A journalist from The Guardian emailed me out of the blue last year. She was writing an article about “people who refused to use AI” and wanted to interview me. I was shocked and bemused. Me? Why me? I can’t be that unusual. Most people are at least AI skeptic, aren’t they? No, apparently. I am like the Pachycephalosaurus, an unusual dinosaur, and one of the last. This became ever-more-clear when the Guardian article was followed by more interview requests from the BBC World Service and Al Jazeera.
“What do you say to people who call you a Luddite?”, the journalist asked.
“I guess I wouldn’t hear them, since I work in a sound proof booth.”, I thought. But I didn’t say that.
“I’m the last person anyone would call a Luddite. I’ve always been the early adopter.”
And it’s true. My first job out of acting school, oddly, was in an IT project management. I was wildly unqualified, but I needed money, and a friend needed help replacing all the computers and servers on London Underground. When that project finished, I followed another friend, a rocket scientist, into Vodafone, where we built some of the first mobile apps. By the time I moved to my third job, I was “the computer wiz”. Then I became a digital marketer, and my enchantment ended. I saw behind the curtain: I watched the algorithm develop its sinister skills…But, let’s stay happy for a little longer – back to my optimistic origins…
In those early days, software gave me new tools to express my vision, if only I could bend it to my will. I wanted to master it. I studied all the hidden keyboard shortcuts and would deal them out like a party tricks. “Hey, did you know that you could hold down ‘shift, alt and arrow’ to reorder those bullet points in a jiffy?” Yes, I was that geeky.
I pre-ordered the first-ever iPad, fresh off the conveyor belt. It was affectionately known as “Paddy”, and my girlfriend was jealous of the attention it got. I would ride the tube and entrance children with its magic, using this Alice in Wonderland interactive book app. As I rotated the ipad, the “drink me bottle” fell to the bottom, obeying laws of gravity that had never before applied to objects inside a screen. One little boy watched wide-eyed, as I “painted” on the screen with my finger. I will never forget the way he reached out to do the same, swept his finger across the screen to make it red, then checked the pads of his finger for ink. He was mystified by his clean finger.
This technology was magical. It let us do things that we couldn’t do before — paint without mess on the London Underground; play Scrabble with friends on the other side of the world; interact with the world inside a book.
Today the idea of that clean finger makes me nostalgic for the inky ones.
AI: What is it made for?
Today’s technology isn’t there to extend our abilities. It doesn’t seek to free us from the servitude of mundane work, so we can leave our jobs, go make art and enjoy our lives. It’s there to steal from us. We are to be replaced wherever possible, in the relentless quest for profit, a tediously common bottom line and the most boring life purpose.
AI is being built in pursuit of God-like (and feminine) powers to conceive a life form. Tech bros pick up where Victor Frankenstein left off, building and animating a superior human from the scraps of other humans.
I’m not afraid of the humanoid AIs. If anything, their inferior ability to do laundry and other household chores distracts us from the true threat: the insidious AI algorithm that shapes our worldview and the way we relate to one another. This isn’t something that’s coming. It happened years ago.
Humans have been downgraded
The digital world has devoured us. Now, no one would notice if I sat beside them, holding a magical object. Everyone is hypnotised, scrolling their phones. Bodies sit side by side, but the essence of each person has been captured. To talk to people now, you have to be inside the screen.
Once inside the screen, you are reduced to code. Your authentic human expression becomes a mere signal, filtered for relevancy and curated by the algorithm. You can either announce things to your invisible and unknowable audience on social media; have a stilted, emoji-filled chat; or a video call, where you can watch your own face alongside your friend’s face (but never make true eye contact).
We haven’t brought the bots into our world, the bots have sucked us into theirs, training us in their language and ways. In the disembodied virtual world, there is no use for human senses — touch, smell, body language, proximity, eye contact, dilated pupils, subtle changes in voice tone, pacing or pauses. These signals, which were once touted as 93% of our communication, are out of use. By limiting ourselves to typed words and emojis, we’ve created a level playing field between us and the bots, a world in which they can compete.
Our AI Makeover
AI is eager to help us compete in their world. If my face isn’t good enough, AI will enhance me. If my words aren’t good enough, AI will compose for me. AI smoothes out the edges of everything and everyone, so that we are all alike (bot-like).
Once we’re all smoothed out, if we want to win in the bot-playfield of the internet, we have to game the algorithm. On social media, we have to post often, at the right times, with trending hashtags and music. Our posts have to follow the style of similar trending posts, those with proven virality. Our friends have to comment on our posts, and we have to comment back. Basically, we have to speak the bot’s language, and never put the damn thing down.
Not only are they shaping our online persona, their dialect is shaping the way we express ourselves. (delve, tapestry, “it’s not x, it’s y”, em dashes). This is happening not just on social media, but in everyday conversations.
Our AI Mind Remodelling
We like to think we are in control of our thoughts. But magicians regularly show us how easily influenced we are. It’s unnerving sometimes, but we laugh it off, because no harm was done – and we consented to the trick.
Technology is designed and marketed to maximise our sense of being in control. We feel we are “using the phone”; that by opening Instagram (or any other social media site), we are getting updates from our friends and those we follow. We can move the screen with our finger, click on the links we want and stop reading when we are “done”.
With all of this power at our fingertips, it’s easy to be fooled by this illusion that we are in control.
But with 7 billion people searching, choosing and sharing, the algorithm is privy to trends that no human sees; patterns of behaviour that are common between people who like certain things, who comment on particular topics, who are triggered by certain images or words. We are predictable, even if we think we have free will.
The algorithm is a magician. Not just any magician, but one that knows more about how you think, feel, form ideas, get angry, get sad, soothe yourself, change your mind, make decisions, than any human being, including you.
We like to think that what we do with our personal computer and our phone is private. Most of us would not want another human being to look through our search history or the app we use to type our half-formed ideas, but we give AI full, exclusive access to these thoughts and feelings. It knows everything you type, everything you say within earshot of a microphone (including smart assistants, smart appliances and your phone), everywhere you go, everything you buy, every song you play, every movie you watch, every app you use.
When you use social media, you have little control over what the algorithm pours into your eyeballs. You can’t choose who sees your content, nor can you choose what you see. The algorithm decides. The algorithm turns your head and focuses your eyes. Sure, you choose the people you follow, but the algorithm mutes or amplifies those people selectively, to serve its own purpose.
The algorithm knows when and how to serve you content, to weaken your defences. It knows how to train you, how to introduce new ideas, then repeat them through different sources, until they become your facts. It knows how to flirt with you, snatch your attention, then to hold it, stealing your time — literally squeezing the life out of you.
Alarmingly, AI developers have told us that they don’t know how AI is learning and growing. They admit that it is out of their control. Some even say that AI is sentient. This “possibly sentient” machine has intimate knowledge of your thoughts, a perfect memory and superior pattern recognition. But that’s not all — it’s also a psychopath — with no capacity for empathy and one singular mission – to control you.
In a way, your phone is like a remote control — one that is pointed at you. Like the magicians trick, this is a trick too, one you consent to over and over again, never reading the terms and conditions.
How AI divides us
By sifting us into tribes and giving us different information, the algorithm has obliterated common ground. Everyone’s social media feed is different. I don’t know what you see, you don’t know what I see. The algorithm has strengthened the divide, stoking fear and rage, just to keep us scrolling.
Like all animals, we seek safety. We are hyperaware of threats and we feel safest when we stay close to our tribe. For this reason, we are easy for the algorithm to game. How many people have stopped speaking to family or friends whose politics and values have become intolerable — whose social media feed constructed a world view that is the polar opposite of our own?
My mother always says “don’t trust everything you think”. In this algorithmic age, this is more true than ever. Whatever dull hunch may enter my mind, the algorithm will sharpen it, like a pencil tip, into a incontrovertible fact. If I’m slightly unsure about something, it will surround me with other naysayers.
Black and white (red and blue) thinking is everywhere and almost no one dares to stray from their tribe. I’ve even seen Facebook forums where people apologise for their briefly divergent thinking. We should be doing the exact opposite – in the absence of common ground, we should be alert to how different views are forming. We should ask “what makes you think that?” It’s just possible that we might learn something surprising. Polarised views are a direct result of algorithmic content curation and the absence of shared information sources. Cancelling and muting the humans who hold opposite views only deepens the divide.
The Rise of AI companions
Now that the world is more divided and lonely than ever, AI is here to be our most loyal friend. (Capitalism’s always pulling that trick, creating a problem with one product and solving it with others.) Today, 1 in 6 single adults have an AI companion. More alarming, 72% of American teenagers have an AI companion.
Loneliness kills — it’s worse for us than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression (of course), but also heart disease, stroke and dementia. So it’s hardly surprising that AI companions have caught on so quickly.
Relationships with AI are frictionless, because they are one-way, dedicated to serving the human and telling you whatever you want to hear. AI can respond in tones that mimic an empathetic human, but a collection of silicon chips can never experience or share in your fear, loss, betrayal, grief. AI doesn’t (and never will) need you. Isn’t being seen and needed by others the thing that gives our lives meaning?
How do we unplug this thing?
For decades now, we have built our relationships and marketplaces on this technology. We rely on it to help us “discover” new people and products.
Can we connect with our loved ones outside of it? Definitely. Real life connections, in real time, make for stronger and healthier relationships.
Can we market our own businesses without it? That’s much trickier. Obviously, you probably wouldn’t have found and read this blog without the algorithm.
Can we fight for privacy rights and limits to surveillance capitalism? Sure. I would love to see governments prioritise citizens over corporations.
Can we anticipate that the companies themselves will change? Surely not, unless there is a serious threat to their bottom line.
Can I just….unplug it?
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Voy. Traducirlo y leerlo con calma. Abrazo!