[ Dr. Aleksandr Grebenyuk, deputy research director, social sciences school, MSU ] Artificial intelligence, big data, social media
have been very beneficial to us in many ways
They save time and effort. They're technological breakthroughs
But along with that come things that have a whole set of negative consequences
Everyone has a choice about what social media is for them?
Is it a tool for something, or is it part of life?
[ Danila Medvedev, applied futurist, head, Neyrokod software project ] Smartphones stole up on us! They're part of life now
We should think about what will happen in 30 or 50 years
How will people exist in this virtual and digital world?
[ Ruslan Yusufov, executive partner, Mindsmith ] Some research suggests
we're all living in a bubble
Because the content we consume shapes our reality
[ Yusufov ] My perception of reality probably differs from yours
The internet has given us access to all the information in the world
But algorithms lock us inside a worldview that may be difficult to evade
[ Artur Khachuyan, big data specialist, CEO, Tazeros global systems ] If we look at the top 10-15 tech corporations' influence,
they shape practically 100% of the information space
[ Khachuyan ] They directly resell advertisers' content to us,
and decide who sees what content, when, and how much of it
It's a mistake to assume Google, for example,
shows 100% results for any given query
Hopefully, you'll get a third of it. The rest is simply hidden
If we want answers that go against the policy
of a search engine or a social network,
it'll be a big problem
[ Yusufov ] I want to read about this, but not that!
So I cut off much information by liking certain stuff 3 times
Now, I have to struggle to get this information
I either have to install some cookie blockers,
or use a special search engine that can block it,
or I need to use Tor for anonymity,
or I need to visit sites I don't usually go to
and consume information I wouldn't normally consume
[ Khachuyan ] Naturally, any algorithm can be
tweaked, modified somehow, and any agenda added
For example, what drives post-2010 social networks
are left-wing agendas
I'm not judging whether it's a good thing or bad... It's just a fact
Right-wing is unfashionable, and such content will be downplayed
Any Trump tweet immediately sank to the bottom
Any BLM tweet got immediately picked up, especially noticeable on TikTok
It's known as 'shadow banning',
the most damaging thing that can happen to a content source
The best example is RT's YouTube account
It's not marked as a news agency, or as a data source from Russia
But we can see that the account has very few views
YouTube displays a much lower amount of RT videos
Here's a simple experiment: take any of the channel's topics,
make a new YouTube account, on a clean computer,
type in the query, and you'll see all video sources, except RT's
IN THIS CASE, A SPIKE IN HITS TRIGGERED AN ALGORITHM THAT CHANGED SEARCH RESULT RANKINGS
[ Khachuyan ] Where did these ranking algorithms come from?
FB's goal - they were the first - was to show people ads
and to monetise it
They developed algorithms. That's where FB's
first machine learning libraries came from
Here's how they do content personalisation:
they analyse everyone's data preferences
Advertising used to be aimed at a specific segment, unmarried women or childless men
And now every ad is personalised, aimed at a specific person
[ Khachuyan ] First, people see content shared by their friends
And that content has a similar ad theme to pique people's interest
Then the ad banner is shown. They click, FB gets money
There would be nothing wrong with it if, in the 21st century, in 2021,
these algorithms worked the way they say
Facebook claims these algorithms are there to learn about our specific preferences
Actually, untrue! They're shaping preference
And what and whose preferences are shaped is left entirely up to private companies
If, tomorrow, a person finds a fake or legit video,
saying the Earth's flat,
then this content ranks higher
At least, 20%, or maybe even 40% would believe it's true
It's a very dangerous thing
Media used to be state-owned. They had propaganda, an agenda, censorship...
Now it belongs to non-transparent algorithms
That's good because algorithms aren't human. They do things strictly!
However, there is a way to manipulate them
[ Gleb Mikheev, CTO, Beta digital production ] 'We collect your data, store it wisely,
we only need it to improve quality'
True! It's how it is
But they get to know too much
They really want to improve. But you will spend more time on that site
You use a better service more
You can't stop watching these videos,
and scroll endlessly through your FB
[ Khachuyan ] Then they can sell you more ads. So it's a direct benefit to them
The best example of attention retention is TikTok's endless feed
Pages to browse, so less time's spent there...
a trivial thing, but true
And you scroll endlessly
No bottom, but that's maybe the TikTok joke. There's no bottom to the feed
THE AVERAGE USER SPENDS AROUND 400 MINUTES PER DAY ONLINE
[ Medvedev ] An average person, user or gamer, gets hooked on dopamine,
on the opportunity to get a narcotic high,
all devised by the game designers or UX designers behind social media and apps
People are motivated to make money, so they write good software,
or bad software, but it's very enticing
People click the links, money flows in,
which is spent on developing even more dangerous and addictive software
[ Grebenyuk ] The new economic trend, the so-called attention economy,
is doing much more to bring about dependence on networks,
on the internet, than anything else
Once conditions for making money from our attention have developed,
we fall under a very strong influence
There's a war going on for our views, and free time
Competition's huge!
We're talking tens of, hundreds of billions of dollars, and the market's growing fast
[ Khachuyan ] Another crucial sociological effect,
which we'll only be able to assess in 20 years,
is the ever widening polarisation of society
The average Russian was a bit leftist, rightist, and somewhat feminist
Feminists now sit in their echo chamber, not talking to anybody else,
or accepting other ideas
The far-right uses Telegram to out Russian girls in relationships with black people
They've got their echo chamber: no interaction with anyone else
It's the same for Putin and Navalny fans
The algorithms have deeply polarised society
So people don't engage in dialogue, but throw mud
Such people will never agree with each other
This is all guided by someone
[ Rustem Khairetdinov, director of development, BI.zone ] Social media hugely boosted
something that's always been: feedback!
You can target a specific person, of a certain age, financial status etc
This is used in politics too. Cambridge Analytica was just...
They got busted, if you will
It's overdone and companies that advertise have been doing it for some time
[ Khachuyan ] America saw many scandals during Trump's election
The same issues and stories
generated different search results in different states
Google says it's down to personalisation of results
And, for example, if I'm a liberal woman, googling:
'Is abortion good or bad?', the only result would be: abortion's OK
If I'm, say, a white Christian, a very extreme one,
the only answer I'd get to that question is that abortion is a sin, and so forth
We should question people's lack of critical thinking
They can't look at problems from 2 sides anymore
So people believe it's the answer to their question
Everyone sees answers to posted content, and these answers make it to the top
You can't get an objective answer to any question,
because it's an agenda targeted at you personally
You'd need another account for different content
You'd need one for a housewife and another for a single man
[ Medvedev ] Then you'd have your own agenda
The big minus is that society isn't ready for digitisation
No one gets how humans should function in the virtual world
We evolved in the physical world
We used to communicate with each other in the physical world
Now we interact with a screen. And no one knows what the consequences of that are
Potentially, it could be valuable technology,
if people used computers to become better and smarter
But in practice people just want better entertainment
[ Anna Kulik, profiler ] Just look at our lives!
We're never entirely by ourselves!
Even when we're physically alone in a room,
we're still in contact with someone
Now, it's important to share with everyone what you feel and what you see
We're changing our thinking too:
from individualisation to how does the world see me?
It's now less important to understand your inner self, how you feel,
how to interpret things correctly,
but rather to broadcast a certain and not necessarily true version of our reality
I'm not here and now. I'm out there somewhere!
[ Medvedev ] If you know that you really need to give your brain a break,
or your psychologist suggests a digital detox, do it!
You can do it, or try meditation and it may clear your brain
But the question remains, then what?
Because people have no choice but to reinstall Facebook,
and start watching TikTok videos again
We all need an alternative,
but we don't know where to go, or what we want to be free from
[ Grebenyuk ] A personal account, chatting online, likes and number of views
are suddenly the ultimate value
There's an illusion that a person with no social media doesn't exist
Like the news: if an event isn't on the internet, it didn't happen
Again, it's a misinterpretation of...
human nature
You can't just socially exclude people who don't have accounts
[ Medvedev ] If we're in a virtual space and think of that virtual space as real,
we think all that communication and learning there
are as important as what happens in the real world,
then we should think harder about it than moving to another country
If someone wants to move to Europe, America, or Australia,
it's a serious decision
But for a move to the virtual world, somehow
nobody cares. It's like, yeah, big deal!
[ Yusufov ] If 90% of the population wants to...
consume content, dumb entertainment, some super-innovative games
and want to be paid for it, and do nothing…
Well, it may sound utopian, because it meets the needs of the 90%
But the other 10% may say, we're slipping backwards into total dystopia
It's about values and needs
[ Kulik ] Hard times create strong people
Strong people create easy times
Easy times create...
weak people
So it's a circle
[ Yusufov ] Imagine that we stopped working because we had no more space to work
AI, robots and various types of automation…
have replaced many types of work
And I might assume that most of the world's population receives
money or services through some kind of social support
Also, people could get entertainment through gaming and virtual worlds
And it would be more exciting than gloomy Moscow with its bad weather
[ Medvedev ] Clearly, if we wait for 20 to 25 years,
people might be immersed in that illusion forever
We have absolutely no plan
and no projection of what that should look like
[ Yusufov ] Because in addressing a number of security issues, geopolitics and so on,
corporations and countries aiming to ensure
global security is starting to play a big role
[ Khachuyan ] Society likes to think: if someone
bad gets blocked, an evil government does it
If someone good, then it's a company doing what it likes
It's impossible to hide! If they want to block you, they'll do it anyway
Private owners can do what they want
[ Medvedev ] There is digital censorship, but digital
self-censorship too, and its commercialisation
It's not done by a government censor,
as it was in imperial times, who was smart and educated
Nowadays, censorship is carried out by low-paid foreign workers
from somewhere like Bangladesh
And Facebook hires them as moderators to
block posts that don't fit with the party line
In my opinion, the situation is a lot uglier,
because almost all our communication is now through paid, commercial platforms
Users have absolutely no rights,
and in this case, I endorse
reasonable government initiatives to create alternatives
For example, a guaranteed email service and internet access for all citizens
Let's say someone violates a provider's rules and gets cut off
Then we see: if we take the digitisation path,
we have to defend our rights there too
And this is a problem of today:
by communicating digitally, on someone else's platform,
we're basically handing over our own social standing and own identity
If someone keeps a personal journal,
they record their deepest, most private thoughts that define them as a person
Moreover, some psychologists say that keeping a journal
is an essential part of personal development:
where they self-question, have an inner discussion
Now, imagine: what if his or her journal is
on a digital platform owned by someone else?
In that case, it turns out that all their private inner thoughts...
can be censored by someone, who may think the thoughts are wrong,
and everything they've written down could be used against them
We already talk about the idea of digital immortality,
where the entirety of all digital content a person produces,
what I say now, all video that gets recorded, every message I send,
someone could save it all!
And as digital storage gets cheaper, I'm pretty sure it's happening
If there's the potential, scientifically and philosophically,
to replicate my identity so that a virtual avatar can talk like me,
the same intonation, meaning and understanding of the ideas in my head,
formed by indirect characteristics. If that becomes possible, it will mean
that companies or commercial organisations basically own my soul, my identity
It could be anything existentially scary,
but there are real, concrete legal and ethical issues
that are not yet clear, like, what can they do with my soul?
I mean, could they delete the data?
Imagine, in all the data that Google, Yandex and Facebook have about me,
there's me... My 'digital shadow'
That 'digital shadow' should potentially have some rights
There's another question: what if they ever want to use my stored knowledge
to give a neural network a digitised knowledge base?
[ Medvedev ] Many questions arise
In fact, we're talking about the potential for transition to
a whole new level of human existence
Vernadsky called it the noosphere, in which humanity forms one brain, 1 organism
Modern philosophers and futurologists endorse this
but we have no idea about the rules for it
Here, humanity has reached...
a fork in the road: in one sense we're progressing,
and in another, we're losing out to AI
Human-level AI is on the horizon, which could potentially surpass us,
and bring to life The Matrix at best, or The Terminator at worst
[ Nikita Mokhnatkin, head, information systems protection sector, Innopolis University ] Artificial intelligence is a powerful expression
But philosophy says that intelligence must, by itself, form connections between events,
draw its own inferences and create new logical links
Current AI can't do that
Modern AI is no more than a classifier
that can only say the words, 'yes' or 'no', well, with a level of probability
But to say that AI could control anything more sophisticated than traffic lights...
that's much more of a sci-fi scenario than a realistic one
[ Grebenyuk ] For me, critical technology is
technology that could drastically change society
And AI is critical by any measure
Without actively developing it, every country's security will be at risk
All countries in the world, which have an advanced military capability,
have started a race...
to be the first to create a military AI, for example, to control armies
[ Yusufov ] A person makes decisions based on ethical principles and rules within society
Artificial intelligence is devoid of what we think of as human morality, right?
Or what we call ethics
There's some great research that asked young children,
if they'd save one man's life or 100 puppies
The kids all chose the puppies!
Do we train the AI
according to the values of children? Or of adults?
What about the problems that self-driving car makers now face?
If a collision is imminent, who gets hit by the car:
a pregnant woman, an old lady, a child?
How do you assess that and choose? Imagine you go to a car dealership...
to buy a self-driving car,
and you're asked if, in an emergency,
you'd prefer the car to veer into a pole, but as the driver, you'd die,
or should it kill a pedestrian?
That's a question humanity will face in the near future
The changes that advanced technology,
like AI will bring, could lead us into terrible darkness
Because we're responsible, our generation is responsible
[ Mokhnatkin ] If we talk about a technological AI revolution,
I think it's possible under two conditions:
firstly, when artificial intelligence learns to draw its own conclusions,
and secondly, if it learns to learn without a teacher,
when it can perform actions and understand their consequences
[ Yusufov ] Because of biotech
and digital technology, people will start to think faster
Those who have access to innovations will make better decisions
Access to healthcare will give longer life
So, the people who live much longer and decide better,
they'll form a new type of human that Professor Harari calls, 'Homo Deus'
And all the rest? They'll never catch up, just because...
because of that difference, the gap will grow wider and wider
[ Yusufov ] It's probably not so scary, we don't have to take either side
We don't have to oppose technology. It's a great thing that may offer
lots of positives, we could...
be free of our daily routine. We could be happier
We could, thanks to algorithms, socialise with people like close family
The possibilities are endless, but there is a negative side we must keep in mind
I have no idea how people might promote the technology, and consider the bad side
I don't know, perhaps, by talking it through and with open discussion like that,
by cultivating our own maturity and growth, after that, it will all become the norm.