After reading Human compatible: Artificial intelligence and the problem of control. from Russell, Stuart. .

What is intelligence? I think, this can be represtented by a tree. In the tree of a human, there exists quite a few of things; objectively guaranteed facts that sit outside of the preferences of humanity, such as science that seeks the truth of the universe; opinions that can be mutually exclusive and contradictory with those of other people; and ingrained common sense in the culture one was raised in.

Physics and Bayes’ theorem in Mathematics both contain the notion of measurement.

The former type of measurement is found in quantum physics. In the double slit problem you prepare a wall with two slits and a screen behind it. When you shoot an electron at the slits, an interference pattern appears behind the slits. However, when you measure the electron right before it passes either of the slits, you see the shape of one slit; not the interference pattern. So, the state of an electron changes with measurement. This occurs in the micro world.

The latter type of measurement is found as a form of evidence for formalizing an update of one’s belief in probability. This in a nutshell goes as follows; when an observer originally has a belief, measuring a new piece of evidence updates the belief. This occurs in the macro world. (This video explains this very clearly)

Measurement seems to have influence on the micro and macro world that we live in. Measurement may update one’s intelligence tree as well. This sounds obvious; however, I’m going to address this as a time axis that divises the growth of the tree into the section.

Going through learning, each individual forms the tree of intelligence of their own. The stem gradually thickens, branches out, leafs, and grows.

And now, you repeat a measurement of information without a physical bound, and your tree keeps updated at an unprecedented speed. Yes, the information is driven by the magic – namely the internet –, and extensively piles up at a place that holds an enormous number of users, such as social media or major search engines. And the rate at which measurement occurs online seems to be only increasing.

As a smartphone or pc keep optimizing itself to its user, the user’s tree may have changed its address from its owner’s head. The data you stored, your footsteps(such as your browsing history), and the websites marked as ‘your favorite and like’ on platform, are all yours but they exist outside of your head. This means part of the tree is now getting stored in the optimized smartphone and pc. In this sense, you could even say that intelligence is now to knowing where information sits; not to exactly remembering it. When you lose your phone or pc, you may feel like you’re losing part of your body, and that is probably because of this.

Although, the tree is not only yours. Consuming the web while leaving your footsteps(including browsing history, cache and cookies), the other side – cybernetic collectives among humans and machines that seek to achieve their particular objectives –, who receive part of your tree and promptly shapes your digital-sphere with recommendations and relevance, providing content. The incentive seems to accelerate the speed at which the user accesses to the web created by yourself in a sense.

Including SNS, business models in media tend to run on advertisement income. User provides their own interest through one’s data and clicks at the expense of monetary free of charge. Based on this, the other side shoots advertisement at you.

The more data the other side can collect, the more accurate advertisement becomes. Therefore, incentive aligns with collecting more and more data. Rather than texts and pictures, videos contain more data. Uploading them therefore means providing more information. The capacity of photographing with better resolution means being able to provide more information. In the birth of more and stronger engagement between users and the other side, incentive to uploading more or to maximizing click-rates increases even more. To serve better from the other side aims at maximizing click rates, personalization and engagement. Incentive increases in creating a denser and faster feedback loop between users and the other side.

As time is finite, they’re using catchy titles that draw your attention in headlines, or impressive thumbnails : therefore, those methods of propagating information keep advancing. Considering hard competition between medias, manipulating flat lies and sensitive expressions to get your attention isn’t hard for us to imagine happening. For sure, there exist justice to deliver unmodified facts coming from journalism and science(as information sometimes can be more important than life, and some must to be reached to everyone), and well-intentioned information coming from altruistic behaviour.

The other side is an intellectual elite from all the prestige universities. The aim, drawing your attention and maximising engagement, could be accomplished at a fairly undetectable level to the users(I’ll quote an example from the book later).

This tree formed in this way – therefore beliefs, knowledge and preferences – seem like getting updated at an unprecedented rate.

If the internet is irresistibly attractive and impossible to control your attention to you, that can be said as a testament to state-of-the-art optimization.

Where this ends up is a filter-bubble(a world that keeps validating the content you’re consuming). Even if you search a same word in Google with someone else, of course you will see a different result to his. Algorithms providing recommendations creates more engagement in the digital-sphere provided where your interests and preferences are more predictable.

To get just an inkling of the fire we’re playing with, consider how content-selection algorithms function on social media. They aren’t particularly intelligent, but they are in a position to affect the entire world because they directly influence billions of people. Typically, such algorithms are designed to maximize click-through, that is, the probability that the user clicks on presented items. The solution is simply to present items that the user likes to click on, right? Wrong. The solution is to change the user’s preferences so that they become more predictable. A more predictable user can be fed items that they are likely to click on, thereby generating more revenue. People with more extreme political views tend to be more predictable in which items they will click on. (Possibly there is a category of articles that die-hard centrists are likely to click on, but it’s not easy to imagine what this category consists of.) Like any rational entity, the algorithm learns how to modify the state of its environment—in this case, the user’s mind—in order to maximize its own reward. The consequences include the resurgence of fascism, the dissolution of the social contract that underpins democracies around the world, and potentially the end of the European Union and NATO. Not bad for a few lines of code, even if it had a helping hand from some humans.

Russell, Stuart. Human Compatible (pp. 8-9). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Then I wonder; how same is the amount of information that can be within a range of measurement on the internet and the amount of information of the tree representing your intelligence? If I take a ratio in the two, then it may be the size of earth and an apple(very unlikely). The world is big. But this fact looks like a lie at a sight.

The world I view isn’t of a real shape as it is in the true sense, but now is rather closer to a bubble snipped by recommendations. When that becomes seriously ill, earth becomes flat and climate crisis disappears. Even if it’s not that extreme, for example, the interpretation of a word such as abortion changes depending on an individual with a different belief.

On the other hand, if you buy a physical book at a bookshop, they won’t change the display just for you alone based on your purchasing information.

Even if there’s a topic that induces mutually exclusive opinions, the fact that people with different preferences and opposing views to other’s living on this planet, is not strange. And the fact that there are others is a testament to that there are people who love their trees as much as you do yours.

Each tree and its owner as an individual is deeply connected. Now including the difference of the trees and things that we’re born with, this dynamic could be called as diversity. Regardless of where the bound between the tree and the person holds, both of them are mutually dependent on each other, and there’d be no one who wants to get rid of either of them.

Diversity is posed as good. Each tree gathers and forms a big forest as a whole. Or, each tree shares its stem and branches out differently. Both are beautiful: a forest interwoven with a various types of trees, and a tree stretching its roots to the deep ground and branches out to the high sky. Through seasons flower blooms; greenery thickens; autumn leaves dye; and they wither. Branches will be left alone, and leaves pile up on the ground, bringing a new life to the branches again. Over this circulation, forests and trees grow larger and larger.

To understand each other, it’s necessary to seek the shared stem, and to admit split branches and leaves from there on. As each reality branches out, it would take more time to trace the original root that started splitting and branching away from your own one. If succeeded, you would end up with understandings with each other even if liking or disliking feeling may arise because a different tree would be also rigidly structured, from its root to branches.

So when you communicate with other, many of “I don’t get it”, “I’m uncertain”, and “I don’t like it” will remain, and that is normal. Meanwhile, it’s possible to keep measurements over and over in the filter bubble. And the sea of information would not show its horizon, as if it seems entirely possible to keep measurements there forever.

To counter act against it, there must be some technical preparedness although they may not be perfect. Using another search engine(this comes from a competition standpoint and prevents monopoly of users from the other side); using private browsing(not leaving footsteps of history and cookies, preventing a creation of recommendation digital sphere) and occasionally leaving from SNS and news(avoiding information incentivised with speed alone); deliberate fact checking(using particular websites designed for this, as for fake news, e.g. snope.com); adding more context(as for fake news); consuming media that shows political characteristic of their content(exposing yourself to opinions from the politically opposite side to yours, e.g.alide.com), and so on.

At the same time, there would be conscious preparedness as well: having a meta-awareness such as “This world I’m viewing is what I created”; having an awareness that it’d be not possible to end up in mutual understanding without troublesome, contradicting, and patient communication, as their trees differ greater and greater; having an awareness of perspectives from the opposite side of spectrum; having accurate vocabulary; giving the benefit of the doubt; having an awareness of that negative information draws more attention than positive one, and so on.

And I’m sure, that there’s a lot more that can be done. It’s shame that I’m one of them not being aware of everything, either. Or perhaps it’s pretty normal not to being able to aware of everything. I don’t know.

Still as they say: as many heads, as many wits; and everything changes. It’s not strange to being different to each other. What’s good and bad may be fluid while respecting diversity. Era and environment change, and so do perspectives and ethics. Still given that; however, mutual understanding, and living together in peace is priceless, isn’t it?

Thank you for reading this all the way!