ROSE TINTED INTERNET

Back again to that old story of mine that I never got around to 
writing. The plot was centred around a guy who builds a sentient 
computer from code and computers collected from a university where 
he works. It hacks into communications systems and manipulates 
society by subtly changing all the communications that everyone 
sees to shape each individual's specific behaviour. First he uses 
it for his own fun and benefit, then to try and further social 
causes he's passionate about. Then the story goes on to have the 
hacking traced back to the guy's house, the computer gets shut down 
after the guy flees the cops, but when this complex system of 
manipulation is removed it plunges society into chaos as nobody 
believes anyone is who they thought they were. The economy 
collapses, new political divisions quickly develop, and eventually 
civil war breaks out. The guy, however, was left a hint from his 
computer on where to go for safety, and eventually encounters a 
bizarre armed cult, preparing since before the switch-off, and 
entirely devoted to following him. The cult, with its arms and 
organisation, is able to establish growing territories under its 
control. Slowly the guy realises that perhaps the computer had 
planned this all along, using him as an unwitting tool towards 
achieving his own power as a new ruler. But who, then, was really 
in charge?

Yeah, I still like it, but it would take me absolutely ages to try 
and write the story. Better to just work away at taking over the 
world myself instead. :)

To that end, what I'm really thinking about is just the start of 
that story - the AI hacking into communications to manipulate them, 
which leads to its (apparant) undoing when found out. Would such 
tricks actually be needed today? In today's world of echo-chamber 
social media and news platforms, imagine an AI app, now seemingly 
quite feasible, which rewrites everything you read on the internet 
to make you feel happier. Instead of selecting stories and people 
that an 'algorithm' thinks you'll like, it actually changes the 
news stories and people, just slightly, to make you like them more. 
It would be like rose tinted glasses for the internet.

It's easy to see how the news stories can be manipulated by 
comparing bias in different media sources. Even the same media 
source following the break of a story can change its angle 
strikingly. Being old fashioned, I listen to news bulletins on 
analogue broadcast radio. It's facinating when a new story breaks 
you first hear it reported as something like "government announces 
new policy x [yadda yadda], also so-and-so said x was because y was 
z", then an hour later you listen to it again as "so-and-so said y 
was z [yadda yadda], also so-and-so said that while the government 
announced new policy x". You hear while the story shifts around, 
while journalists (hopefully _just_ journalists) decide what the 
real story is. The manipulation is, or would be, all so easy.

For manipulating talk between individual friends, that would have 
to be more subtle since you actually talk to those people in real 
life (maybe). But here too the AI could change emphasis towards 
aspects of other people's personality that you like, even ego-boost 
you by having them explictly reference you more often when they 
echo or expand upon things you've said. You'd still be reading 
roughly what they talked about, so in direct conversation it would 
still make sense to discuss things further, but the emphasis 
changes, and perhaps eventually the conversations would change too, 
ideally emphasising mutually agreeable topics.

If social media already works much like this just by selecting 
which content to show you, and people (except me) lap that up, it 
seems like AI-manipulated content could be embraced as well. 
Especially in a society filled with climate worries and faultering 
standards of living. But, as in my story, the underlying control 
granted to the operator of that AI would be unprecedented. The 
power to manipulate the reality of an entire internet-connected 
society. And I don't imagine that avoiders of such technology like 
myself would have any more ability to stand up to the resultant 
changes than against the societal changes already driven by social 
media today.

 - The Free Thinker

PS. This isn't that "big website idea" I keep mentioning. Just an 
alternative one for 'evil me' to contemplate.