Quote of the Day

I became a journalist because information is power. And now the very structure of our information ecosystem is corrupted from the top. When a lie spreads faster than a fact, when you say a lie a million times, and it becomes a fact, people cannot tell fact from fiction.

And that’s what we have seen all around the world. It is what’s weakened democracies in many countries around the world. And you just look at the decline of democracy. [The] V-Dem [Institute] in Sweden said that, last year 60 percent of the world was under authoritarian rule. This January, that number went up to 72 percent.

And when we look at the elections coming up, if you don’t have integrity of facts, you cannot have integrity of elections.

. . . Ironically, China, which is far from democratic, has put guardrails in place around [the development of A.I. technology and on] their large language models [LLMs]. . . . And while America says that [it is too], remember these companies are driven by profit. Surveillance capitalism was the first contact with A.I. Large language models will have the ability to mimic you. It mimics humanity. And when that happens, it also doesn’t tell you it lies.

It looks for patterns. It doesn’t necessarily find meaning. That’s what we have lost here. And if you look at the two ways A.I. have touched us, the first time it exploited our fear, anger and hate. This second time, with large language models, with ChatGPT, with Bard, with all the different ones that are rolling out, it looks set to weaponize our loneliness.

More the question you should ask is, why did China put guardrails in place? Why didn’t America? . . . [The answer is] profit. Frankly, it isn’t an argument about innovation.

It’s like saying, oh, we should test the COVID vaccine in real time on real people. Before that was rolled out, it was tested, and we were assured of safety. You think about it like this, right? The social media that is in your pocket, in your cell phone, a toaster has more safety regulations to fulfill before it can get inside your home.

And this, you carry with you all the time, collecting data on everything you do, right? So . . . are you going to allow the LLMs to scoop up all your content? These are all questions that we have, and yet it’s been rolled out into the public. It’s like rolling out COVID vaccines without testing.

– Maria Ressa
From “Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa on Defending Truth
and the Danger of A.I. in the Wrong Hands”
PBS Newshour
October 6, 2023

Related Off-site Links:
AI: Profit vs. Freedom – Richard D. Wolff (CounterPunch, September 25, 2023).
AI Appropriated My Books. Someone Will Profit, But It Won’t Be Me – Karen Stabiner (Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2023).
How Artificial Intelligence Is Mining My Body and Thoughts for Profit – Heather Mallick (Toronto Star, October 2, 2023).
Global Declines in Democracy May Be Slowing, Freedom House Says in a New Report – Frank Langfitt (NPR News, March 9, 2023).
Uruguay Has the Strongest Democracy in the Americas, While the US Lags Far Behind – Diego Lasarte (Quartz, February 2, 2023).
Maria Ressa – Wikipedia.

Image: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images.