Frontline's In the Age of AI

I recently watched the PBS Frontline documentary on AI or Artificial Intelligence. I recommend it but with qualification. It was both interesting and disturbing but it was also misleading. There were some interesting discussions to be sure. From the future of jobs to some rather questionable uses in medicine to social media and surveillance, the documentary raises numerous salient questions.

There was also a strong anti-China propaganda aspect to the film. I say this as one who heartily condemns Beijing's increasing authoritarian and even totalitarian impulses and the way it is using technology to exercise its power. Nevertheless the story was told from the standpoint of American bias, operating under the assumption that Washington is somehow less nefarious, less evil in its deeds, goals and aspirations.

The documentary buys into the lie that the American Empire is genuinely concerned with the values of Liberalism. The track record with regard to the US tells a different story. From the Red Scares of the 1920's and 1950's to the FBI's war on Civil Rights and the CIA's campaign of domestic spying, international assassinations and coups d'état... to the US support of dictatorships and often brutal proxy wars, to the revived surveillance state born of the 9/11 narrative, the US has a long record of opposing liberalism and its values. So while it cannot be doubted that China has largely rejected the values of the liberal West, should we assume (as the Frontline documentary seems to) that America stands for these things... especially in the realm of tech and AI?

And this is related to an additional perhaps more immediately relevant point. Are Huawei and other Chinese tech firms leaving back doors in their software which can be exploited by Chinese intelligence? Probably.

But we know the Americans are doing this. Amazingly and deceptively the documentary chose to completely ignore all the revelations brought to light by Edward Snowden. We know the US is attempting to siphon off all data and has put a great deal of pressure on US software and tech firms to leave open back doors. And where they can't get direct access they have tapped into transmission cables. We know the US is building massive data collection facilities and in addition to online data and emails the NSA and other US organisations are attempting to gather data on all communications and transactions, phone, retail, geolocation and otherwise. We know that US law enforcement (and most certainly intelligence agencies) are scanning Facebook and using facial recognition software to gather data. And undoubtedly the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies (NSA, CIA, FBI, DIA etc.) are attempting to build profiles on every single person not only in the United States, but in the entire world.

Are these things being collected and plugged into a larger federal database... or perhaps databases? We know this is happening to some extent but the true scope of the project(s) remain unknown. Once again the TIA programme supposedly scrapped by the Bush administration (and yet later revealed to be operating under different names) provides at the very least a hint of what the US government has been doing for the past two decades.

But Frontline chose to ignore these realities, these facts and thus once again the PBS affiliated outlet is revealed to be not Left-wing but Establishment, well within the consensus.

There is a value to their documentaries and some are certainly better than others. And yet today's PBS is (like NPR) a far cry from what it was pre-9/11. I mark that date as the turning point. These outlets have continued to degenerate into propaganda and what the AI documentary left out was in the end just as important and telling as what was chosen to be put in.

The silence was deafening and while we learned a great deal about AI and China, we also learned a great deal about how the US government works and the control (whether direct or not) it exerts over media outlets.

Fake news has always been with us but ironically Trumps evocation of the term during the 2016 campaign began a new chapter in American news media. Even as the mainstream outlets clamour to expose the fake news of the extreme margins (both Right and Left), they themselves have succumbed to it... in a strange sort of self-fulfilled prophetic sort of way. It's not an uncommon phenomenon.

Sadly when news outlets announce that they're going to fight 'Fake News' you can be almost certain that they're going to diligently produce it. Likewise when governments announce they're going to 'help the poor' it's almost certain they're going to wage war on the poor, or when they 'seek peace' they're looking for a fight. It's a world of lies and in the age of AI, the lies are going into hyper-drive.