sound like such a bad idea!
I heard a comment recently that these big companies, foundation, etc. are taking on the role of countries. They are so fast on their feet with money to burn. Our sloth like government doesn’t have a chance.
Bill Gates just said out loud what we all are afraid of.
Fascists always GAIN power by promising to protect you!
Today’s left and democrats are FULL Fascists…using government, media, banking, business, tech, education, healthcare, etc to destroy opponents.
Freedom…means FREEDOM of idea. Control of IDEAS is FASCISM!
Until the entire group from Obama and Hillary down are JAILED for the Russian Hoax…we know our government is run FOR DEMOCRATS
Also people need to be JAILED for protecting the Biden Crime Family for DECADES!
Elections should be 1 day, in person, with ID…
I don’t care if you vote
I care if you cheat!
If you replace the term, “Fascist” with “Communist” . . . I’d be 100% with ya Guy.
Ken9350: They’re both totalitarians, so it really doesn’t matter which term you use. The days of “purity” are over, and so US totalitarianism takes a little from both. I’m sure some clever historian in the future will find a clever name for today’s totalitarianism…but we still have to live through it.
Too bad Gates didn’t have AI in place to help him with his decision on whether or not it was a good idea to associate with Epstein. Not sure I want to trust Gates. Oh heck! I do know. I don’t trust the fool.
How do people who create one high quality product or service suddenly become an authority on every subject in the universe?
Is there an AI algorithm to censor extreme arrogance?
Is Gate’s good with this AI, when QuAnon is in charge setting the AI?
“inappropriate” and “unhealthy”. Rhetoric of a police state. They mean whatever the censor wants them to mean from day to day.
Gates ignores the bias that can be programmed into AI, why? Because he can influence it in his direction?
ChatGPT has been shown to be entirely woke. It’s a left wing ai.
We can laugh all we want now but when they install their left wing programming widely it won’t be funny then.
“Political polarization may bring it all to an end, we’re going to have a hung election and a civil war.”
Seems like ole gatesie has been prepping for such an “unfortunate” turn of events. Didn’t he predict the pandemic, too?
I see it less a civil war and more a French Revolution. When your leaders conspire with other nations counter to the interests of your own people…cutting those leaders down to size via guillotine seems entirely reasonable.
I’m sure gates and his psychopathic ilk (obamma, romney, and their string-pullers, WEF, etc) see more of a culling of the Kulaks on the horizon.
We’ll see how it turns out, but it is clear that the gateses of the world, really have no patience with opposing views (and of course, opposing moralities (read: morality)). These people became leaders not because they are leaders of people, but because they accumulated great wealth and were/are able to corrupt true leadership. Then you have their political counterparts, take lizzie warren, quoted in the article, how freaking hard is it to maintain a senate seat in MA as a democrat? You can literally murder someone and still be that person. She is a product of the kind of corruption the gateses promote. Apparently these people are good for us?
Seriously, how many people are going to willing rise-up behind a bill gates and fight their brothers?
Just another rich elitist, like Bloomberg, who have no skills of life. Ban them from everything AMERICANS!!!
“You will be AI’d – A(ss)I(milat)ed”
The Borg