Winter Rant

Productivity gains that we make with technology, apply to both good and bad actors of this world.

I was watching Skyfall yesterday. It is my favorite Bond movie. I love the scene when M quotes Tennyson to a Parliamentary hearing, while fending off questions about the relevance of the double-O section. It is a well written scene that brings the entire movie to life, which up until that point is slumbering through a more sober spy story.

But what caught my attention, on this 107th re-watch, was when M says, “I am frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us. They do not exist on a map. They are not nations. They are individuals.”

Now, I am not familiar with matters of war, peace, military, weapons, geo-politics, let alone being an expert/authority on any of those or related subjects.

But speaking as a lay person on these matters, M’s dialogue about “enemies” being “individuals” and “not nations,” does seem sort of obvious in the age of terrorism. That idea that non-state or non-nation actors can actually cause sufficient harm to nations is a reality that we have been living with for a long time, more so since 2001.

The ability of such non-state actors to have that level of influence actually speaks to the overarching impact of productivity gains that humanity has made over the years. Let’s run through some examples.

Cars no longer breakdown that easily – which is why Toyotas have become the reliable tool for daily commute, and the make/model of pick-up trucks that show up terrorist videos. (see How did the Toyota pickup become terrorists’ favorite truck? (qz.com)).

It is easier now more than ever to spread your point of view – this has given rise to an unfathomable creator economy on the likes of YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, and Snap. But it has also made it that much more easier to spread propaganda, conspiracy theories and fake news. Consider how a private company like Cambridge Analytica is alleged to have influenced politics and political campaigns across multiple continents using a social-media/communications platform like Facebook (another company albeit publicly traded) – Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal – Wikipedia.

Algorithmic stock trading has arguably made capital allocations in public markets more efficient. But that was a cue for the Bond villain in Skyfall – Silva – to engage in stock manipulation in part by information manipulation.

For every productivity gain that we made as a planet-spanning species, we have also made it that much simpler for bad actors to be bad.

Already, Generative AI poses serious threats when in the hands of the uninitiated. Recently a professor thought that the entire class cheated on their term papers by using ChatGPT (see AI error leads college instructor to wrongly accuse students of cheating – YouTube). Ironically, he used ChatGPT to find out if the term papers were written by ChatGPT. Thing is – ChatGPT lies confidently; and turns out that most students in the class never used GPT to write their term papers. This is bonkers.

I shudder to think what large-scale harm tools like GPT can be used for, by those who know what they are doing with it. We will soon live in an internet run by troll farms that peddle misinformation, all powered by Generative AI. If left unchecked, this will force the internet to become a big lie. GenAI will mis-diagnose diseases, it will leave loopholes in legal contracts. But what happens when a bad actor starts exploiting those shortcomings, to say cause misdiagnoses of diseases at scale? Or breakdown our societal trust in contract law or academics? Many already distrust election results.

Productivity gains swing both ways. Just saying.

– vijay, struggling with a blocked nose 🤧