Assuming the Governance of Communication Science in the Age of AI Disruption
The recent release of Chat GPT AI-based descriptive search engine and spectacular AI artwork collage, leaving behind a trail of robbed artworks of whining artists, has once again exalted in chorus, the arrival of the age of AI disruption, in the corridors of technology companies, since the last time it has been heard, with major advancement in AI photography, and a desperate attempt for the inception of fully automated vehicles in the market, a few years back, holding on all laws and safety protocols challenging the launch.
The concerns around the repercussions of advancing AI technologies by weaponizing communication on digital platforms persist, alongside the rut of news we are coming across every day for politically managing social media in so many ways. Some of the buzzwords are echo chambers created by personalization, coordinated media synthesizing an individual, a faction, and a vicinity, in-person social engineering, force-feeding political propaganda to a selected stratification, shadow banning, educational debasement, linguistic debasement, and total cultural deterioration. I’ve described it in detail in one of my posts, User Experience Digital Forensic Investigation. (Link)
AI disruption may give us a kick of adrenaline for a moment but the duality that is the society in congruence with the judiciary in India is far from ready in managing the social impact of AI in many facades and levels. The general digital retail-related cases themselves struggle to find the right set of people in society to comprehend, identify, challenge, and then find the justice progressing within the various segments of the Indian Judiciary. On top of that, any expectation of acknowledging a veiled AI algorithmic activity as a social phenomenon collectively, to organize and file it as a class action civil lawsuit, followed by comprehension and advocacy in the course of litigation, itself seems to be a far-fetched dream right now.
Recently, Paytm and HDFC ERGO rolled out insurance cover due to loss of money during UPI transactions up to Rs 10,000. Carefully, comparing with the trajectory of other similar schemes in India, I can predict that the insurance instrument will be advertised heavily, which will be taken advantage of, by cyber law enforcement bodies in near future, by taking an unsolicited personal dig at the victim of UPI-related cyber fraud, that if only they had purchased the insurance instrument in today’s deceitful times, all the trouble could have been avoided and with it quietly shake off from their duties. In another scenario, has the victim of UPI fraud have purchased the insurance instrument, the private insurance firm’s customer experience representative would have deliberately complicated the whole scenario with stunning technical terminologies and multiple forms (to be filled only with a pdf editor) in an attempt to assertively knock off the insuree which most likely resulted in a discouraged awestruck layman, incapable of comprehending and challenging the complex transactions within the tech ecosystem, ends up withdrawing from the legal battle of receiving justice.
India as such a big humpty-dumpty nation can’t manage every aspect of our life with insurance coverage like in Germany. Even claiming insurance will require streamlined speedy effective grievance redressal, insurance ombudsman, and consumer dispute redressal forums which need to be accessible from the comfort of home. Currently, the state of this channel is chaotic and involves a lot of paperwork and traveling to the consumer dispute redressal forum multiple times for ongoing litigation of thrifty amounts which doesn’t make it a practically viable option. Sometimes back I’ve written a post ‘Quasi Judicial Patients, & Victims of Insurance Companies Institutional Exploitation’ along similar lines.
We as technologists might be working on one product, but we are the retail consumers of every other product and service in the market, which equally puts us in a vulnerable shared spot same as other people, at the mercy of the limited judiciary system falling short to comprehend our appeals against retail technological manipulations and exploitations. The obsoletion of the Judiciary with advancement in technology over decades isn’t coincidental. It has been strategically designed such that the elites could have all the crux of knowledge (scholarly human capital) and tools to twirl everyone else to meet personal objectives at their fancy. The middle class has distributed specialized knowledge, limited tools, and limited power as long they are on the job. While the cattle class has no option other than submitting to fate as the pawn of social experiments which is the by-product of socio-political power struggles from time to time. Enhancing the Judiciary in today’s time will secure the interest of a considerable portion of the population which is the middle class. Securing the interest of the middle class formally, by regulations established by judicial advancement will enrich the participatory social structure once again. Advancement in Judiciary will breed the need for collective participation by different stakeholders of the society to find consensus through collective conscience in any initiative. A social initiative will now demand scrutiny and agreement with a larger base of stakeholders. Also, retired middle-class folks won’t find themselves lost and hopeless post-retirement confined in the walls of their home or running from pole to pillar of the nearest ashrams. The laws and regulations established by the advanced judiciary will legally empower retired folks to take participation in social causes confidently alongside elevating the younger generation with a modest pace breeding passion towards projects, initiatives, jobs, and life altogether. The poorer class will once again find aspiration to hop onto the wagon of the middle class by the mean of educational excellence.
As early as the history of politics goes, recalibrating the public’s perceptions by drawing the benefits of communication science has always been a part of the socio-political engagement with the crowd. In the age of Personalized Ubiquitous Communications yet falsely denoted the age of Information Technology, the private and the government sector in accord is pulling out massive tricks on communication science behind the public deception curtain, in lieu of regulating information technology which only addresses a fraction of the cavity in the public governance system. Although, the notion, that popular digital companies are safe and self-regulated is rapidly eroding which is opening up doors for people-centric democratic innovations in the field of administration, regulation, and judiciary in the upcoming era. We have been running towards one way of commercially managing the repercussions of technological red ocean interventions and blue ocean disruptions for long enough. It is in our best interest to muffle government regulations around the commerce of communication technology for achieving optimal civility in society by restoring parity in innovation tossed between both fronts. And it’s a Goal! In the best interest of society.
I think every movie and every series on OTT these days needs to comprise the deficiencies in folds of digital communication in society in the sub-narrative of modern stories. The deficiencies in communication by the membrane of technology will only then slowly become part of our cognizance. The contribution of the courses like Envisioneering at MIT, Speculative Design, and B.Sc Visual Communication under the faculty of engineering can’t be undermined in surfacing and channelizing the uncontrollable gush which is drifting life of the common man riding on the waves of digital commercialization.
We may notice in the near future the Jurisprudence of technological retail cases and the respective ministries in the Government of India will spread out into three primary branches. The first one will be dealing with usual information technology cases, the second and third ones will be dealing with communication science and propagation science respectively.
Information technology cases are plain and simple cases related to data breaches and cyber security. The communication cases are related to coordinated media and broadcasting efforts for cultural synthesis, propaganda by social media personalization reducing the comparability factor and subsequent reference identifiers to zero, dark patterns in User Experience, dark algorithms in data science to put a person on a dopamine pedestal beyond the ethics of concepts of gamification, echo chambers, etc. The propagation-related cases are bio exploitation by electromagnetic waves, nanorobots, neural engineering, etc.
I only wish we advance in AI capabilities to collectively know what we are doing and the butterfly effect of it till the last grain but for that to happen we need to achieve social consensus by being inclusive of the conscience of every living organism on the planet because AI doesn’t need to spread at scale for causing major damage, unlike social media platforms. It can send sonar ripples of communication predictively.
You may also find it interesting to read about Judicial Investigation Friendly Digital Systems, Judibility (Link), and Ex Ante Regulation for Digital Markets in India (Link).
Last edited on 27 February 2023 at 21:17 IST.
