Reflecting on 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, I’m left with a pressing set of thoughts, I'll share them here.

tl;dr: Jamiroquai was right. Listen while you read:

First, we are all in this together. In the global context of our world as we enter 2023, political boundaries are the most imaginary, useless, yet powerful boundaries that exist—and they’re entirely in our minds. They are fostered and stoked not just by politicians, but by algorithms, who are shaped by, and increasingly want to shape, those same algorithms and AI systems working on social media; but they risk a serious issue of the Icarus effect. They will fly high, but they don’t know what they’re playing with, and ultimately we all risk falling when AI and social media is abused.

Myself and my colleagues have long warned against the abuse of these algorithms, how censorship was increasing radicalization—not lessening its threat—within the global context of extremism and violent extremism in particular. However, as we now know what was going on at Twitter for example, we see a silent media, and a vocal group of people effectively excusing what is, without much doubt, an egregious breach of trust from a social media company to its users. It is also, we now know, one of the largest issues of “jawboning” in US history (jawboning is when a government doesn’t make a law, it just pressures others to do its bidding outside of creating any law). In this way, the world’s reaction to these revelations is a canary in a coal mine. If the bird flies and lives, and goes on without the over-reach of censors with ulterior motives that are self-serving more than anything, we will progress. If the bird dies, it will show how much power structures are really at issue here. It calls into question not just Liberal values of free speech, but also issues of centrally planned governance—an approach that was proven to fail by the events of the early 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe. However, the excuses being made for both management at Twitter, and government management, on what is possibly one of the biggest issues of free speech and election interference in US history, are troubling.

This unsettling feeling many of us get when we look at the situation comes back, again, to the algorithms and AI systems being used on social media. They’re winning a battle for your eyes, but to what end? Honestly, nobody really knows, some of us—as researchers—feel like we have a pretty good idea of where this ends, and many of us are troubled. This trouble is what motivates me most days to build something better, to continue researching these issues, creating viable solutions and applications of the results, and ultimately to keep speaking on the issues, regardless of how unpopular the opinion might be. When I was discussing the issues of Twitter early on, I was getting a lot of criticism and heat, but ultimately, almost every point published here on LinkedIn has been born out.

What I’m left with in 2023 however, is still net optimism. We are remembering what its like to have fun, which is good, because later in 2023, the internet will go wild in the political sphere, but will ultimately be better than in the past. I think we need to remember that fun, remember real world happiness when we’re online, and remember that not all friends are on social media, and almost no social media “friends” are in fact more than connections that you’ve curated for a reason… almost surely to be supporting you to find signal from the noise of the world.

The best thing we can do in 2023, make more bonfires, sing more songs, and unplug from the world. We need a break, and the break is ours to take, we just need to turn off our phones...