Breda O’Brien: Tech giants are undermining democracy

We live in an age where every change is heightened and accelerated by the impact of the internet. It is an age of paradox when two seemingly contradictory things can be true. The internet connects; the internet divides.

Some people think the internet is run by liberals who attempt to undermine conservatives at every turn. That is pretty much true. Others think it is a haven for conservatives, allowing direct access to audiences in a way that was impossible before. That is pretty much true, too.

But nonetheless, one cumulative effect is that differences are heightened and identities become tribal. As trust in others and the belief in the common good erodes, the new culture of condemnation undermines democracy.

Given the pace of change, there is something quaint about the US congressional hearings featuring Twitter, Facebook and the conspicuous absence of Google. It is like watching dinosaurs interview humans about extinction events.

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The whole way our world works has changed and no one quite gets it, not even the tech giants. Law professor Kate Klonick uses a great phrase in an article in the Harvard Law Review about Big Tech: our new governors.

The ones who rule us now are not our governments but those who control the flow of information or create the hardware and software through which information flows.

Kowtowing

This new power is reflected in Apple’s cash reserves of $267.2 billion in the second quarter of this year. That figure was a decrease on the previous quarter. God forbid that it should pay its fair share of tax. The Irish economy might collapse, dependent as it is on attracting corporations by our local level of taxation.

In our kowtowing to these tech giants, we are ignoring that social media companies are all about capturing our attention and selling that attention to people who want us to buy not just things but ideologies.

Who would have thought that the internet, which was once viewed as the great leveller that allowed everyone to participate in debate, would instead reinforce the re-emergence of elites

We are in thrall to technology on a personal and communal level. We worry vaguely about the internet making us stupid, with good reason, but we scarcely address the undermining of democracy, which happens at a level much more subtle than fake news.

Consider the way modern technology fosters the growth of elites for whom accountability amounts to little more than occasional lame-duck congressional hearings.

But the elites are not being captured in the same way as the rest of us. Maryanne Wolf, in a recent Guardian article, says the "neuronal circuit that underlies the brain's ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing – a change with implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult".

Skim reading has become the new norm. But for a smaller number, particularly among the upper classes, it has signalled a return to the long read, and an emphasis on distraction-free periods of concentrated deep thought.

What social grouping will enforce limits on screen use for toddlers and children? The wealthy middle classes. What social grouping sends their children to elite schools that will not allow the use of technology in the classroom?

The Los Altos Waldorf primary school in California costs $25,000 a year and is packed with the children of executives who work in Google, eBay and Apple. All classrooms are completely technology-free.

Who would have thought that the internet, which was once viewed as the great leveller that allowed everyone to participate in debate, would instead reinforce the re-emergence of elites educated and smart enough not to succumb to it?

While it may be fun to watch members of Congress make Twitter's Jack Dorsey or Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg squirm, it does not represent real accountability.

Algorithms are now being used to steer or even determine many of our choices, from the books Amazon recommends to us, to whether the bank will give us a loan. Our politicians' dependency on opinion polling is just another form of algorithm.

Reinforcing bias

Far from being magical, algorithms are programmed by humans. Cathy O'Neil, the American mathematician and author of several books on big data including in Weapons of Math Destruction, convincingly showed that they can be used to reinforce bias.

Sometimes, the consequences of algorithms are farcical, such as clashing Amazon algorithms that end up pricing a popcorn popper at $6,370.81.

The weird specificity of that number is funny but the consequences for people who are denied parole in US prisons because of an algorithm that discriminates against people from specific postcodes is not.

O'Neil makes the point in a Wired interview, that what we have at the moment is data without wisdom. She has proposed auditing the algorithms used by Big Tech in order to counteract their unintended negative consequences and has set up a business to do so.

But to produce better algorithms in the first place, what we need most is not more efficient technology but more emphasis on philosophy and ethics.

But given that ethics and philosophy are likely to undermine revenues, our new governors will continue to issue vague promises to improve but do little in concrete terms to enforce ethical oversight. The dinosaurs need to pass some laws enforcing auditing of the algorithms that govern our lives because our new governors never will.