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Happy Holidays and Peace for all throughout the world!
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Reality Hacking: The Secret
World Of AI, Bots And Fake News
James Canton Global
futurist, keynote presenter, adviser and Game-Changer. CEO, the Institute for
Global Futures. Author Future Smart, former Apple executive
This has been a busy post-election time with all of the
chaos around what I call Reality Hacking. I am trying to connect a number of
events to the emergence of the extreme future happening now. We didn’t really
have a term here. With the Russian hacking the US election, now pivoting to
Germany, left/right politicos in full cyber web gear and of course the Brexit
fallout, who has time to dig deep into the truth of why this is all connected
and all about the same spooky technology. OK I do.
Reality Hacking is the electronic manipulation of ideas,
opinions, news, information, cyber and my fav—propaganda bots. Why is this
happening, this new cyber tradecraft you might ask? The engineering of our
realities, (get it Reality Hacking) is the advanced use of artificial
intelligence programs called software bots and algorithms as well as big data
and analytics that can be applied to just about any issue, cause, problem or
challenge you want to influence. And you can wage info war, cyber attack and
manipulate public opinion.
The same tech we use to trade stocks, such as machine
intelligence, neural networks, really diverse forms of artificial intelligence,
we can and do use to influence elections. We just created a new digital species
that influences, as well as buys/sells, no actually is seeking to manipulate
attitudes and most likely votes. Hacking Reality used to influence elections
and harness attitudes that consumers hold, signals a new dangerous era of mass
communications. This is information warfare on steroids focused not on military
but civilian world. The nuanced soft war that goes on we don’t talk much about.
We have seen this before. Believe me when I say George Orwell, author of 1984
would be proud to know his forecast of the future of media has come true!
Just when we elected a new President in the US we found out
that there were more fake news postings by over one million plus on the web
(where else) then there were factual postings in the real media. And of course
this is all today online. I am not taking sides here but Reality Hacking has
become a weapon of choice by causes, non-state actors, nations, criminals,
terrorists and governments. Information warfare such as psyops, was once only
what government cyber shops did to each other. But now non-gov institutions,
like the elections are all fair game. We are in a cyberwar era where Reality
Hacking is the tool of war that has not been formerly declared.
One can recall the old days like when you only published
facts by real journalists. Oh and they had to fact check and confirm the
viability, credibility and authenticity of the news they were reporting. Hey
even the Guardian and the Times fact checked Snowden. Imagine that.
A few observations. Nobody I have met in leadership or in
power really understands the sophisticated technology behind Reality Hacking.
The most dramatic example of this of course is try to find anyone at the SEC to
explain the Flash Crash in the global market that crashed the stock market
wiping out billions in minutes. We were led to believe that a lone gunman
(sounds vaguely familiar) meaning a online stock trader hacking out of his
parents house in England, caused all the damage. Come on folks. Really it was
the software programs that swarmed automatically he created to hack the market
that did his bidding. AI at work, Look mom no hands.
The presumption that people could conduct a information war
against nations, companies, issues, elections or even people, to influence big
events like elections —is absurd yet true. Few leaders know the potential power
of automated computer technologies like artificial intelligence, AI forms such
as neural networks and machine intelligence. Every day AI trades stocks in the
billions of dollars, manufactures everything, manages energy and creates the
news—yes that even create the news.Trillions are buying and selling bits, ads,
stocks at speeds faster then humans can conceive are all run by AI.
Today AI works for the humans. Tomorrow this futurist
forecasts that autonomous AI will operate autonomously for its own agenda. AI
for AI. Think information viruses with the global impact of billions of
machines, trillions of dollars of Bitcoins and billions of mobile access minds
to influence; with an offer to buy this idea now.
In a recent talk on the future of AI I posed the biggest
challenge we faced as a civilization was to control AI before it controlled us.
Too late. Autonomy is the next battle. Move over intelligent machines here
comes autonomous bots, AI’s and fake news. Autonomous AI versus the humans—the
AI wars are coming. Another time for this meme.
In fact it works to not think about the link to AI to these
larger global transaction platforms that run banking or telecommunications or
you name it because if they are electronic, online they of course can be
hacked. And they are often. But this is the deeper stuff of scifi movies that
are in play now, here, just emerging the hacking of reality as a deliverable, a
product.
Of course the most diabolical Reality Hacks are the ones you
don’t hear about or that you don’t think exist. For example, if you read news
on the web, well it must be true. If you see it on the evening news then its
got credibility. The assumption of truth when we see it is high. But now we
know we are swimming in search engines, ad servers, artificial intelligence
that serves us fake news, manipulated news and propaganda bots shape our
reality—thus Reality Hacking is the new science of big data persuasion. Do
people want to be entertained more then they want the truth? Now that is
spooky.
I don’t think the threat of the Russian hacks of our electoral
computers is as potent as the fake news that was generated on Facebook, or the
thousands of websites automatically spewing out news that seeks to influence
peoples attitudes. Reality Hacking designed just to shed doubt and to stoke the
embers of dissent or distrust really has worked wonders on millions of folks.
Do we care about what is real. We should.
To chalk this up to living in a filer bubble, where search
engines show us just what we want to see, misses the point. Its the engineering
of our cyber mindset by what the Reality Hackers think we Should Value. I am OK
with tricking out ads and marketing with this but it has gone well beyond this
when we are taking elections, public opinion and governance in democracies.
Reality Hacking is behind the British people being
influenced to vote for Brexit. The tricked out algo’s, the software bots swayed
minds and hearts. The public only saw a limited Group Think of information on
the issues, over one third said afterwards. The narrowing of the search engines
to show you what the AI in the search engines “thought” you would want to see,
helped to influence the Brexit vote. It is quite impossible to assume this was
not engineered by humans or engineered AI’s working for conviction based
movements—Anti EU for example.
The Russian hack of the US election was not so much
targeting computers as to change the hearts and minds and therefore the
neuroscience of persuasion which leads to votes. The Reality Hackers set to
disorient and spread a sense of questions, doubts, chaos and
vulnerability—democracy is a vulnerable institution that cannot be protected
from hackers, is a great story. Chaos rules. I don’t think this worked 100% but
it didn’t have to. Instilling fear from fake news and propaganda bots did
influence voter mindsets. Who is the better candidate when your afraid?
Reality Hacking, the purposeful manipulation of news,
information, content, attitudes and ideas via the internet is here to stay.
Likely the more connected we are to our mobile, auto, VR, IoT and computer
infused Blended Reality will only make us more accessible to those that would
have us embrace their “truth”. We should beware and learn to embrace the real
from the fake. The actual authentic media has a role here. But the larger
issues of engineering our reality, influencing our public policy issues should
be looked at. It is not all entertainment.
If there was ever a time to push back and insure that
democracies demand truth and honesty it is now. We get the future we make. We
get the future we fight for. What kind of future do you want this year?
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In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ
has a website with great
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Over
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