[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader warns us about where the super-highway and artificial intelligence are taking us. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Note: You can easily translate the Readers to many languages. Use the app deepl.com and it is done instantaneously. It takes seconds to download the app into your computer or phone and translations are of high quality.
The Internet: sheep in wolves’ clothes?
–The internet is the place where millions of us reside (Daniel Lehewych), but it is also the medium that constrains what can be and is (ought to be?) messaged. (Samir Gendesha)
1. Regrettably, in the brotherhood of the Internet, it is more possible for individuals who believe in unusual political myths to take to the internet without the need to belong to a formal or informal political organization. This type of marginal individuals is more difficult to locate, track and to control by security agencies, because they are lone wolves who act without leaving traces or clues. (José Durán Barba)
2. But it is not only individual lone wolves; dictatorships we already have the world over, consistently eliminate the ideological diversity among internet users. These regimes do not reduce the bulk of information, they increase it to the point of exhaustion through repeating the same and different empty slogans, half-truths and outright lies. They thus do not eliminate freedom, they reduce it to a menu of authorized freedoms. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
3. …And it is not only dictatorships: At the end of the day, the political center itself defines those who receive the bulk of their information on political and social issues coming from main stream corporate and commercial media sources. To be a part of centrist thinking you have to accept the rules of the theater. Once you exit the theater you are no longer an asset to the corporate world. (Reader Supported News)
4. In this gloomy scenario, human rights (HR) in the media simply must become more seductive, not only be about rationality. This highlights the role of a seductive communication strategy that can positively coopt particularly the youth and the middle class to the HR cause. (Esther Solano) In other words, we have to cleverly ‘capsulize’ HR concepts to make them into seductive message. (Achin Vanaik)
No technology or innovation is capable of saving humanity from itself.
5. Digital technology is a kind of domin/ant/eering common good; it allows those who own and control it to exert power outside traditional channels of political and/or legal influence. Those who own and control the most powerful digital technologies will, more and more, write the rules of society itself. But no technology ought to be beyond the reach of human politics! This is why, if nothing but for HR sake, we should care about who has a say in the digital future.
6. Moreover, networked artificial intelligence, we are told, will increase human efficiency. But it will also threaten human autonomy and capabilities. AI is likely to provide us with both, great opportunities and difficult challenges. Technological advances do raise concerns about possible negative impacts on jobs, personal privacy, HR, society, the economy, and politics. …Nothing new here.
7. Experts have estimated that, in the next 15 years, about half of our jobs will be taken over by automation and robotics. It is interesting to note that some of the goals that could lead to the destruction of humanity could be programmed by us. The goal of AI should be to create useful intelligence and, for that, AI systems need to be safe and secure –legal systems thus need to be urgently updated so as to manage the risks associated with AI. Artificial intelligence systems must be designed and implemented in such a way that they are compatible with the ideals of human dignity, HR, freedoms and cultural diversity.
8. Once a totalitarian AI-controlling state emerges, it will be virtually impossible for people to overthrow it. Will artificial intelligence improve-us-like-never-before, or will it give-power-to-some-that-we-cannot-control? How can we prevent superintelligence from turning against us? There is absolutely no guarantee that we will succeed in building human-level general artificial intelligence in our lifetime. (Nadia Batok)
Some hope after despair?
9. Pessimism sounds smart. Optimism sounds dumb. It is no wonder, then that, in the internet, pessimistic messages hit the headlines, and optimistic ones hardly get a middle-page snippet; this is why doomsday thinkers get respect and accolades; they are the smart ones that ‘can see what the rest of us cannot’. There is an ‘optimism stigma’ that is pervasive throughout society. But the world desperately needs more optimism to make progress, so I/we should stop being so shy about it. People mistakenly see optimism as an excuse for inaction; they think that it is pessimism that drives change, and optimism that keeps us where we are. The opposite is true. Optimists are the ones that move us forward. They are the innovators; the risk takers; the ones willing to put their reputation and time on the line, because they see an opportunity to solve problems, HR included. (Big Think)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
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Postscript/Marginalia
-The absolute instantaneousness that we demand when faced with any request for information through the messaging system that we use through our cell phones produces an enormous degree of disquiet and anxiety when we do not get immediate response to the question asked or the request for information required. (Albino Gomez).