AI as Propaganda

Context: Attack Mannequins: AI as Propaganda

An interesting article but the assertion of ideological counter-propaganda in this context is a bit of stretch. It projects much more structure, aptitude and volition to the behavioural and regulatory (as control/governance) systems than has ever actually existed. The assertion of all ideological positions requires a foil, an antithesis and an (at least partially fictive) “bad actor” upon which to structure an argument. This duality self-inflects, hyper-inflates and instils symbolic momentum into all political life.

In this context more broadly, and aspirationally agnostic of the deadweight inertia that ideological commitment of all flavours incur, we might do much better to consider that communities of technical, commercial and regulatory practice find themselves unwittingly orbiting precisely the same class of uncertainty, undecidability and (logical) incompleteness as the technology itself.

There are useful analytical “hyper-slices” of culture, psychology and technology here. All of these complex systems of information and energy-processing represent computational entities that acquire both utility and value from the irreducible uncertainty (as ontological vacuum of entropy) at their core. The presence of absence is endemic.