My computer, the dictator

by John Michael Vore

This is an excerpt from the first chapter of my book “AI + Democracy.” The chapter is about different kinds of intelligences, the kinds that created democracy as a political force and in the following section the intelligences which have given us the computer revolutions of the last few decades.

For the writing purists out there, yes I know that “intelligence” is a plural noun. I am using it differently throughout the text to make the point that artificial intelligences will come in all kinds of varieties, shapes, sizes, etc. We need to think in pluralities, not singularities.

In this section, I discover something startling: our devices train us in authoritarianism. But don’t get me wrong! As the full book will show, I’m not a Luddite. I love my devices!

Back to our historical narrative, where intelligences work themselves out via assembly lines which build our tiniest intelligence mirrors, our computer chips. When it comes to the manufacture of computer hardware, it's as if we get intelligence that has been frozen in place for our use. Instruction sets we cannot change. The hardware of our computers operates on strict instructions, on top of which is a computer programming language which constructs an OS in which live the programs and apps we use. They of course have their own instructions, outside of which they are inoperable. Though open to anyone who possesses the right OS, their use is not very democratic. Their instructions tell us how to use them; if we want the benefits we follow the instructions.

Thus one might argue that the very centralized nature of computing makes it naturally totalitarian [1], not democratic. So, are we putting lipstick on a pig in asking that aspects of AIs, AGIs and superintelligences be democratic?

The operating system is a dictator; its use is part of an authoritarian or totalitarian regime [2]. Whether Apple, Google or Samsung, or countless other manufacturers, engineered devices are, by their very nature, coming off assembly lines, so they are not individualistic things though they are meant for individuals. They are mass produced to act alike or fail quality control [3].

One needs to come to terms with the nature of technological processes in relationship to the organization of people as they govern themselves in order to answer larger questions about injecting democracy into AIs. How can we ignore the training each of us goes through daily as we use our devices: we are constantly having to adjust our activities to meet the demands of our devices. We get to use the most advanced technology on the planet, or close to it, when we use our newest phone. The trade-off is that we have to be trained in its use; they are not natural and they are not open to deviance. There is almost no way to think about these devices in a democratic way.

They try to appeal to different populations by localizations, but these are rolled out so that everyone can follow the instructions, by reading them in their own language. If one takes a photo with the extensive camera apparatuses, the extent of one’s input is pointing and clicking, though one can make adjustments afterwards. But then go try to find an old photo; in one of the digital spaces where one might most show up, one can hardly find one's self. One needs a search engine to locate the needle in the haystack one's contribution becomes. Thus one's most creative use of the device disappears, overwhelming its very use as we take photo after photo, attempting to show up. The device says it's there for us; but where are we in relationship to it, and the world around us?

Depending on how much of a person’s time is spent on a device, each day, following the dictates set by device makers or app makers, this adds up to the number of hours spent in a totalitarian mindset.

How can this not affect someone’s participation in democratic processes? These are uses of intelligence that do not encourage, say, observation and collection of data; though in some hands they do. These are intelligences that do not ask one to think for one’s self and question authority in the words of a 20th century maverick [4]. Yet in some hands they do exactly that [5].

First you have to follow the directions [6]. These are devices that ask you to figure out what the designers created, the path through a game, or the sequence of events to open and use a word processor or streaming service. Streaming often seems the place where we are at one with our devices, in our most passive state, being fed fleeting images of shows algorithmically delivered. (Do we have any agency when binge-watching? (Do we want agency in those moments?) Do we even remember what we've watched?)

As for the wizards behind it all, the programmers, the coders: one can understand the allure. Software is a space in which an individual can “write himself” in losing himself, giving over the messy self-ish-ness of RL (real life) to the pursuit not of a grand public scheme, as within political plans, but a tiny, semi-private one. Software is the semi-public backdrop to digital life, one that makes things go, invariably, seemingly without authorship. It is a pure loss of subjectivity, giving over to a use of meaning as a personal search for an ideologically-driven answer. The search for hidden answers which must be there (because it is an ideological system), this deep coding obscurity gives programming conundrums the flavor of mystery once ascribed to religious purists, who, though driven for ultimate truths, were, nevertheless ideologues. The search and “aha” in programming is not dissimilar; religious zealots and programmers both make for sometimes isolated, sometimes collaborative attacks on a mass of knowledge not easily climbed alone.

And what of the hardware engineer? Their designs, etched into silicon in ways no eye can see, no hand can duplicate. But with the correct machinery, these creatives pack so much computing power into processors that they’re bumping up against the very laws of physics. Nature itself is the dictator of science; engineering, here, the handmaiden. Nothing other than creating microprocessors could better exemplify Foucault’s sense of a knowledge regime writing itself onto the individual who learns to sit still and hold a pen. We say they aren’t ideologies though they demand absolute precision, a repetition that is ungodly and superhuman, thus the need of the foundries which etch silicon wafers. The ideology is simply further out of view; it is the make-up of our universe, the bits of stars in each of us, in all of our devices.

We all live in worlds which demand we follow the laws of nature; then sitting atop them all live a significant population in which the people write laws for themselves. Some of those within democracies think everything about them exemplifies their freedom and that they can press them to logical absurdities, "purifying" them. Yet even in the freest of them, little is free. Our devices demand so much.

People, consumers of perhaps the third most expensive items in their lives, buy products they’re told will make them like rock stars or famous painters, even historical individuals who “think different.” When they buy them, they know they’re not going to be the commercial; they do expect to be taken for a ride. Diversions we get.

To some, those buyers bring home powerful catalysts which enhance and empower subjective agency. Smart phones and computers should at minimum, one would think, enable control over political entities such as the state.

With a veritable magic wand in our hands, we should be able to run the world. Right?

The reality is much different.

Huge swaths of our devices run on the same operating systems. Everything on them is in the same place, depending on the whims of that particular OS. Within each OS, authoritarianism rules, with a few exceptions.

Access to an OS is the same on all the devices, secured by password. This is your key, so, at this point, in this moment when you choose your password, you get to be yourself, right?

One hopes that this password is not the hinge on which computable democracy hangs.

Footnotes

[1] Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. Beacon Press. Boston. 1964. p. xvi. “…the traditional notion of the ‘neutrality' of technology can no longer be maintained. Technology as such cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put; the technological society is a system of domination, which operates already in the concept and construction of techniques.”

[2] Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man. Beacon Press. Boston. 1964. p. xv. Marcuse states the relationship between production and free societies as such at xv: “… in the society, the productive apparatus tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupations, skills, and attitudes, but also individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the opposition between the private and public existence, between individual and social needs.”

[3] The author twice has worked in quality control both in a production level, flashing memory, and in a testing capacity, on a new tablet. It is the very repetitiveness of production and testing which make them effective on mass assembled devices. One might best compare one’s stance to the manufactured device to that which one might have had towards royalty, where one had to stand in a certain manner, hold one’s arms and hands just so, and keep one’s eyes fixed. The preoccupation with these forms enabled the subject to be “quality controlled” by the monarch. If one wanted to be seen, one merely had to miscue one’s hands to be seen quite easily when out of line. Author analysis though details from Russell, Gareth. Young and Damned and Fair. Simon and Schuster. 2017.

[4] Timothy Leary. “Think For Yourself. Question Authority.” 1985 Notre Dame Lecture. Author’s notes. Leary had been a Harvard professor who found controversy in utilizing LSD in experiments in the 1960s after which he lost tenure. He later capitalized on this as a lecturer, when the author invited him to speak in a student speaker series.

[5] Even in Russia, in a distant past, an LGBTQ organization in Moscow helped Boris Yeltsin stop counter-revolutionaries by printing copies of a letter of his for protestors to read. (The author regrets he is unable to find a source for this memory.)

[6] In fact one doesn’t so much follow instructions or read manuals as one is forced to imprint one’s “desires” on a manufacturer’s cornucopia of settings menus, dozens and dozens of pages. Were they actual book pages they might add up to 300 if a quick count of the latest macOS “settings” is accurate.

Thanks for reading! I hope the book will be out in early July.--John Michael Vore