Mises Wire

Separating Information from

Disinformation: Threats from the AI
Revolution
Tags: Language, Media and Culture, Progressivism
03/11/2024 • Mises Wire • Per Bylund
Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot distinguish fact from fiction. It also
isn’t creative or can create novel content but repeats, repackages, and
reformulates what has already been said (but perhaps in new ways).
I am sure someone will disagree with the latter, perhaps pointing to the
fact that AI can clearly generate, for example, new songs and lyrics. I
agree with this, but it misses the point. AI produces a “new” song lyric
only by drawing from the data of previous song lyrics and then uses that
information (the inductively uncovered patterns in it) to generate what to
us appears to be a new song (and may very well be one). However, there
is no artistry in it, no creativity. It’s only a structural rehashing of what
exists.
Of course, we can debate to what extent humans can think truly novel
thoughts and whether human learning may be based solely or primarily
on mimicry. However, even if we would—for the sake of argument—
agree that all we know and do is mere reproduction, humans have limited
capacity to remember exactly and will make errors. We also fill in gaps
with what subjectively (not objectively) makes sense to us (Rorschach
test, anyone?). Even in this very limited scenario, which I disagree with,
humans generate novelty beyond what AI is able to do.
Both the inability to distinguish fact from fiction and the inductive tether
to existent data patterns are problems that can be alleviated
programmatically—but are open for manipulation.
Manipulation and Propaganda
When Google launched its Gemini AI in February, it immediately became
clear that the AI had a woke agenda. Among other things, the AI
pushed woke diversity ideals into every conceivable response and, among
other things, refused to show images of white people (including when
asked to produce images of the Founding Fathers).
Tech guru and Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen summarized it
on X (formerly Twitter): “I know it’s hard to believe, but Big Tech AI
generates the output it does because it is precisely executing the specific
ideological, radical, biased agenda of its creators. The apparently bizarre
output is 100% intended. It is working as designed.”
There is indeed a design to these AIs beyond the basic categorization and
generation engines. The responses are not perfectly inductive or
generative. In part, this is necessary in order to make the AI useful: filters
and rules are applied to make sure that the responses that the AI generates
are appropriate, fit with user expectations, and are accurate and respectful.
Given the legal situation, creators of AI must also make sure that the AI
does not, for example, violate intellectual property laws or engage in hate
speech. AI is also designed (directed) so that it does not go haywire or
offend its users (remember Tay?).
However, because such filters are applied and the “behavior” of the AI is
already directed, it is easy to take it a little further. After all, when is a
response too offensive versus offensive but within the limits of allowable
discourse? It is a fine and difficult line that must be specified
programmatically.
It also opens the possibility for steering the generated responses beyond
mere quality assurance. With filters already in place, it is easy to make the
AI make statements of a specific type or that nudges the user in a certain
direction (in terms of selected facts, interpretations, and worldviews). It
can also be used to give the AI an agenda, as Andreessen suggests, such
as making it relentlessly woke.
Thus, AI can be used as an effective propaganda tool, which both the
corporations creating them and the governments and agencies regulating
them have recognized.

Misinformation and Error

States have long refused to admit that they benefit from and use
propaganda to steer and control their subjects. This is in part because they
want to maintain a veneer of legitimacy as democratic governments that
govern based on (rather than shape) people’s opinions. Propaganda has a
bad ring to it; it’s a means of control.
However, the state’s enemies—both domestic and foreign—are said to
understand the power of propaganda and do not hesitate to use it to cause
chaos in our otherwise untainted democratic society. The government
must save us from such manipulation, they claim. Of course, rarely does
it stop at mere defense. We saw this clearly during the covid pandemic, in
which the government together with social media companies in effect
outlawed expressing opinions that were not the official line (see Murthy
v. Missouri).
AI is just as easy to manipulate for propaganda purposes as social media
algorithms but with the added bonus that it isn’t only people’s opinions
and that users tend to trust that what the AI reports is true. As we saw in
the previous article on the AI revolution, this is not a valid assumption,
but it is nevertheless a widely held view.
If the AI then can be instructed to not comment on certain things that the
creators (or regulators) do not want people to see or learn, then it is
effectively “memory holed.” This type of “unwanted” information will
not spread as people will not be exposed to it—such as showing only
diverse representations of the Founding Fathers (as Google’s Gemini) or
presenting, for example, only Keynesian macroeconomic truths to make
it appear like there is no other perspective. People don’t know what they
don’t know.
Of course, nothing is to say that what is presented to the user is true. In
fact, the AI itself cannot distinguish fact from truth but only generates
responses according to direction and only based on whatever the AI has
been fed. This leaves plenty of scope for the misrepresentation of the truth
and can make the world believe outright lies. AI, therefore, can easily be
used to impose control, whether it is upon a state, the subjects under its
rule, or even a foreign power.

The Real Threat of AI

What, then, is the real threat of AI? As we saw in the first article, large
language models will not (cannot) evolve into artificial general
intelligence as there is nothing about inductive sifting through large troves
of (humanly) created information that will give rise to consciousness. To
be frank, we haven’t even figured out what consciousness is, so to think
that we will create it (or that it will somehow emerge from algorithms
discovering statistical language correlations in existing texts) is quite
hyperbolic. Artificial general intelligence is still hypothetical.
As we saw in the second article, there is also no economic threat from AI.
It will not make humans economically superfluous and cause mass
unemployment. AI is productive capital, which therefore has value to the
extent that it serves consumers by contributing to the satisfaction of their
wants. Misused AI is as valuable as a misused factory—it will tend to its
scrap value. However, this doesn’t mean that AI will have no impact on
the economy. It will, and already has, but it is not as big in the short-term
as some fear, and it is likely bigger in the long-term than we expect.
No, the real threat is AI’s impact on information. This is in part because
induction is an inappropriate source of knowledge—truth and fact are not
a matter of frequency or statistical probabilities. The evidence and
theories of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei would get weeded
out as improbable (false) by an AI trained on all the (best and brightest)
writings on geocentrism at the time. There is no progress and no learning
of new truths if we trust only historical theories and presentations of fact.
However, this problem can probably be overcome by clever programming
(meaning implementing rules—and fact-based limitations—to the
induction problem), at least to some extent. The greater problem is the
corruption of what AI presents: the misinformation, disinformation, and
malinformation that its creators and administrators, as well as
governments and pressure groups, direct it to create as a means of
controlling or steering public opinion or knowledge.
This is the real danger that the now-famous open letter, signed by Elon
Musk, Steve Wozniak, and others, pointed to: “Should we let machines
flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we
automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we
develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart,
obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our
civilization?”
Other than the economically illiterate reference to “automat[ing] away all
the jobs,” the warning is well-taken. AI will not Terminator-like start to
hate us and attempt to exterminate mankind. It will not make us all into
biological batteries, as in The Matrix. However, it will—especially when
corrupted—misinform and mislead us, create chaos, and potentially make
our lives “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”