To feel the (algo) rhythm of life is to feel the powerful beat

Journalists are the awkward squad asking difficult questions, and should be cherished for that, writes Allan Prosser, acting editor of the Irish Examiner

TAKING charge of a great newspaper, even temporarily, provides opportunities and pleasures that other walks of life do not. One involves supervising the daily discussion on what should fill the next day’s opinion, or “leader” column.

Readers might imagine that some forensic analysis takes place on the profound issues facing the nation. And that is sometimes true. But in my experience, 49 years and counting, the decision on the next day’s editorial normally sums down to a handful of considerations a) what are the topics that are judged to be most relevant to, or interesting for, the audience? b) what has the paper said before on the subject, and should that position be altered? c) is there anything new to say? d) is the point of view being proposed capable of being argued and defended, even if it is unpopular?

There is usually a team of contributing writers with experience and responsibilities across the media spectrum. But such journalists tend to have common characteristics. They are voracious readers, they have a grasp of the history and social position of the title, they have opinions which do not tend to the bland, and they are argumentative. They don’t like secretive organisations, or the excessive display or demonstration of power. They are, in short, the awkward squad asking difficult questions, and should be cherished for that.

During my first week after the departure of the previous editor I wanted us to poke some gentle fun at the creators, bright people without a doubt, of an algorithm which made financial trades based on prevailing sentiment on social media. This was post-Brexit, but pre-Donald Trump. My main writer that day told me, and it still makes me smile, “algorithms and I are not on speaking terms”.

His answer was instinctively robust and correct at a human level but avoided the enormous challenge to society and democracy which is arising from the combination of mathematical programming and artificial intelligence which can adapt to experience, and the automation which is being, and will be, delivered from that Faustian pact.

Already it is close to impossible to have a sentient relationship with many of the companies and corporations which provide essential services to us. They do not exist physically on the high street; navigating their increasingly complex websites and apps produces an experience and sense of alienation which is beyond the wildest imagination of Kafka. They are faceless and formulaic and ineffective in their treatment of customers and citizens. Small wonder, then, that the body politic takes any opportunity on offer to strike back at the establishment. We can expect more of the same, and deservedly so.

Philip Larkin, the misogynistic, discontented, but brilliant British poet took this view of history in Annus Mirabilis:

“Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(which was rather late for me) —

Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban

And the Beatles’ first LP.”

Technology, for me, began in 1983 with the burgeoning power of the internet, and for some 30 years I was an apostle for the optimistic visions of the likes of digital sage Nicholas Negroponte from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If I had been a Game Of Thrones character it would have been as a member of the Faith Militant, the muscular organisation (loosely based on the 16th century Catholic Church) which defined itself as “an army that defends the bodies and souls of the common people.”

I hear similar lofty claims from giant corporations. I don’t want to pick on Google because they are, in many ways, an easy target, being best in breed. And they’ve been very good to Ireland. And when I have met members of their staff I have liked them.

But please do look at their company philosophy https://www.google.ie/about/company/philosophy, often summarised as “Don’t be evil”.

Then read The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). This is easily available online. You can find it through Google. Although this book, by Siva Vaidhyanathan, is several years old (an early internet joke, no doubt thoroughly outdated by hip programming mathematicians, makes one internet year the equivalent of seven years for the rest of us) it still has resonance, particularly in its analysis of how, without much debate or challenge, we have allowed Google to become the lens through which we watch the world. And how our own intellectual skills have been overwhelmed by pace of change.

I once saw the arrival of personal and mobile computing as a liberating and democratic benefit which would enable every person to become better informed, more articulate, and engaged with society. I was an early convert to the concept of “hive mind” until I observed that it had turned into “hive rabble” with the opprobrium attached to any unconventional or unpopular opinion generating the digital equivalent of what was known as rough music in the 16th to 19th century. Perhaps we should have Anti-Social Media Orders, an ASMO rather than an ASBO?

When a Bishop of Durham (jokingly) told me that “all technology was the Devil’s work” I smiled at the humour, and told him he was wrong.

When my daughter was at university she told me that she had 4,700 friends on Facebook. I replied that I could count the number of friends I have on the fingers of two hands. Friends are people you can rely on when the chips are really down, who will take you in and protect you, and will only give you their judgement when they think you are ready and capable of receiving it. They are people with whom you have some shared legacy of experience. Everyone else is an acquaintance, at best.

When Twitter arrived (2006) I felt that what we would gain in speed of communication would be destroyed by self-aggrandisement, babble, clamour and falsehood. It is little wonder that it is the primary weapon of political propaganda from Asia to the Americas. The peer-to-peer pressure it introduces is a significant contributor to mental health and welfare problems. Too many people are drawn like moths to the flame.

So, this is a lament for a lost opportunity to improve the human condition. And a concern that we are much closer to dystopia than utopia.

Algorithms which make decisions — be they financial, or commercial, or military, or political, based on volumes of social media sentiment — have the seeds of mutually assured destruction engrained within them.

Politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel as recently as October, in her well-intentioned but futile plea for algorithmic decision-making to be publicly transparent, are recognising too late that rapid technical advance has become a malign, and not benign, experience.

Meanwhile profit-driven corporations know the threat that AI poses but are not candid in explaining it. It is no coincidence that we are fascinated by the likes of Dolores and Maeve in Westworld, and Mia and Niska in Humans. They are the next generation on from the replicants of Blade Runner and the grandchildren of Hal 9000 in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey. Science Fiction writers, from HG Wells onwards, have been consistently accurate in predicting the future. It is simply a matter of timing.

“No fate but what we make” is the paraphrase of Sarah Connor’s punchline in Terminator where a self-aware superintelligence system called Skynet brought the world to destruction. What was thought pure fantasy in 1984 appears less unrealistic by the day. Disaster can come in many forms to an interconnected world.

It’s time for our leader writers, and all of us, to get on speaking terms with algorithms.

Alison O’Connor is away. Allan Prosser is acting editor of the Irish Examiner