Peter Cochrane: Governments may try to lock down the internet and AI, but freedom will always out

Endless moral scares may justify ever-more controls on the internet and AI, warns Professor Peter Cochrane, but won't achieve their supposed aim

It all seemed to start with the prospect of TV rotting the brains of our children. Then, cable TV doing the same to adults. After that, computer games apparently turned us all into unthinking automatons, while pornography on the net has (apparently) destroyed morality. And it doesn't stop there: mobile phone signals are giving us all brain cancer and now we have the ‘evils' of YouTube and social media to contend with.

One scare campaign after another seems to be the norm with governments compelled to act, or be seen to act, before the next big threat pops up and the circus of absurdity moves on.

Remember the now largely ignored and forgotten ‘Data Protection Act' and the associated ballyhoo and corporate expense?

Well, it is still in place, but I see plenty of violations every day, and now it has been surpassed by the even wilder GDPR, which is even more unworkable. Passing legislation is one thing, but enforcement is another matter entirely.

Where does all this unworkable stuff come from? I have a theory: There is a cave somewhere populated by people who watch over us, but never use technology. Their job is to concoct unworkable laws to control our actions and limit our experiences, only to see their efforts rapidly slide into disuse and disrepute.

It appears the EU cave dwellers recently discovered artificial intelligence (AI) and they now have a plan to control the whole internet. They misguidedly see AI as the ultimate censor of all content, social media, and video uploads. What could possibly go wrong?

How did we get here? Here is just one idea: It's claimed that teenage suicides are accelerating due to cyber bullying and undesirable videos and pics on social media. So that's cause enough; except for the fact that report after report reflects that the situation is a lot more complex than that.

Suicide in young people is rarely caused by one thing; it usually follows a combination of previous vulnerability and recent events

So, the cause is uncertain and is not down social media alone. However, not to be confused by facts governments have to be seen to be taking action to satisfy vociferous individuals, countless pressure groups and media campaigns, and they just cannot resist trying to control everything one law at a time. Never mind the potential destruction of a massively beneficial upside - it all has to be stopped!

So far, people have found ways around unworkable legislation, but AI is a game changer and an easily corrupted technology.

At the very least it is prone to the human bias of the creators and habits of early observations. Once it starts ‘banning and erasing' it will likely eradicate its own ability to learn. The catalogue of AI approved content will then be progressively narrowed as new and potentially valuable material is rejected far too early.

Then, of course, we have the people factor. So far, AI has given only a limited indication that it is capable of deviousness - learning to cheat at the classic arcade game Q*Bert, for example. We, on the other hand, are masters of this craft! My guess is that a new raft of apps and sites will emerge to outwit the politicians, regulators and AI. Freedom will be restored, but with far less openness.

Governments never seem to learn. Campaigns against particular social evils, supposedly perpetrated online, invariably only encourage the perpetrators to upgrade their IT skills and drive whatever moral abhorrence they are responsible for underground. In effect, a big problem can be made even harder to deal with by just one wrong decision. If only the powers that be could be persuaded to read Sun Tzu's Art of War.

I fear that we are about to see a repeat performance with AI governance of the internet, with the net result to the gross disadvantage of the general population!

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Professor Peter Cochrane OBE is the ex-CTO of BT, who now works as a consultant focusing on solving problems and improving the world through the application of technology.