Spend a vision with me: Do you want to use AI or be used via AI? (1/2)

This is the first of 2 blog posts on giving some idea of how AI is being used, by who, and the choice each one of us as individuals has to make.

Right up front let me state my position:

Influencing how people behave is nothing new, AI just makes it easier to achieve
AI is being used more and more to influence how people think and therefore behave
AI is neither good nor bad, it is how it is used that matters.
Each one of us has a choice to make, whether to allow the influence or question it.

Influencing how people behave is nothing new, and this comes from everywhere

The ‘father of propaganda’, Edward Burnays (1), in his book Propaganda (2), he started by saying:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

And he continued by saying

“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of”

Edward Burnays was a psychologist and his book was first published in 1928. Burnays talks about state level molding of minds and suggestion of ideas.

States have always been very active in the field. I was actually very interested to see that Burnays was involved in United Fruit in South America. But that’s another topic. For today, we focus on how state and state agents influence us.

Nation/State-wide propaganda powered by AI/ML, bots

US presidential elections, since 2016

Some people may remember the idea that Russia was accused of spreading ‘selective information’ with a view to influence voters in the US elections in 2016 (3), 2020 (4). Various techniques were used and of course ML and AI were used, in managing bots, microtargeting (after having hacked personal details for example)(5). It was a well executed plan:

Hack into electoral registries especially in states with tight races
Get personal details of voters and how to contact them
Model how they could be influenced and prepare bots with selected information
Take action

In 2016, Mr Trump won the elections, this was supposedly the aim of the 2016 effort.

In 2020, the ‘left wingers’ also started to get active in the bot space, although not as much as the right wing (5)

It is clear that the volume of tweets by ‘left-leaning bots’ was much lower than ‘right-leaning bots’ (and the pattern very different), but still there were efforts to ‘inform’ the electorate from both sides.

Foreign powers too

One of the most interesting aspects of the 2016 presidential elections was the emergence of the Russian interference claims (6) The idea was that Russia intervened to increase the chances of Mr Trump getting elected. The playbook was simple:

Hack electoral register (7)
Gather information about electors
Target them via bots

This also happened in 2020 (8), but prewarned the efforts were less one-sided.

2024 US Presidential elections

Already various sources are warning that Russia will be enhancing its impact by using AI more, and in 2024, China too is getting in on the game (9)(10); with Generative AI (GenAI), the impact is getting potentially stronger.

Interestingly, the aims of the efforts of China and Russia seems to differ. While Russia aims to weaken support for Ukraine in US, China aims at societal polarization (as if that needed a helping hand) (11).

But it is not only foreign national intelligence who are using AI, at least the Republican party is doing it to increase its appeal to specific voting groups (12) and democrats too (13).

Basically, everyone is using AI to fool American voters into doing their bidding.

Now, please do not believe that the USA is only a victim.

USA Military and the drive to hamper Covid19 vaccination in Philippines and Central Asia

A recent piece of research by Reuters uncovered that the Pentagon (USA ‘Ministry of Defence’) was using social media, fake accounts and presumably ML/AI tools, to turn people against taking the Covid19 vaccine from China (14)

In Singapore, the Chinese made vaccine (Sinovac) was made available, as well as Pfizer, Moderna, and is still available until now.

Now, what makes things more interesting is the polar opposite approach between the policies of the USA government (USA first, all vaccines possible to the USA) and China (Covid19 is a worldwide problem so avail vaccines to other countries).

Given the political position taken by the government, the Pentagon decided that they should not allow China to get any goodwill by giving away Covid19 vaccines. That would put the USA in a bad light. Hence, the disinformation campaign.

“Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.”(14) Actually, this quote from the article would even point to more than just anti-China, since it is also about mask wearing. But for now, let’s focus on the pentagon’s anti-China vaccine stance.

Not only Philippines, but also in Central Asia, using religion

“Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.” By whatever means possible, the Pentagon discouraged adoption of Sinovac in Central Asia using rumours about religious taboos.

To me the key difference is that this campaign is real, and has probably cost people their lives: “When he addressed the vaccination issue, the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaccinated – far short of the government’s target of 70 million. By the time Duterte spoke, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus. The difficulty in vaccinating the population contributed to the worst death rate in the region.”

‘“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”’

In sum, chances are many Filipinos (and Central Asians) died because they chose not to take Sinovac that was available to them at the time because they were influenced by the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign using social media and bots. But don’t blame the tools. The aim of the campaign was achieved, the tools worked.

‘Deep Fake’, for a cause, the case of Pakistan

I used ’Deep Fake’ because in this case, AI was used to have an the voice of Mr Imran Khan make a speech, but the key is that Mr Khan was in prison and had passed his speech to his supporters to create the movies for the purpose of campaigning; an approved deep fake in a way(15).

This novel campaign strategy (16) was effective enough for Mr Khan and his allies to become the largest single block in Pakistan, although they did not manage to form the government (17)

This is a case where AI was used very effectively to bridge a gap between a politician and his electorate.

And to me, the key is that the electors knew exactly that this was an AI generated image of Mr Khan, but saying the words Mr Khan wants to say.

It worked.

What's next, an AI candidate/elected representative?

As far fetched as it may seem, it is quite a possibility, especially where candidates need not prove they are real humans, that you will get an AI aided or generated candidate near you. A recent case, in the 2024 UK Elections, Reform UK has been accused of fielding 'fake' candidates (18)

What does this mean?

It’s very simple, not only are private companies trying to influence our decisions, usually to buy/consume their products/services by using tools like AI, governments and the political class are also quickly adopting these tools.

The reason is that your brain is the hottest real estate, and everyone wants to plant a flag.

You may be ok with that or you may not.

The second part of this blog will show a couple of ways how each one of us could preserve this real estate.

Spend a vision with me

Monday 8 July 2024

Do you want to use AI or be used via AI? (1/2)

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