Some of what you touch on, specifically AI powered disinformation and how the Russians will use it to weaken the US, are explored in detail here. Gary, you seem to be one of the exceptions; but I don't think people have really grasped the potential for LLM AI content to be weaponized against the US on a large scale. But I'm pretty sure everyone in America will "get it" by the end of the 2024 elections. https://technoskeptic.substack.com/p/is-ai-an-opportunity-for-writers
Health of our information ecosystem is vital to an open democratic political order.
We are already suffering from information bubbles engineered to maintain audience and ad dollars through narrowcasting on broadcast media. Algorithmic mediation on social media poses even greater danger. At least Google/YouTube and Meta/Facebook *claim* that they try to modulate extremist content. Twitter/X and TikTok manifestly don't care.
This immediate danger is far greater than hypothetical future malfeasance by autonomous AI agents.
What is the intersection of social media and AI? Well, recommender algorithms are a branch of AI. What many are worried about is how Generative AI will play into this mix. For example, by producing ever sticker content without regard to veracity or balance, or by fine-tuning individualized content to promote certain political agendas. Is TikTok intentionally enabling this now? No one knows.
It's great to see your expertise and reach directed to this issue. What's largely missing from the debate---and that you are particularly well equipped to address---is the human cognitive dimension. Belief systems, cognitive biases, emotional triggers, social needs, tribalism and groupishness, etc. All of these factors will shape the evolution of AI systems and their impacts on society.
If we lose healthy democracy, we lose our ability to collectively govern all the rest of the AI stuff.
I am 67. Two things: 1. There has been a powerful, concerted and sustained campaign to erase any distinction between "criticism of Israel" and "antisemitism." A good example: the letter from Harvard students cited in the Congressional hearings with the three university presidents not once mentioned Hamas. It was simply critical of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. And yet it was widely reported as evidence of -- even the poster child for -- "antisemitism on college campuses." 2. I remember the huge social convolutions of the late 1960s and early 1970s connected to the anti-war movement. The entire movement was widely dismissed as being an aberration confined chiefly to the young and blamed on some of their social behaviors completely unrelated to their politics such as their music, mode of dress and recreational drugs. Their social behaviors had little to do with their politics. The Vietnam war was simply bad policy and deserved to be criticized. Their age simply meant they were less invested in the status quo and were willing to buck the system. I think the same may be true here.
The first poll questions are completely fucked up, the poll itself is a misinformation campaign that just reflects the poor education of the average American voter. No surprise here given the supervisors.
Why would you use the words false ideology in a poll sentence for some average uneducated guy, when even google can't find the meaning of that concept in a straightforward manner ?
And pollmakers know the game, answering "False Ideology" feels to most people as supporting Israel's bombing of children, so even if putting Jews in a class with some label on it looks and feel wrong to the respondent, they feel like have no choice if they want to save their dignity.
The same with the right to exist and no right to exist, "right to exist" sounds like support for Israel's abominable actions to the average Joe, especially in the modern context where zionists managed to conflate both in US public media by opposing two groups, the "right to exist" vs the "no right to exist". Just as you said, it goes both ways, and zionists are fueling polarization with tankers by their misuse of influence and power.
And let's not start with "justified" in the 3rd poll question which, muddiness of the concept aside, is completely retarded given the poll supervisors intentions : if you rightfully answer "not justified", then Israel's attack is not justified as well, because otherwise Hamas's attack could be justified by previous Israeli actions.
I'm sure if i read through the fine print, they'd state that the poller came wearing a kippah to orient the answers a little more to make their perfect propaganda piece.
Yeah, while I don't doubt that you get extreme views on Social media, these questions are truly bizarre. They seem deliberately designed to evoke partisan reactions rather than understand what is at the root of people's views.
All media have biases. It's not exactly clear why the biases of Social Media are somehow worse than that of the mainstream media. For example, how many old people know anything about the history of the Palestinians? How many have heard about the Nakba? How many even understand how these territories became occupied? Yet, no one seems to be bothered making similar studies showing the ignorance and anti-Palestinian biases of various groups.
as i pointed out, i think this runs both ways, but i don’t have relevant polls available in the opposite direction. i think social media in the form of tik tok bites does a particularly bad job (eg compared to a long news article); i urge you to watch the videos attached to the WSJ article I linked
I would be surprised if it didn't run both ways, however that wasn't the point I was making. The point I was making is that the mainstream media is also a peddler of misinformation, often just as bad and dangerous as anything on social media, usually with State backing.
Wait, how are you defining anti-Semitism here? Are you lumping people who are calling for permanent ceasefire and/or critiquing the apartheid-like practices of Israel in with the anti-Semites?
Jews ≠ Israel. I would think that from the final long quote that i personally am not supportive of the war as currently conducted, but also eg lies about Holocaust aren’t specifically about the war but stoke anti-semitism.
Israel and it's lobby groups deliberately try to smear all criticism of Israel and Zionism as anti-Semitic. Is it any surprise that more and more people are also becoming less nuanced about their labelling?
"The moderates on all sides are being squeezed and isolated, and the road to peace has never felt narrower or more lonely. But we simply can't give up."
Since readers here know AI, let us try to think about this from an AI point of view. Our whole economic system can be seen as an AI that is trained by reinforcment learning on the objective function of profit maximization. Looking at what happens right now through this angle, what possible solutions does this suggest?
Haha, not denying the polarising role of social media! Just saying that with the specific case of Palestine, there are many other factors shaping youth opinions that could be interacting with the use of TikTok, so it requires more research. Not looking to refute every single observation you quoted, as I mostly agree with their factuality, just trying to add some nuance to the interpretation. Happy to collaborate on further investigation if you find this topic important as well!
The causality is definitely fishy here. The US stats conflating anti-Israel and anti-semitism looks like a motivated oversimplification. Sure, there is a generational divide when it comes to Israel vs. Palestine, but how much does social media contribute? Not too sure, more research needed. In the end, humans social dynamics is hard to model and predict, so I'd try not to read too much out of aggregate descriptive stats.
I pointed to six or so converging lines of evidence and you have scarcely addressed any. I am reminded of the cigarette manufacturers insisting for decades that there was no causal study showing smoking causes cancer in humans.
Social media is a problem, surely, but traditional media propagates extremism as well, including by over-reporting and weaponizing certain incidents. This is a feature of the mechanisms of social media also, to some degree, since sensationalism sells in any media business and traditional media outfits rely on social networks to disseminate their articles and information. We do not live in a free and open media ecosystem, nor should we over identify with the interests of our national leaders when we position ourselves relative to the rest of the world issues of information freedom. Powerful native interests, including our government, have the most to gain from propagating misinformation in "western" countries.
Nothing new here. Most people are by now aware social media is both unhealthy and polarising; few how catastrophically so.
Yes, until we see surveys with non-users as the control group, the cause/corrolation issue makes all this dismissable (and, ironically, inflammatory as of by itself).
For a thorough and sober investigation into the ill effectsof SoMe, I strongly recommend ‘The Chaos Machine’ by NYT reporter Max Fisher.
1. Who cares what 18-24 year olds think? I'm not sure they've ever been less relevant in human political history. We live in a gerontocracy now. These kids are not "tomorrow's leaders". Four decades from now, maybe.
2. This may in itself partly explain their views. Like teenagers, these grown children are simply professing whatever opinions they know will agitate their elders.
3. The very same data shows the 55+ crowd are overwhelmingly more in favour of Israel and Jews than the kids are opposed. If anything, it's remarkable how homogenous opinion gets in the older cohort. And remember, these are the people in charge.
Exceptional insights, important questions raised. Thank you, Gary. Your recent AI posts were getting a bit gossipy. This... THIS piece is solid reportage and provides genuine ACTIONABLE insight. Thank you.
It looks social media is trying to perform some of its tricks in your comments thread here, Gary. You poked the bear!
Some of what you touch on, specifically AI powered disinformation and how the Russians will use it to weaken the US, are explored in detail here. Gary, you seem to be one of the exceptions; but I don't think people have really grasped the potential for LLM AI content to be weaponized against the US on a large scale. But I'm pretty sure everyone in America will "get it" by the end of the 2024 elections. https://technoskeptic.substack.com/p/is-ai-an-opportunity-for-writers
Health of our information ecosystem is vital to an open democratic political order.
We are already suffering from information bubbles engineered to maintain audience and ad dollars through narrowcasting on broadcast media. Algorithmic mediation on social media poses even greater danger. At least Google/YouTube and Meta/Facebook *claim* that they try to modulate extremist content. Twitter/X and TikTok manifestly don't care.
This immediate danger is far greater than hypothetical future malfeasance by autonomous AI agents.
What is the intersection of social media and AI? Well, recommender algorithms are a branch of AI. What many are worried about is how Generative AI will play into this mix. For example, by producing ever sticker content without regard to veracity or balance, or by fine-tuning individualized content to promote certain political agendas. Is TikTok intentionally enabling this now? No one knows.
It's great to see your expertise and reach directed to this issue. What's largely missing from the debate---and that you are particularly well equipped to address---is the human cognitive dimension. Belief systems, cognitive biases, emotional triggers, social needs, tribalism and groupishness, etc. All of these factors will shape the evolution of AI systems and their impacts on society.
If we lose healthy democracy, we lose our ability to collectively govern all the rest of the AI stuff.
You know it isn't just Russia. You know that China is using Ticktock to undermine the Biden administration.
You do know it's not just Russian and China. You might want to look up the history of disinformation campaigns run by USA and it's allies.
Oh, I understand that. But as Noah Smith points out, the current administration is fighting foreign influence with both hands tied behind their back
So the US is getting a dose of what's it's been dishing out for decades? Who cares?
I am 67. Two things: 1. There has been a powerful, concerted and sustained campaign to erase any distinction between "criticism of Israel" and "antisemitism." A good example: the letter from Harvard students cited in the Congressional hearings with the three university presidents not once mentioned Hamas. It was simply critical of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. And yet it was widely reported as evidence of -- even the poster child for -- "antisemitism on college campuses." 2. I remember the huge social convolutions of the late 1960s and early 1970s connected to the anti-war movement. The entire movement was widely dismissed as being an aberration confined chiefly to the young and blamed on some of their social behaviors completely unrelated to their politics such as their music, mode of dress and recreational drugs. Their social behaviors had little to do with their politics. The Vietnam war was simply bad policy and deserved to be criticized. Their age simply meant they were less invested in the status quo and were willing to buck the system. I think the same may be true here.
The first poll questions are completely fucked up, the poll itself is a misinformation campaign that just reflects the poor education of the average American voter. No surprise here given the supervisors.
Why would you use the words false ideology in a poll sentence for some average uneducated guy, when even google can't find the meaning of that concept in a straightforward manner ?
And pollmakers know the game, answering "False Ideology" feels to most people as supporting Israel's bombing of children, so even if putting Jews in a class with some label on it looks and feel wrong to the respondent, they feel like have no choice if they want to save their dignity.
The same with the right to exist and no right to exist, "right to exist" sounds like support for Israel's abominable actions to the average Joe, especially in the modern context where zionists managed to conflate both in US public media by opposing two groups, the "right to exist" vs the "no right to exist". Just as you said, it goes both ways, and zionists are fueling polarization with tankers by their misuse of influence and power.
And let's not start with "justified" in the 3rd poll question which, muddiness of the concept aside, is completely retarded given the poll supervisors intentions : if you rightfully answer "not justified", then Israel's attack is not justified as well, because otherwise Hamas's attack could be justified by previous Israeli actions.
I'm sure if i read through the fine print, they'd state that the poller came wearing a kippah to orient the answers a little more to make their perfect propaganda piece.
Yeah, while I don't doubt that you get extreme views on Social media, these questions are truly bizarre. They seem deliberately designed to evoke partisan reactions rather than understand what is at the root of people's views.
All media have biases. It's not exactly clear why the biases of Social Media are somehow worse than that of the mainstream media. For example, how many old people know anything about the history of the Palestinians? How many have heard about the Nakba? How many even understand how these territories became occupied? Yet, no one seems to be bothered making similar studies showing the ignorance and anti-Palestinian biases of various groups.
as i pointed out, i think this runs both ways, but i don’t have relevant polls available in the opposite direction. i think social media in the form of tik tok bites does a particularly bad job (eg compared to a long news article); i urge you to watch the videos attached to the WSJ article I linked
I would be surprised if it didn't run both ways, however that wasn't the point I was making. The point I was making is that the mainstream media is also a peddler of misinformation, often just as bad and dangerous as anything on social media, usually with State backing.
Wait, how are you defining anti-Semitism here? Are you lumping people who are calling for permanent ceasefire and/or critiquing the apartheid-like practices of Israel in with the anti-Semites?
Jews ≠ Israel. I would think that from the final long quote that i personally am not supportive of the war as currently conducted, but also eg lies about Holocaust aren’t specifically about the war but stoke anti-semitism.
Israel and it's lobby groups deliberately try to smear all criticism of Israel and Zionism as anti-Semitic. Is it any surprise that more and more people are also becoming less nuanced about their labelling?
"The moderates on all sides are being squeezed and isolated, and the road to peace has never felt narrower or more lonely. But we simply can't give up."
Since readers here know AI, let us try to think about this from an AI point of view. Our whole economic system can be seen as an AI that is trained by reinforcment learning on the objective function of profit maximization. Looking at what happens right now through this angle, what possible solutions does this suggest?
Haha, not denying the polarising role of social media! Just saying that with the specific case of Palestine, there are many other factors shaping youth opinions that could be interacting with the use of TikTok, so it requires more research. Not looking to refute every single observation you quoted, as I mostly agree with their factuality, just trying to add some nuance to the interpretation. Happy to collaborate on further investigation if you find this topic important as well!
The causality is definitely fishy here. The US stats conflating anti-Israel and anti-semitism looks like a motivated oversimplification. Sure, there is a generational divide when it comes to Israel vs. Palestine, but how much does social media contribute? Not too sure, more research needed. In the end, humans social dynamics is hard to model and predict, so I'd try not to read too much out of aggregate descriptive stats.
I pointed to six or so converging lines of evidence and you have scarcely addressed any. I am reminded of the cigarette manufacturers insisting for decades that there was no causal study showing smoking causes cancer in humans.
Your title is almost ironic and naive if meant literally. Is this some great surprise? Of course it is fomenting and amplifying extremism
Social media is a problem, surely, but traditional media propagates extremism as well, including by over-reporting and weaponizing certain incidents. This is a feature of the mechanisms of social media also, to some degree, since sensationalism sells in any media business and traditional media outfits rely on social networks to disseminate their articles and information. We do not live in a free and open media ecosystem, nor should we over identify with the interests of our national leaders when we position ourselves relative to the rest of the world issues of information freedom. Powerful native interests, including our government, have the most to gain from propagating misinformation in "western" countries.
Nothing new here. Most people are by now aware social media is both unhealthy and polarising; few how catastrophically so.
Yes, until we see surveys with non-users as the control group, the cause/corrolation issue makes all this dismissable (and, ironically, inflammatory as of by itself).
For a thorough and sober investigation into the ill effectsof SoMe, I strongly recommend ‘The Chaos Machine’ by NYT reporter Max Fisher.
Devil's advocate here.
1. Who cares what 18-24 year olds think? I'm not sure they've ever been less relevant in human political history. We live in a gerontocracy now. These kids are not "tomorrow's leaders". Four decades from now, maybe.
2. This may in itself partly explain their views. Like teenagers, these grown children are simply professing whatever opinions they know will agitate their elders.
3. The very same data shows the 55+ crowd are overwhelmingly more in favour of Israel and Jews than the kids are opposed. If anything, it's remarkable how homogenous opinion gets in the older cohort. And remember, these are the people in charge.
Exceptional insights, important questions raised. Thank you, Gary. Your recent AI posts were getting a bit gossipy. This... THIS piece is solid reportage and provides genuine ACTIONABLE insight. Thank you.