James Bridle: "We need to start thinking differently now."

Sometimes – in fact, often these days – we step deep into the forests of technologies and see the countless trees … and forget the forest itself and everything that lies beyond. Speakers like James Bridle, to my mind, become ever more essential in these times.

He was one of the speakers at the GDI's Power of Predictions conference and he's a writer, an artist, and someone deeply interested in the effects technology has on society. Bridle shared stories and insights this article would end up a book instead of a post. Instead, allow to start my mentioning his book "The New Dark Age" (a book I'll certainly put on my reading list. I'm also including a few of his articles below – they're definitely thought-provoking and worth your reading time.

He had come to make people think beyond the mesmerizing gleam of technological advances, a world full of human beings. Remember the pictures of old when computers took up entire rooms? Bridle suggested that, while we all think that computers have shrunk dramatically, they really haven't, instead they've expanded – we live in a world  of computation, of cables, or wireless signals. "We live inside that machine, and as a result we live according to its logic that the future is something that can be modeled, and protected. If we only gather enough information, gather enough data and run the machine fast enough."

With regard to Moore's Law, he argued that it led to the Silicon Valley way of thinking – to what he calls solutionism: "Whatever the problem, there's an app for it." From Bridle's point of view a big chunk of the technology-focused world doesn't question beyond technology. Intensely and exclusively focused on gathering more data, making better models and predicting more accurately, they are ignorant to the blind spots. It is easy to get lost in technology's positive potential, of course – but there isn't only Moore's Law, there's also Eroom's Law (Moore inversed). Bridle pointed out that the at the very heart of computational powers lies the idea of progress … but Eroom shows that ever more computational power is leading to ever fewer actual results in pharmacological sciences.

Bridle sees a world where the future itself is actually becoming hard and harder to predict due to a combination of environmental changes and technological complexity. "We find ourselves in a world that is less known, less stable and less predictable." With regard to CO2, for example, he point out that the concentration in the air is higher than ever before – at a level that is on par with poorly aired classrooms. You may remember this from your studying years – concentration invariably suffers in such environments. Apparently this has been measured and means people in such conditions lose up to 20% of their problem solving abilities … take that the a global level. Examples such as these are clear signs for Bridle that "We need to start thinking differently now."

He addressed tech giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook and how these companies do everything in their power to not just deliver good services, but to predict every possible question and answer a customer might have. What these giants do is reshaping not just what we do and how we do it, but who we are, as individuals, as communities, as citizens … as a species. Bridle then shared the well-known example of the DeepMind AlphaGo game in 2016 when the machine made a move that simply made no sense to human players, at all. It was considered a mistake at first – in fact it was a move that no human player had ever played … and the machine went on to win the game. According to Bridle experts back then said that the move was "alien" … and that's exactly what it was. It was non-human. It was not based on human input, the move had come about because the machine had been self-learning. Because of the multi-dimensional complexity of machine learning, Bridle said, "we will never know how AlphaGo made this decision." … no doubt there are many bright minds grappling with this. We're already here, at this point in time, where we cannot comprehend how machines have arrived at this result or that solution … there's a saying that when the cat's away, the mice will play ... AI is playing. 

Bridle continued, explaining that, today, machine learning is used in everything from self-driving cars to military drones and from the stock market to job applications. He pointed out a fresh New York Times article that highlighted that predictive algorithms on YouTube lead to the sexualization of young children online. What he says certainly resonates and we all know how "tailored content" is pushed our way across the many online platforms – it leads to bubbles and tribalism that can have many unintended consequences, among them political extremism. "We no longer feel in control of our own destiny. Because we're locked out of automated decision making processes, based on predictions."

It might surprise you to hear that James Bridle is very much for technology. He advocates for alternatives to the current path, alternatives that would see people engaged and enabled by new technologies. Part of this is transparency, something he says is "in direct opposition to most of the machines that govern our lives today." Another part is engagement of the people – he pointed to the government of Ireland that had, a few years back, set up randomly selected citizen assemblies to discuss important topic – what happened was consensus and policy ideas far beyond the expected. The current computational powers, Bridle said, reduce choice and produce inequalities of knowledge and power. The remedy? Radical diversity and openness that create trust and transparency.

As mentioned, Bridle's talk was sweeping and I'd urge you to read the linked articles below for more of his insights. In closing he pointed out that models exist, that a positive way forward is possible, a way that leads to pervasive access to education and power, a way that uses open source distributed decentralized tools and that leads to "rewriting the world to principles of fairness and equality."

"Computers are not here to give us all the answers, but to allow us to put new questions, in new ways, to the universe."