Video Killed the Radio Star

In the mid-90’s, I attended an academic forum on technology. I was a first-year undergraduate student. A panel of scholars was debating Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Penguin Books, 1986). The book was required coursework reading. Classroom discussions preceding the forum had been very spirited affairs. I had high expectations of the professional panel and debate.  

Postman suggests that a culture which elected a film star as a president (he was talking about Regan) was dangerously close to uncoupling itself from rational discourse. His analysis of North American pop culture was that of a people amusing themselves toward cultural decline; as Nero fiddles, Rome burns.  

It was 1996. The internet as a household phenomenon was relatively new.  If Postman was correct, if television had been manipulated to turn everything – from war, to famine, to political unrest – into a form of entertainment, might the emerging technology suffer a similar fate? That debate was thirty years ago. 

In spite of my expectations, the forum ended up being dreadfully disappointing.  Every academic panellist agreed that they disagreed with Postman. Not a single panellist challenged another. Postman had been declared a buzz-kill.  

All panellists felt that the internet held great potential for building up a golden age of civilization. It would make us more civil, more human. Well and good. I agree that technology has the potential to (1) draw the world together into a more global communion of humanity; (2) it has the capacity to bring great literature and vast libraries of knowledge into the homes of everyday people at the click of a cursor.  It might even equalize access to information and knowledge across classes; (3) it has the potential to animate well-educated, socially engaged citizens who are more like philosopher-kings than ever before in history.  Public education, democratic government, and general human civility will flourish like never before. And given this lofty rationale for the internet, human beings will refrain from reducing these technologies into forms of brain-rotting-entertainment.  

Even at the time, I felt that the panellists had been rather naïve in their assumptions. As a student, I had a pretty good idea of what the internet was being used for, and there was a disjunct between reality and lofty assumptions. They say that hindsight is 20/20, and looking at the state of the world today, the predictions my professors made in 1996 have not aged well.  Back then, we were talking about universal access to the internet. So, what of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? 

I can’t help but feel like I’m experiencing some of what I experienced in 1996. I’ve attended several forums on AI lately. I’ve heard the sales pitch over and over.  From the Carney government’s glowing prospectus on AI and national economic security, to perfectly well-articulated reasons why I need to sample every conceivable AI chatbot, I’ve been sold a pitch about how AI is going to improve my sermons, increase my productivity, make me a better listener, and even how it will improve my natural good looks and charm!  It’s always the same message – I promise you – AI is going to change everything in your life for the better; you’d be a fool not to embrace it now.  And why, exactly, should I be resorting to AI? Because the more I use it, the better it becomes at mimicking me.  Makes sense, right?  

I’ve heard that one of the great benefits of AI is that, unlike human intellects, it is ‘neutral.’ But neutral it is not.  Marshal McLuhan’s warning that “the medium is the message” applies to AI just as much as it applies to television, radio or books. Remember, video killed the radio star. 

The ethical irony behind this strident push for AI is that no self-respecting university ethics committee would ever approve of this as a research project with human subjects.  Imagine I make this pitch to a medical research board for approval.  How likely would I be to be given ethical clearance? I’d like to conduct a research project; it may hurt the human subject, it may not, I won’t know until I’ve conducted the research.  I’ll need access to listen in on every human subject’s phone. I need access to every subject’s data history. I want access to all of the subject’s social media data, the names and contact information of every person in their personal contact list. I want the ability to listen, remotely, to every conversation the subject has, with friends, doctors, therapists, and even lovers – without their consent. I don’t want any supervision, no accountability, and I will not be available for peer-review. This is AI.  

AI listens to us through cellphones, computers, and smartwatches. It recommends products, vacations, therapy models, and sexual partners. All based on unrestricted access to eavesdrop on our lives; it learns, self-corrects, and tries again. Then it tries again. But to what end? Is this really the prelude to what my professors, thirty years ago, thought of as the prelude to a golden age of flourishing and civility? Or, is AI something different?  

I suspect that our current debates on AI will age like my professors’ pronouncements about the internet. I, like them, probably won’t be here in thirty years. But I suspect that if you follow the money, you’ll see where the narrative is leading.  Is this really the dawn of a golden age of humanity, or is it the masterfully disguised logic of the Empire? As long as you fill bellies with bread and entertainment, people won’t question motives. As long as it is written by “machine and new technology”, they’ll let you do it. Nero fiddles, Rome burns.