I
have had weird things happen on Facebook, so weird that I supect that FB has become a version of HAL … an AI gone awry.
This is not idle speculation. Zuckerberg has talked about how their AI reads messages looking for whatever someone thinks violates “community standards.”
I also have “friends” who posts are so reliable, so predictable that I have come to assume they are bots.
and I too have been blocked when someone or something at FB decides my writing violates some rule I can not .. as a mere human .. understand.
Facebook is not Hal. Hal is a highly sophisticated computer on a spaceship, that controls all the functions of the ship and is intelligent. but has been given instructions tha violate its basic coding. For all its intelligence it cannot hold two opinions that conflict, and function. Something very human. The facebook program is just looking for phrases that could violate, and try to take human beings out of the equation, but in the end a human has to make a decision, and often will go with whatever is in their best interest, and inevitable free speech suffers. So yes Zuk has his finger on the scale, and we would be better of with Hal.
The basic question is whether Facebook is a commons. If it is then they should not be doing censorship. Clearly they do not do it well. The fact they maybe doing it directly or indirectly on behalf of the United States government is reprehensible. Yes it is still government censorship is elected officials in the US House and Senate threaten to do things to Facebook if they do not do some kind of censorship, something those same politicians could not do directly. Though politicians in China and Iran have a totally different standard and those governments make demands as well. Though in Iran shouting down with the Ayatollah on the street will get you shot or executed quicker.
The HAL 9000 though is a sentient supercomputer while facebook is just a network of computers, servers, and routers. Hal is capable of painting a tree, do poetry, and have original thought. Facebooks computers cannot do any of that, though they can find if you use a particular word, but they cannot determine the onctext the word is used, but HAL could, but since HALs basic commands of being open with information means HAL should not do any censorship of information and that is what causes the problems in the novel and movie. So censorship is inimical to HAL so your issues are not with HAL, probably not with the Facebook network since they are dumb computers that do the things that humans tell them to do. So it is Zuck or other human beings at Facebook you really have the issue with.
Obviously it IS a commons. B ut, there is a new fillip since the days of Jefferson and the Handbills. AI offers a set of new tools for controlling what is put up in the commons and whi it connects with. How do you regulate AI? Ask the Zuck?
Hal is meme. Yeh the AI on the 2001 FB is nto Zuck but it is Zuck that has more power than Hal!