One Female's Feat

A recent article in the Guardian described how a computer-savvy woman perfected an artificial intelligence (AI) program to deal with a growing problem on the internet. For some strange reason an increasing number of women are receiving what are called “dick pix.” These are photos emailed to them of a penis—supposedly that of the sender. These pix are often startling, shocking, and most often unwelcome to the women.

I won't try here to guess what's behind this trend. It's as mystifying and bizarre to me as are many practices on today's social media. The anonymity offered by the internet seems to encourage a certain type of person to say and do offensive things that they'd probably restrain from doing, face to face.

This lady decided she'd had enough of dick pix sent her way—she'd opened up her email or Instagram or Facebook account a few times too often, to see a gross photo. She was disgusted at this practice. So she sent out an invitation on the internet for anyone (presumably mostly men) to send her photos of their genitalia. She then used the many kinds of penile pictures she collected to train an AI program to recognize what they were—rather than, say, a handsome eggplant—and to immediately delete them.

In time, her AI program achieved 95% accuracy at expunging dick pix on Instagram. Wouldn't many women agreeably download such an app, which would allow them to turn on their smartphones without cringing? Those few women who enjoyed the prurient pix could simply reject the app and continue their titillating tradition.

This lady's remarkable accomplishment brings two thoughts to my mind: the first is that she refutes the common assumption that most computer geeks are male. She is evidence to the contrary.

The second thought is more a question: If a lone (female) wolf can accomplish this AI feat, what's holding back Facebook, Instagram, and Google from achieving something similar? Their computer geeks are legion and they've repeatedly demonstrated their astounding AI accomplishments. Many people who use these social media—including governmental authorities—have demanded that they do something to counter or check the various internet attacks launched by nefarious characters, with a definite lack of response on the part of the tech giants.

In what appears to be one meaningless response, Facebook has described how it formed a group of people whose job is to monitor online postings, in order to block the more offensive ones. These poor Facebook folks are known to suffer from the trauma of viewing despicable postings, day after day. Is this the best that Facebook can do—distressing and depressing a bunch of loyal employees? Where is their amazing skill at creating software algorithms? How is it that one woman can show them up? Could it be a lack of passion on their part? Their passion—and accomplishments—seem to be more aligned at making money from ads, rather than protecting their users.

Identity Urgency—Part 2

There's yet a very different kind of identity crisis going on today, in which the providers and exploiters of social media—Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.—scoop up every tidbit that we send out on the internet, recording every click that we make. They then process that information with various algorithms, and create yet another identity for us; call it sort of an online identity. What's amazing is that those algorithms can accurately create an identity by which they then sell us things and even subtly manipulate us. After an astonishingly few keystrokes or “likes” the algorithms of these giant tech organizations know intimate things about us.

In fact, some algorithms have been shown to capture your personality more accurately than a close family member, after you've clicked on only a dozen or so “likes.” They then send you tailored ads and other tidbits—all designed to capture and hold your attention. They know what groups form your social network and they pass information to you that confirms your confidence that your groups are good and righteous. Thus you need not pay any attention to opposing groups. This is how bubbles and silos are formed. This is how social divisions and schisms grow and harden.

But Facebook, Amazon, and Google don't intend to cause strife. They're just trying to sell you stuff and thus amass the fortunes that they have. They've created the game and they've really benefited from it. Many people in fact appreciate the services these purveyors provide: the connections to gobs of “friends,” the delivery of just what you want to see on the screen in front of you, the ability to navigate through unfamiliar territory, the tailored news (or should I say “targeted” news?) that you're interested in, etc. It's all very easy and convenient.

But there's yet a darker side to these social media platforms. Those identities formed by the algorithms can be used to manipulate us in insidious ways. By showing us only what we are comfortable with, they literally capture us in a bubble. They sway our preferences—which is not necessarily devious when it involves purchasing new shoes, but can be devious when it influences how we vote. There are an increasing number of nefarious individuals and organizations whose online activities are intended to create havoc or steer public events in an unhealthy direction. Trolls roam the internet, attacking people. The Russians have become very proficient at hacking into private emails and websites, effectively damaging democratic processes.

And, finally, identities are sometimes stolen. These kinds of identities are not quite the entities I've defined at the beginning of this post; they are not social identities. They are more the official evidence we have to show authorities who we are, or to access our financial accounts. Once that type of identity is stolen, we have an extremely hard time taking back control of who we are.

So we are indeed experiencing an identity crisis today... on may fronts and in ways that couldn't have happened, even a few years ago. Who's in control? In the past, I could manage my identity pretty well, by deciding which groups I wished to belong to, and which norms and values of the group to internalize. Today the formation of our identity is more and more in the hands of powerful factions and their algorithms. Should we worry about this loss of control?

Identity Urgency—Part 1

Many people are currently wrestling with several different kinds of identity crisis. Most of us possess a number of identities; for example, those that we have formed on our own, those that our friends and family have created, and several that civil and governmental institutions have attached to us. More and more, some of us are being required to carry identity cards to prove to authorities who we really are, to validate what we are engaged in, and even if we are legal or allowable in their sight.

Let's back up a little. To begin with, what is an identity? The basic dictionary definition is “the fact of being who a person is.” Well, that's a little vague. The dictionary further describes identity as “the characteristics determining” who one is—such as possessing a “Canadian identity.” Some synonyms of identity are: personality, self, distinctiveness.

With that basis, we can view identity as something that gets continually molded over our lifetime. A baby is born with almost no identity—other than being a helpless ward of mom and dad. It has little personality or distinctiveness at first. As we grow, we gradually form our identity, and do so largely by the groups we find ourselves associating with and are members of: family, church, school, neighborhood, club, and other social and employment groups. These groups constitute our social network. They form our personality... our identity.

Over time we come to internalize the norms and values of the groups we're members of, and we begin to behave accordingly. Catholics have different values and behaviors than Muslims do. Motorcycle gang members have different values and behaviors than quilting club members do. So our adoption and internalization of the norms and beliefs of the groups we associate with largely establish our identity. Identity, in other words, is primarily a social construct. Our groups—which form our social network—in a sense define us.

Before the time of social media our identities were created very differently from how we do it today. We previously formed mostly face-to-face relationships with other members of the groups we joined. It was a more visible and tangible process. Now we have Facebook and other social media, which play a major role in the creation of the identity of many people. Because we often no longer use those face-to-face relationships to form our identity, many people even consciously construct their online identity, which is often something quite different from their “real” identity. The identities people create in online games can even become rather fanciful—quite the opposite of who they actually are. It can get confusing, as to which identity is real, which is virtual, which is imaginary. For many people this situation is creating a kind of identity crisis.

More on identities next time...

Tool Mistreatment

Tools have been of tremendous benefit to humans. From the early use of stone tools (dating back millions of years... even before humans arrived on the scene) to the latest artificial intelligence (AI) machines, tools have enabled us to extend our senses and multiply our physical capabilities far beyond what nature gave us. Those first stone tools brought our ancestors powerful new ways to smash nuts to get at their interior, to cut up meat, to clean animal hides for clothing, and even to fashion other tools.

When those ancestors subsequently learned how to make metal tools, their capabilities dramatically expanded. The later invention of telescopes and microscopes extended our visual capacity out to the stars and into the interior of biological cells. The list is limitless. It extends all the way to today's computers that bring us almost unimaginably powerful capabilities—possibly the most impressive of which is AI.

Human culture would likely have remained on a par with chimpanzees, had we not been able to create this increasingly complex and powerful lineage of tools. A fascinating question that is often posed is how our big brain and our fantastic tools are causally connected. Can we attribute the evolution of our wonderful tools to our capacious cranium, or did our increasingly sophisticated tools demand a bigger brain to use them? It's sort of a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Whatever the answer, modern humans certainly depend on and benefit from our many kinds of tools.

Tools are a form of technology. The definition of a tool is traditionally considered to be a hand-held device, used for a specific type of occupation. In contrast, our modern tools are usually thought of as a form of technology—a word that generally describes machinery or equipment developed from or for scientific purposes. With these definitions, we can see that those primitive hand-held tools gradually morphed into various forms of technology. (Interestingly, the root of the word technology is the Greek word tekhnologle, which means “the systematic creation from art and/or craft.” This craft process seems to me to be exactly how the early stone tools came about.)

Unfortunately, tools and technology have also had a dark side—from the first stone hammer to the latest AI machine. Tools seem to have invited mistreatment from their very beginnings. The same rock that was used to crack a nut also soon got used to crack a human skull. Sharp flaked stone tools that allowed our ancestors to cut up a gazelle also got used as a weapon to cut up other humans. Those primitive metal knives cut meat better than stone, but soon saw use in warfare. And so it went, throughout our evolution.

A current mistreatment of a high-tech tool that billions of people have enjoyed using—Facebook—is causing all kinds of trouble for many people. Facebook is valued for its ability to keep people in instant and handy touch with each other, but there's a dark side to its use that is emerging. Commercial interests use big data algorithms to determine intimate behaviors of Facebook users and then entice them to buy billions of dollars worth of stuff they otherwise would not have bought—without those targeted ads.

Multinational actors use the same intimate data to manipulate people's behaviors through the use of fake news and other biased misinformation. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other online businesses all exploit the power of AI—ostensibly to offer us convenience, but also to amass huge amounts of money by swaying our choices. And of course, many technologists today worry about the future dangers of AI robots—which some fear will either eliminate many current forms of employment or even enslave their creators, us humans.

I am not equipped to explain why it is that Homo sapiens is such a brilliant creator of so many wonderful tools that make our lives so pleasant, but then also get used as one form of weapon or another—weapons which make so many lives miserable, or even terminate them. Philosophers and pious people have pondered and debated that issue for millennia. They have offered many diverse explanations—and most of those explanations clash with each other.

Whatever the cause of human behavior that leads us to mistreat our tools, there certainly are countless examples of how we've perpetually done it. One factor is that we seem to be suckers for the latest technology. Show me a new, convenient and efficacious tool, and I'll want one. Tell me about an attractive technology that's about to be offered, I'll want one. Our initial intentions are rarely wicked; we simply focus on the advantages, and thus we enthusiastically pursue the new tool.

But sooner—rather than later—it seems that someone will find a way to mistreat the new tool; even if they don't deliberately do so. Is it greed? Laziness? Merciless competition? Seeking power over others? Or is it largely due to the fact that we just move too fast, and can't seem to pause and exercise a little precaution? I suppose it's all of these and more.

Yes, tool mistreatment is an ancient bad habit of humans. It's caused untold suffering. And it doesn't appear that we are in the process of reining ourselves in. The scary part is the fact that our tools have become so powerful that their misuse can do damage beyond our control.

Forget to Forgive?

An Oxford University professor of internet studies had an article in the Washington Post on 11/25/12 titled “Can We Forgive if We Can’t Forget?” Viktor Mayer-Schönberger makes the point that we tend to forgive each other for our transgressions when we—over time—gradually forget what the other person said or did to us. Our memories fade away in time, unless we specifically and repeatedly bring them back up and lock them in, or if some kind of external record exists, such as a written account.

It’s necessary for us to forget many things that happen to us, otherwise our minds would become overloaded with details that get in the way of our dealing effectively with the present. So the loss of some things from memory is important for a healthy life.

Mayer-Schönberger is concerned that our digital social tools—emails, Facebook, tweets—can be a problem, because they do not allow us to forget transgressions that occur between us and friends or loved ones. They become part of the cloud’s permanent record.

For example, a snide comment that Fred made to you in an email—something you’d otherwise let go of in time—gets indefinitely preserved and reminds you of it, every time you open Fred’s email (when you may simply be looking for his address). These hurts do not fade away, as they could if Fred had said that directly to you, with nothing permanently recording his unkind comment. As another example, you fired off a smart-ass tweet to Sally last year. You wish you’d not been so quick to do that. You’d just as soon she forget it, but both you and she know that the nasty comment is frozen in time in the digital world.

I feel that Mayer-Schönberger has some good points. He recommends that we find a way to let old emails and Facebook comments slowly fade away over time. That could help. But I also think that he’s focusing on dealing with what to do, after you’ve opened the barn door and the transgressive horse has already escaped. It strikes me that we could better deal with the problem by keeping the damned door shut in the first place. That is, keep our mouth shut… or more appropriately to the subject, keep our vengeful fingers off the keyboard until we cool down.

Where we once talked to each other face-to-face or over the phone, we now hastily fire off emails and tweets. It only takes a few seconds and, hey, aren’t we all too busy to pause and allow ourselves a moment in which to reconsider our actions? Aren’t we all in a rush to complete three other things we’re also attempting to do simultaneously? So we dump down a fast rejoinder and hit the “Send” button.

At the least, the one who opens our message may be confused at what we meant, or more likely, hurt. Our sloppiness, our transgression, is now history. It’s permanently stored in the ether. The problem is not the inability to forget the offense—it’s our lack of control, consideration, and attention in the first place. Our uncouth, shoot-from-the-hip, rash response is now a permanent part of the cloud… waiting to keep reminding the other person, every time she opens that page on her computer.