Category: communication

‘Information’ Overload

On By Mick CanningIn AI, artificial intelligence, books, comment, communication, internet, misinformation21 Comments

I’ve had this post in mind for a while without actually getting around to writing any of it. But I felt it would fit in well here, following on from my last post.

We are supposedly better informed today than we were twenty, fifty, a hundred years ago. I’m not sure I agree, though. Certainly, there is no lack of information available, and access to it couldn’t be any easier. In fact whatever you want to know, you can find it online. Anything. Whether it be true or false, it’s there online. And because all this information is easily available, and because billions of people have access to the internet, it can be spread incredibly far and wide in a tiny amount of time. It is certainly not just AI that has led to this. The internet was full of misinformation long before AI was an issue.

I heard a few years ago that university students were forbidden to use Wikipedia as a source for essays and research. The people who add information to Wikipedia do not have to be any kind of expert. There is a certain amount of checking, but I don’t know how rigorous it is. Certainly, it is not unknown for mistakes and deliberate falsehoods to be added. This is why I have never used it as an information source. At best I have found what I might be looking for on there, but then gone to a reliable site to check it. For medical information, for example, I would use the UK’s NHS site. For historical information, I might use a top university website, or a large museum’s. A site where the information will have been uploaded by experts and specialists.

YouTube seems to be ridiculously popular with huge numbers of people as an information source. There are, of course, YouTube channels by very reputable people and institutions, but also a huge number of ones which exist solely to spread misinformation and total lies. And while it may be easy to tell some of the bad ones from the good, that still leaves large numbers that might or might not be reputable.

The same is true of social media. Countless sites run by Holocaust deniers, Nazi sympathisers, and every sort of conspiracy theorist from Flat Earthers to those who believe the world is run by paedophile alien lizard people. Again, while most of these are obviously what they are, many are less so.

Why so many sites spreading disinformation? The first reason is that there are many people who believe the crazy conspiracy theories. I’m not getting into the hows and whys of this, but the psychology is interesting. But the second reason is money. Many of these sites are monetised, so that the more clicks they get, the more views, the more money the site owner ‘earns’. Probably a feeling of power, too.

And to return to AI briefly, if anyone is in any doubt that it will make things up or provide misinformation, should you ask an AI program for examples of misinformation from an AI program, it will provide them. Whichever way you look at that, it is proof.

The advent of physical self-publishing, too, has contributed to this, albeit less seriously. The vast majority of self-published books are fiction, but who is there to check the accuracy of the supposedly factual ones?

As difficult as it is to separate fact from fiction now, how will it be in five, ten, or twenty years down the line? Or a hundred? We already treat historical records with a certain amount of suspicion, aware that many of them will be biased or fabricated. I suspect that generations to come will decide it is impossible to be certain of anything that happened in these times.

In a way, they will be the new Dark Ages.

A Justification of Theft

On By Mick CanningIn AI, artificial intelligence, comment, communication, internet50 Comments

Clickbait? Perhaps, but I have a point to make.

There is a blog I follow which regularly posts about good people. People who make a difference to their world. Kindness. They change lives. And it makes for a refreshing read in a world which often appears to be so full of shit we could be drowning in the stuff. I also see now on social media – at least on Facebook, which is the only one I follow other than Instagram – AI generated posts on good people. I know they’re AI generated, because the signs are all there. I don’t intend to list the signs, as most people are aware of them already. These AI generated posts seem to fall into the same few categories. There is the rough biker with the heart of gold adopting a defenceless little girl. The retiree who’s lost his wife and finds meaning in life through spreading love through his community. There’re one or two others, but they all seem to fall into a few predictable categories. And you read these long tear-jerkers and reach the end and you go ‘Ah, isn’t that lovely.’ Or you’re meant to, anyway. But they are AI generated, the people don’t exist (although the original ones may have been based on real people), and these things did not really happen. But does this matter?

I think it does, for several reasons. AI invents stuff. If this is not the intention of the user, these are known as ‘AI Hallucinations’. If it can’t find what it’s been asked to find, it will sometimes make something up instead. Equally, it may draw data from untrustworthy sources. Then there are AI programs which are designed to make up stuff. If we understand that, then when we read something we understand is AI generated, we don’t necessarily believe it. And since we don’t believe the characters or the narrative, then the message it is designed to deliver is rejected. We all know that kindness is a good thing, but being told that by a computer program that has clearly fabricated the vehicle of delivery diminishes the message.

It is the exact opposite of ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’, because in this case the message is rejected because the messenger is flawed.

And the more we read these posts, knowing they are AI generated but if we’re still happy to take them completely at face value, the more we help to normalise the things. The more we accept AI into our lives and accept these fabrications.

So there are more than one type of AI program. Many of those that are really good at inventing stuff, and there are quite a few, are designed specifically to write books. They advertise themselves as producing books ‘in minutes, not months’. A few clicks on the button and hey presto! I’ve written a book! I’ll get back to this at some point, but are these people authors? No. They’re not. They’re frauds. But this brings me back to those original posts, which someone has created using an AI program similar to the book writer programs to deliberately invent the contents.

And to the more important point, the point where both the hallucinations, but even more importantly the deliberately fabricated material, really matter.

AI is, as we’ve seen, designed to invent stuff. Okay, that’s a simplification, but the point is that it’s designed to give the user exactly what they ask for. If someone requests it to write a piece justifying theft, or infanticide, for example, (not to ask it if it can be justified, but telling it to actually do so) it will do that, citing either nasty stuff it’s dug up from some remote hole on the internet, or, more likely, completely inventing stuff because the real justifications don’t exist. And it will look reasonably believable, perhaps writing something along the lines of ‘the Cornel University experiments of 1983 – 1984 by Taylor and Whickham et al demonstrate that…’ etc etc. And the casual reader will think ‘oh, I never realised that. So perhaps there’s something in it after all.’ But these citations will be made up.

And to go slightly off topic for a moment, there are the illustrations. AI generated photos are still usually recognisable as such, but they’re getting much better. Ones that have been subtly manipulated are now very hard to detect. The implications there should be obvious, can we now believe anything we see or are told?

This is not to suggest AI is an unmitigated evil. Its champions will point out advances in, for example, medicine and material sciences, which are very real and extremely important. But the issues of misinformation and, as frequently cited, intellectual property theft, to say nothing of the potential to completely destroy careers in the literary and artistic worlds, are also very real.

So how do we fight this? I’m afraid I’ve no idea. The genie is out of the bottle and I see no way it’s going back in again. Other than burning down the internet we are stuck with it and over the next year or so (or less – who knows?) it’s going to get harder and harder to tell truth from complete (and possibly dangerous) crap. While the programs are becoming better at presenting the genuine data they are requested to present, the ones inventing stuff are getting better at making this appear real. All we can do is be aware of this, be cautious and critical. And perhaps we could go back to getting our facts from books which, although not infallible, are far more likely to be accurate. Publishers are still the gatekeepers there, and they tend to do a pretty good job. Research stuff properly. Rather than accepting important medical information, for example, from Joe Bloggs on Facebook, look it up on a respectable site, like the NHS (in UK).

Maybe just stay off the internet more.

Which is probably a good idea anyway.

An Alien Culture?

On By Mick CanningIn communication, respect, travel51 Comments

More people travel for leisure purposes today than have ever done so in the past. And many work abroad on short- or long-term contracts, often with a certain amount of leisure time available to experience the culture that surrounds them there.

And this will result in these travellers meeting the people that make up the indigenous society where, for a while, they find themselves. Will there then be a meeting of minds?

Having lived in an ex-pat society, as I have referred to on here before, I am familiar with the laager mentality that often pervades it. I won’t go into all the permutations, but there is frequently a combination of arrogance and fear that leads to a strong feeling of ‘us and them’.

Many travel with the firm conviction that their own society is superior to any other, and are unwilling to see any good at all in any others. Some who go away to work resent being uprooted, and arrive with that resentment packed in their baggage. Some find the experience to be fearful, if they do not understand the language being spoken around them or assume that this alien society has values that somehow threaten them.

And they can either lock themselves away and peer over the barricades, or they can embrace the experience and learn from it.

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Travel broadens the mind, it is said, but sometimes it seems to just cement prejudices more firmly in place.

And how easy it is to travel around just looking for things to justify prejudices!

One of the more infuriating things that I come across occasionally is a bigoted and ignorant letter or article in a local newspaper (it often tends to be the local ones) where someone’s idiot views are justified by the phrase ‘I know; I was there’. I imagine them living their entire time in a foreign country in a compound that they rarely leave, yet thinking that they now know exactly how the society functions beyond their walls.

I’ve met one or two of them, over the years.

I spent three years in Oman, working, and I’ve travelled fairly extensively in India, but I do not imagine or pretend that I really have much more than a superficial experience of these places. I knew little of the local culture in Oman beyond what I could see in the streets and villages and markets that I visited. I didn’t know anyone well enough to spend time at their homes or in their social circles. I went with groups of other westerners to places of interest. I did spend a lot of time exploring the desert and the nearby towns on my own, but I was effectively still inside my own little bubble. It is a huge regret that I never got deeper under the surface.

I have, perhaps, managed to learn a little more about the real India, especially through spending time on a project in a village, although I cannot pretend, even to myself, that I really have any idea of what it is like to actually live in an Indian village.

During the later days of the British Raj, the rulers took the approach that their civilisation was naturally superior, and that there was nothing in Indian civilisation worthy of their consideration. The irony of this is that around the end of the eighteenth century, and the first years of the nineteenth, many of the British in India had taken a keen interest in Indian history and culture, themselves doing a tremendous amount to unearth much of the history that had been lost and forgotten. For that comparatively brief period, it would seem that many of the British treated Indians and their culture with a deep respect.

The reasons that this changed are probably deeper than my understanding, but two things stand out. Firstly, that from the beginning of the nineteenth century, many British women came to India in search of husbands, bringing with them what we tend to think of as Victorian attitudes, and secondly, there was an upsurge of evangelism in Britain, which translated itself in India as a movement to convert the ‘heathens’ to Christianity. These combined as a new feeling of superiority, and contempt for a society that was now seen as inferior, especially when much of it resisted their overtures.

With this, the British as a whole seemed to become more intolerant and arrogant, and less respectful of sensibilities. This culminated in the horrors of 1857, which could be said to be caused directly by these attitudes.

To return to the present day, it seems that many travellers have attitudes no better than their Victorian predecessors’. I wrote a post a few months back that mentioned a number of westerners I came across in a Himalayan hill resort, https://mickcanning.co/2015/10/25/the-mad-woman-of-the-hill-station/  should you wish to view it, whose behaviour and attitudes were just downright arrogant and disrespectful. They were doing no more than confirming their prejudices as they travelled, and at the same time I daresay they were confirming many people’s views of western travellers.

Yet there are many people who travel with open ears, open eyes and an open mind, and their rewards are far greater than those of the blinkered traveller. They have the wonderful opportunity to experience and learn about different cultures at first hand, speak to people who hold different beliefs and ideals to them, and perhaps learn a little of what drives them. In return, they have an opportunity to enlighten others, perhaps, to things in their own society that might not be understood by those others. In a small way, each and every one of them can choose to contribute either to different societies coming to understand and become more tolerant, or to the further spread of tensions, mistrust, and misunderstandings.

And all of these little interactions, added together, are as important and influential as the contacts between politicians and diplomats.

The Language Barrier

On By Mick CanningIn communication, conflict resolution, discussions, language, opinion27 Comments

As part of its strategy to counter extremism, the British Government has today announced its intention to fund a plan to help all migrants to this country learn English. For once, I think that this is a plan to applaud.

For the inability to speak and understand the language of others around you fosters fear, misunderstanding and distrust.

Having lived in an ex-patriate community myself, I remember how easy it is to become persuaded by others that you are somehow surrounded by ‘enemies’, and to develop a laager mentality. This mindset takes it as a given that everyone outside of the circle does not understand you, they are somehow ‘against’ you, and forever plotting to attack or undermine you, so you sit there muttering darkly about these ‘outsiders’, and voicing your dislike and prejudices against them…it becomes a cycle of mistrust that can possibly become violent.

It is another example of the saying that we hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not understand. And when someone is trapped in a limited social circle because they cannot understand anyone outside of that circle, their chances of becoming a full member of the wider community are severely limited.

Having travelled in non-English speaking countries, I realise how much easier life becomes for me when I make the effort to learn even a small amount of the language.

There will be some who refuse to learn the language on the grounds that they feel that they are there temporarily, possibly working on a short term contract, and can get away with using their own language in a limited circle of work, shopping and socialising.

And there will be some for whom it is a matter of pride to use only their birth language.

I think that both of these viewpoints are mistaken.

Writers understand only too well the importance of language. We worry over whether to use this or that word or phrase to get our meaning across; we worry over whether the way we have worded something may be misunderstood. But when you are attempting to communicate with others in a language that you only vaguely understand, every single conversation is full of these fears.

And when that is the norm, it becomes easier just to avoid any situations where you have to try to use that language.

But it does not actually take much to overcome these fears. Perhaps accepting an invitation to visit to someone’s home, or their place of worship, will lead naturally to conversations where people can learn about each other. But the essential thing is to be able to communicate, which becomes next to impossible without at least a few words of a language in common.