CT article "Digital Sloth in the Online Arena"
Outtakes from the latest at Christianity Today. The modern amphitheater is a dangerous, polluted place - beware the digital circus shaping your soul.
I have been working on this article for CT for several months. I’ll offer some outtakes here, with some more specific references to further illustrate. In the political countdown and what seems like daily news of the new capabilities of AI, disinformation around elections and natural disasters, social media and foreign actors meddling in your heart and soul… I keep thinking… this is like the old colosseum!
The numerous Roman amphitheaters in Rome, the Middle East, Carthage… are an amazing sight and, a were major culture issue for the church. Why did secular Greek philosophers and early church theologians like Tertullian say no to the arena?
In our day with the internet a primary source for all things immoral and illegal, where radical groups recruit, bots and AI with immense power shape and psychologically manipulate, nefarious spy operations target the unsuspecting, rage entrepreneurs inflame, and a flood of misinformation makes it nearly impossible to tell truth from lies… our akrasia and clamoring for the arena is leading to drastic consequences. For Christians especially, it is time to contemplate the risk vs. reward and listen to Tertullian who said ‘avoid the spectacle.’
We have an amphitheater in our pockets and it is strategically targeting us to cultivate hostility and ideological loyalty.
A few interesting (scary) examples:
Generative adversarial networks automated with powerful AI deliberately test fake material to elicit outcomes (like opinions). And, bot-networks can establish a ‘swarm’ of real-looking accounts to overwhelm a person with information, hateful comments, memes or propaganda either to silence or to sway. Facebook reportedly deleted 3 billion accounts within 6 months in 2019. If you’re a user, you’ve already been exposed to all kinds of fake content, deliberate misinformation or demeaning and dehumanizing memes authored by bad actors… attempts to curate your desires and shape your soul.
Technology is also “determining how we think and what we value” in war and conflict. In the Gaza crisis, it has been reported that, in addition to AI run propaganda campaigns, Israel is using militarized AI tools to select targets for elimination and execute targets. One even has the audacious name “The Gospel.” Humans are barely involved, weapons controllers are encouraged to trust ‘The Gospel’, dehumanizing even the process of killing and outsourcing morality on a massive scale. These tools, technologies and screens are shaping our view of other humans (and killing them), distancing our moral compasses from the ethical entanglements and grotesquely altering our view of the world and other people.
Numerous actors in the digital, social and news spaces mask their intentions as news organizations, deliver memes via people on social (as fake accounts). One report indicates there may now be more news sites authored by domestic disinformation, Russian intelligence and the like than real local news channels. AP News has a whole section on ‘Not Real News’ things that didn’t happen which are being shared all over the internet.
Cults and politically charged groups function more like tabloids or super-PAC’s and have limited public accountability or visibility. The Fulan Gong, a religious movement out of China launched The Epoch Times as a propaganda newsletter. Epoch is a distinctly anti-China group whose founder has been in severe legal trouble for financial crimes. They spent millions on the last Republican campaign and deliver free papers including innocuous cooking and recipe suggestions to conservative geographical areas to get people interested.
Foreign governments wage influence campaigns through fake accounts and AI to sway perception and push agendas (like Israeli intelligence in the Gaza war). And foreign agencies like Russia and Iran, looking to foment conflict in the US, have been active for years, influencing elections, making fake groups and memes (that evangelicals are more prone to like and share) and even organizing protests and counter-protests (where people actually show up).
Democrat and Republican campaigns are already using AI, bots and fake imagery to influence votes and in some cases portray dystopian futures in AI generated images and video on national TV. AI chatbots are running for office and synthetic robo-callers are asking for votes on the other end of the telephone. Domestic disinformation accounts for an increasing amount (up to 65%) of junk, conspiracies and mysterious, but traceable sources (mostly alt-right) that deliberately flood digital spaces with material designed to overwhelm traditional news sources and create confusion.
Disgraced former presidential advisor Steve Bannon famously outlined the information strategy “flood the zone with sh**” for undermining traditional media and journalism. The strategy purposefully overwhelms channels, networks and social media with so much junk content that people won’t be able to tell what is real. It prevents any kind of consensus because of the distrust reaped, and then elevates a solution in its own voice that provides a defense against the flood of confusion (that the leader themselves created). This crisis-solution construct is a classic recruiting technique for extremist groups (see more here) and creates a perception of reality where everything and everyone is either good or evil with no nuance or middle ground.
One of the striking consequences of all of this… surveys show an increase in Americans who believe violence is justified, alarmingly highest among white evangelicals.
This technology, says Jack Esselink (a former colleague from the Extreme Beliefs group) in his thesis on deepfakes and extremism, is a “manifestation and amplification of underlying sociological trends” towards fear, feeding existing biases, radicalization and out-grouping. He says further that there is an “epistemic uncertainty… caused by the infocalypse.” We simply don’t know what to believe anymore, and, are too lazy to do the work to find the truth. This, Esselink says, can be a form of “algorithmic akrasia” where we rely on the algorithm or technology itself to serve up what is real and true, to “provide epistemic certainty” all the while ignoring our own tendency towards cognitive bias, us and them thinking and the dangers inherent in a polluted space. Many, like the extremely profitable ‘outrage’ entrepreneur channels are out to make a profit from fear and they don’t abide by out-dated journalistic rules. They will keep up the slander as long as we listen, click or subscribe.
Not everyone (or everything in the case of AI) in the digital space can be trusted, there are many forces shaping our hearts and minds towards other human beings and pushing or pulling us onto radicalization pathways. Knowing biases and outlets prone to skewed or deceptive messages helps to filter (I have mentioned the Media Bias Chart before). Akrasia-permitting exposure to misleading and extremely biased types of sources eventually molds us and is itself a liturgy, curating our heart postures towards other humans one email, post or news headline at a time.
So taking the advice of Seneca and Tertullian, it’s time to wean off the devices and unsubscribe from emails, channels and stations that have become mechanisms to shape our souls.