OUR WORLD - Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence

PERSPECTIVES ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
of misinformation is not illegal. Should
we prohibit people from sharing private
content, the validity of which they cannot
judge? Of course not.
What we can demand and desperately
need, however, is transparency, first of
all for recommendation systems – the
artificial intelligence employed to govern
content. A Wall Street Journal report
found extremist content in a third of
all Facebook groups. The groups were
recommended to 66% of members by a
Facebook algorithm. We have a societal
right to know about and publicly debate
these decision mechanisms. Meaningful
transparency will be increasingly
important in the future - just think about
deep fakes – but it is already urgent.
AlgorithmWatch, a Berlin-based NGO,
has made concrete proposals regarding
researchers’ and investigative journalists’
access to raw data.
The mechanisms which currently
control our communication and
significant portions of the basic
information in public debate are a
veritable black box. Independent
researchers only have restricted access
to data, with access to public application
programming interfaces (APIs) being
increasingly curtailed in recent years,
leaving Facebook, YouTube and the like
to use every psychological trick to exploit
their knowledge monopoly. As a society,
we must put an end to this. We ought to
be able to co-determine rules for digital
opinion-forming marketplaces, based on
hard facts currently withheld from us by
conglomerates.
I propose “Social Media Councils”
as a model for public debate, similar
to Citizens’ Assemblies in Ireland,
comprising civil society, experts for
freedom of expression, democracy
and technology, and representatives of
groups particularly affected by hatred
and hate speech. They can trigger public
debates based on evidence gained
through transparency obligations,
identify good and bad practice, and
issue recommendations for action to
politicians. Facebook and its internal
ethics committee seek to privatise
precisely this public debate. Facebook’s
<strong>OUR</strong> <strong>WORLD</strong> | January 2021
own internal appraisal of its practices
is commendable, but in the long run a
committee answerable to the CEO will
never decide in society’s favour over its
own boss’s business interests. That is
why we need space for public reflection.
Prominent Facebook critics such as
Carole Cadwalladr, who exposed the
Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Roger
McNamee, early investor in Facebook
and venture capitalist, have joined forces
in the “Real Facebook Oversight Board” to
publicise particularly dubious practices.
Micro-targeting and targeted
advertising, i.e. the dissemination of
advertising to very small target groups
based on previously collected and
collated data, must also urgently be
banned. The resulting gigantic database
with millions of highly detailed user
profiles also enables misleading
messages to be spread to especially
ISTOCK
susceptible users and is thus highly
problematic. Moreover, Google and
Facebook control large sections of the
ad-tech market, thereby constantly
expanding their market shares to
the detriment of European media
outlets. Nowadays, press publishers’
proceeds are also highly dependent
on behaviour-based advertisement.
However, the Dutch public broadcaster
NPO has demonstrated that equally
successful methods for context-based
advertisement can exist without personal
data or spying on and pursuing people
via various websites and into their offline
lives. A viable press financing model
is needed to reinforce substantiated
reporting as a foundation of liberty and
democracy, whilst not inadvertently
weakening that very democracy
through the unwanted dissemination of
misinformation.
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