AI engines, hidden controls

Not only is India the world’s most populated country, but it is also the world’s biggest market for consumer goods – a market ready to be exploited by the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google using their AI-enhanced software products. Google’s current language translation software is being expanded to include a large number of previously ignored Indian languages, spoken by millions who now have smartphones, extra disposable income, and easy access to the internet. To the computer-savvy Indian, this may all seem quite obvious.

However, what is not so obvious are the two principal downsides to this rapid expansion in internet capability, especially when it comes to searching the web in a plethora of languages, be it for looking up/sharing information or online shopping. The unchallenged leaders in facilitating these activities are Google, which provides the virtual content, and Amazon, which brokers the selling of all manner of physical goods.

The dissemination of misinformation and disinformation has gotten a whole lot easier using ‘slop’, a term used to describe digital content of low-quality AI that is currently permeating the web on a hitherto unknown scale. According to The Guardian, more than 20 per cent of all digital imagery YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users is AI slop; the ‘nudification’ algorithms of Musk’s Grok are a disturbing example. This can prove especially troublesome at election time since it is during election campaigns that misogyny, racism, and xenophobia tend to peak.

The automatic incorporation of AI into search engines permits AI algorithms to unilaterally make decisions without consulting the user. Shopping decisions can now be made by AI algorithms, and it is only a matter of time before these same algorithms will decide for you how you should vote in any election. Democracy is in danger, and few voters realise this. Imagine what would happen if a user were to ask search engines to make recommendations on which party and/or which candidate he or she should vote for in an upcoming election. It is only the rare user who would question the recommendation made by the engine and make up their own minds.

How you lean politically on a given issue can easily be inferred from your web activity – which articles you read, which media and think-tank websites you visit, which political parties you contribute to, etc. The context in which you got interested in reading a set of articles about a particular topic is conveniently ignored. Moreover, since AI produces an automatic summarisation of any and all articles, readers end up not bothering to read the original articles in their entirety, even though the summaries may be entirely misleading. Even though the summaries are accompanied by the search engine company’s caveat that the summarisation may not be accurate, readers tend to ignore the warning, thereby letting the companies absolve themselves of any legal liability.

In civil and criminal cases, when lawyers base their arguments on case summaries generated by AI, the law gets perverted, since nuances and context aren’t exactly AI’s forte.

Donald Trump has called for the unfettered access of America’s high-tech companies, especially Big Tech, to world markets and has threatened to sanction any country that attempts to rein in these companies by enforcing their data and privacy protection rules and levying multimillion-dollar fines because of their monopolistic behaviour.

The windowless, soulless modern architectural marvels that are warehouses, typically located in sparsely populated rural areas where land is plentiful and cheap, which have sprouted across the globe to serve the wants and needs of a consumer society, can also serve as detention camps in case the customers, in whatever country, rise in revolt. An equally monstrous set of buildings in similar locations, which house data centres, use a tremendous amount of electricity and water resources, depriving citizens of these scarce commodities.

Since both types of warehouses are considered US assets that further America’s economic interests worldwide, any threats to these could trigger a military response. To paraphrase Trump, the Pentagon is always locked and loaded.

You will be gratified to know that, and here I am quoting Google, “Google runs regular checks for the information you care about and lets you know if it shows up in search results.” It helps you find personal information, and if the removal request meets policy requirements, Google will remove the information for everyone.

Good luck finding what Google’s policy requirements are, and even better luck trying to decipher ‘for everyone’.

The writer is a computer scientist, a newly minted Luddite and a cynic.