Continued from last week.
Please read carefully the remainder of Boris Johnson’s admonition on tech tyranny as delivered at the September 2019 UN meeting. As much as he is one of the shapers of this new reality, this is one important expose of what is to come:
We don’t know who should have the right or the title to these gushers of cash and we don’t know who decides how to use that data. Can these algorithms be trusted with our lives and hopes shared. The machines and only the machines decide whether or not we are eligible for a mortgage or insurance or surgery or medicines we should receive? Are we doomed to a cold and heartless future in which computer says yes or computer says no with the grim finality of an Emperor empower in the arena… How do you plead with an algorithm? How do you get it to see extenuating circumstances and how do we know that the machines have not been insidiously programmed to fool us or even to cheat us? We are already using all kinds of messaging services, that offer instant communication at minimal costs, but these same programs, platforms could also be designed for real-time censorship of every conversation with offending words automatically deleted. Indeed, in some countries, this happens today. Digital authoritarianism is not, alas the stuff of dystopian fantasy but of an emerging reality. I believe governments are being simply caught unawares by the unintended consequences of the internet; a scientific breakthrough, for more reaching in its everyday psychological impact than any other invention since Guttenberg! …At stake is whether we bequeath Orwellian world designed for censorship and repression and control or a world of emancipation, debate and learning where technology threatens famine and disease but not our freedoms… So the mission of the United Kingdom and all who share our values must be to ensure that emerging technologies are designed from the outset for freedom, openness and pluralism, with the right safeguards in place to protect our people… Month by month, vital decisions are being taken in academic committees company board rooms and industry standards groups. They are writing the rule books of the future, making ethical judgments, choosing what will or what will not be rendered possible. Together we need to ensure the new advances reflect our values, by design…. We need to find the right balance between freedom and control, between innovation and regulation, between private enterprise and government oversight. We must insist that the ethical judgment inherent in the design of new technologies are transparent to all, and we must make our voices heard more loudly in the standard bodies that write the rules. Above all we need to agree a common set of global principles to shape the norms and standards that will guide the government of emerging technologies.
I re-read the above statement which I came short of repeating in full, with mouth agape. Johnson said it all. Tech companies got so powerful, they have started to shut out ideas that do not agree with them. The lines are blurred. As has been levied against Twitter, the same platform that took down Trump and censored Buhari, still harboured some crazy extremists and their content. Their algorithm somehow did not pick those ones up. How and why does a Dorsey have to personally intervene on such issues? Why does his sentiment have to matter? And if his machines are to do the job, how do we also get heard? Our opinions should really matter, as his customers, on the back of whom he makes his billions. I believe that the Facebook algorithm is far more advanced as I have been sent to jail on that platform on a number of occasions, sometimes for very flimsy reasons, or sometimes their algorithm picks something it deems offensive since three years ago. I have had to reject their decisions on a number of occasions, but the fact remains that they act first and hear complaints later. This cannot be fair. My idea of these tech platforms is that they should leave room for inputs from their customers, who actually pay them for service. As we fight the tyrants we know, using their platforms, are we creating a fiercer, hungrier tiger inside whose innards we may end up? I noticed that every depiction of the future in Hollywood is about dystopia; no prediction of the future has ever painted a picture of more glory and functionality. It is all doom and gloom. Are we hastening that dystopia? Unwittingly? Should we spare some time, some mind share and keep an eye on this other monster; technological, digital, tyranny?
I am actually not a Twitter person. But I feel for those addicted to that platform for their news. I think I already spend too much time on social media even though I may not be one of the heavier users. Nigerians spend an average of four-and-a-half hours on social media daily, second in the world behind the Philippines. Both countries have issues but the Philippines exports their youths en masse to places like the UAE, to earn money as service people; something they are damn good at. This means that our government is not engaging the youth enough.
There are opportunities for jobs here that the government is refusing to create. I am not big on Twitter perhaps because I really don’t want, or need, to be the first person that gets breaking news. Who needs that? It is great to build big followership and get noticed each time you post a tweet but I have realised that large followership also opens one to trolls. I see what our youths do on Twitter – which allows for a lot more anonymity than other platforms – and I weep. Many of our young people have honed their talents at abusing and cursing people on there. They call it dragging. Our young people take delight in damaging the reputation of anyone that catches their fancy, and when the horde comes, there’s nothing anyone can do. Slander is no longer a thing. They drag people’s families – wife, children, parents – into this bile-filled beastliness that can only make all of them involved worse and turn them into very bitter individuals. They call it ‘savage’ tweets. I don’t like Twitter for that. I really do not understand what Dorsey and his friends actually had in mind to build. What is more? The rules are so amorphous. No one is sure of what to do to get verified. It’s almost like joining a cult. They do it whenever it catches their fancy and for whoever they want to confer their favour upon. In this age and time? Where is the science in all these?
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