A great danger to mankind from false news and digital dictatorship

Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harary owns an extraordinary gift to expand his field of investigation and analysis without clouding covered themes, putting the pieces of mosaic made up of boxes of various origin: history, biology, neuroscience, technology...

What is the subject of the mosaic this time? The main subject, man: where it comes from, where it's going. Evidence of its spreading, epic and amazing ability is the book bestseller “Sapiens: A brief history of humanity” that shows, on 500 pages, through evolutionary stages and technological discoveries, a millions of years of adventure: from the appearance of the Homo gender on Earth and to the present, passing through the affirmation of Homo Sapiens, thanks to his power of imagination.

With “Homo Deusin”, he designed analysis of what is expected to happen in the future, between dreams and anxieties of a technologically advanced world where it can be lived without the human factor.

“T 21 lectures for the XXI”, it addresses the most pressing problems of currentity, putting them in a historical perspective, in order to weigh their internal value: manipulation of reality, biotechnology, privacy, digital dictatorship, new forms of censorship...

Harary, false news is not a new phenomenon. But today the threat is greater. Why?

Propaganda has always produced false news. But at one time it was not possible to spread false stories to billions in an hour. So the real danger of lying is greater than before. And that's also because the false news has a new goal: the quest for human attention, which is the current greatest battle, where many people are willing to exploit <x0-cells<x1 most emotionally: fear and hatred. The danger is to break down the public sphere, our inability to have normal communication.

False news and extinguish identity. With social networks, it's possible to change. Or hide our true identity...

Each of us's identity has a lot of fiction. It's always been like this. We build our individual history on the basis of autobiographical facts, but also invented religious and cultural elements; books or movies yesterday.

Today Facebook and Instagram; and social networks in general have for the first time made our mental processes evident: choosing this or that photo to post, among other 1,000, is something that happened only in our mind.

Now these processes can be seen by foreign actors, but even the state authorities who can learn what we could not get out of, nor the most cruel torture of the Middle Ages. And we do this with our consent! It's too dangerous when someone knows you better than you know yourself. Except for one chance.

Which one?

Our mother's. Mothers have great power over their children because they want the best for them. Until adolescence, they know us better than we know ourselves. But if now it's the government, or a party that doesn't think for your own good, and that doesn't care about growing up but just using these platforms, then the danger is clear.

We're almost too close to monitoring an individual's movements for 24 hours of the night. But the real revolution is monitoring through biometric data, what happens with blood pressure, or brain activity. It's not a science fiction, because we're developing sensors, who know what happens to our hearts and brains when we watch TV.

Orwell's Big Brother. It was a Soviet regime dystopi, but now it's triumphing in the digital market of consumers...

Think about Netflix, he can collect this data to measure your commitment and others with a character, and change his weight in history. And that's okay. But if someone can study the way you react to a politician, if you're turned on by a sex or violence scene, then things aren't good.

Some time ago I went to one of the stores of “Guccico” in Milan, to a room designed by H-farm (a digital platform of innovation), where a video shows photos and scenes of couples kissing, mother with a son, and you have sensors that record pleasure, embarrassment or empathy to those devices.

I ask: If you see a kiss between two men and you don't like it, can you label yourself homophobic? And if you like, are you gay? And I'm not talking about an instrument of Chinese government, I'm talking about a fashion company! Now let's imagine we're in Iran or Saudi Arabia, where there's an extreme sentence on homosexuality. I go to a school or a barracks and I say: “Okay guys, look at this screen and put this helmet to your head”

Orwell again. There will be police mind: Are we building a machine of truth?

Yeah, and very advanced. Because he does not tell us if we are lying, but he is able to see within us our desires and fears. This is the basis of the greatest dictatorship in history, a power that Stalin and Hitler did not have. Now digital dictatorship can speak on the one hand by propaganda, and it will crush any individual who opposes the system.

Fantastic had warned us. But some nightmares yesterday, they look like dreams today...

Today science fiction has a big problem. She's confusing artificial intelligence with consciousness, humanizing robots. And it's harmful because today science fiction is the channel through which many people learn technology news.

But it is absurd to fear that robots and computers will gain conscience, and rebel against us, because the problem is the opposite: they will always obey us humans, without arguing, unlike the soldiers of people, who can be demoralized or deserted. The real danger is the blind obedience of robots to a political party or to a government. There is no rebellion. There will be only one small human elite with a great power in her hands.

You write that algorithms will lead to a kind of automatic, de-humanized decision-making in the private and public realm...

We're going to have less control over the choices we make in life, over what we study, with the man we're going to get married... just like an algorithm tells us what to see on TV, or how we do today.

Let's go to a certain place in town.

Major financial decisions can be made based on algorithms that can make accounts far more elaborate than human ones, usually managing the maximum 3-4 factors. An algorithm can account for thousands of factors, which weigh only zero points, and escape our understanding.

To provide a mortgage, banks will consult the algorithm, which processes thousands of risk factors. If she refuses you, she won't give you a clear explanation, but a file with dozens of sheets with algorithm calculations. Decisions can be made on their own.

Applying to politics, this picture becomes very disturbing. Can algorithms endanger democracy?

This is a big risk. In the past, the reasonings of a speaker like Cicceron were heard, or influenced by propaganda to choose whether to support a war or not, and people focused on a few current topics. Today, the most extreme options can be restored to judgment of logos.

And this is something that is already happening in the military, where terrorists are often executed in fear. Whether to kill or not, the decision is not yet made by an algorithm, but the definition of the suspect as a terrorist is. At least in the U.S. and Israel, this is done through algorithms based on a person's pattern of behavior that is monitored on the basis of exchanged information and his suspicious contacts. A lot of data that people can't process.

You're a fan of “Black Mirror”. In an episode of the first series, imagine the existence of artificially intelligent robots with whom it is possible to engage in sexual relations. What happens to Homo sapiens if people go alone with robots?

Artificial intelligence does not need human forms, as the film “Her” clearly shows (It). Other films are wrong when they are anthropomorphizing robots. The car driving itself does not need the driver's help. The only area in which human form is important is that sex.

But it won't take long. Because the real sex organ of Homo sapiens is head. Biotechnology will allow a deep interaction at the level of pleasure with something outside of us that has no human form, with a biotechnology connection. Pornography and the sex industry are sectors that will benefit the most from this progress, of course, behind the military sector. But this has its dangers. There are places where viewing pornographic pages is now monitored, producing data that some governments may use to blackmail or punish citizens.

What means do we have in order to avoid this digital dictatorship?

Progress cannot stop, but it can and should change direction in the way we use it. And this is happening. Liberal governments have avoided a control over the population, such as the one existing in totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, which were the result of massive communication means and modern infrastructure, but they did not destroy those tools.

We need to work on two levels. As individuals, we need to develop greater awareness of ourselves. I do this through meditation: in this way we reduce the gap between what they know about us, and what we know about ourselves.

And then we have to limit the power of multinationals and governments, with movement and parties that put the development of technologies at the top of the agenda, and help the citizen protect from their efforts in our lives. This thing isn't science fiction, it's gonna happen. And that's why we need a biotechnology antivirus.

Given your doubts about the way social societies and governments can use our data, I ask you: does it scare you more of a reconfirmation at the White House of Trump, or a surprise victory of Mark Zuckerberg?

At the moment, Zuckerberg does not represent anyone. If he were elected by most voters, it would be another story. However, it is a problem that someone who has not been elected by vote has so much power. As for Trump, I'm not an expert in the economy, and I don't know how he's ruling, but I'm afraid of his actions on the global scene, his withdrawal from global co-operation.

If American voters were to support this line, the U.S. would give up being the Guardian of the world, and when this one needs a leader, who will be headed? Trump or Zuckerberg... I'd be scared if I had to choose between the two. I hope the Americans find a third option. / La Lettura é world.al