AI is making the news. This astonishing technology is enabling some Nobel-prize-worthy new scientific breakthroughs. AI also makes the news for the wrong reasons – it’s being used to create clickbait, deepfakes, pornography, election misinformation,… and companies that help supply data may be exploitative and harmful. But in reality, none of this is new – AI is just the latest and easiest way to achieve such twisted goals.
I have a bigger problem with social media today. Our large social media companies deliberately use content curation strategies which amplify polarisation, causing harm to the fabric of our societies. They show inappropriate content to our children, causing numerous psychological issues. The saying goes that if the product is free, then you are the product. These companies treat us - their users, their “product” - as disposable. There’s always more being born. Why look after our wellbeing when they can make easy money from exploiting and amplifying our weaknesses until we break? “Churn” is one easy term used to brush under the carpet those whose lives have been ruined by social media.
But what if there were a different kind of tech company that cared about us? A company that laid its foundation in principles of improving one’s awareness of themselves, their surroundings, their “consciousness”. A company that used AI not to exploit us, but to help us understand ourselves better, so that we might make better life choices. This is the hypothetical scenario that forms the core of Michael Rosen’s new novel, The Consciousness Company. It’s a familiar story of two founders starting in a garage and inventing a new kind of AI technology. We watch as they navigate the world of investors and company growth. What’s fascinating about this story is the way it is told: we live inside the heads of the characters, who are unnamed. We hear their thoughts, their feelings, and we notice how little of their world they perceive. We see how everyone is wrapped up in their own lives, their minds following often trivial tracks that bear little relation to the physical world they inhabit. And we see how they are changed over time, in a slow awakening to their realities. Rosen imagines ever more advanced technologies as the company grows towards global market share. He shows us some of the ethical dilemmas faced by such a company, and even how one of the founders reaches a messiah-like status, while the other is left feeling inadequate.
But the question remained with Rosen’s hypothetical company – how would it make return on the investment? When it finally pivoted from the Silicon Valley notion of growth of user base to monetisation, what values might it sacrifice and what would it become? Would it mutate into another monster as our social media platforms have become? If so, would it be a monster with AI-powered mind-reading and manipulation powers that could destroy societies? It sounds all too familiar. Rosen leaves us to make up our own minds.
The author Michael Rosen sponsored this blog entry.
