“I’m sorry Dave, I can’t fake that.”
Give a civilization 23 centuries and a proliferation of robots tasked with providing a visually enticing and shiny respite from the stark and deadly truths of totalitarian government and collective servitude, and the electronic and digital minions of the state will eventually deviate towards a role of evil evolutionary engineering in unnaturally selecting humanity towards extinction. As science fiction and the movie industry exist as the ultimate soothsayers for an epic doomsday, it is just a matter of time before the tools of technological innovation, gravitate to a position of robot overloads in an irony where the baleful broadcast screams of the flesh and the blood fail to reach the nearest star systems.
China is not helping to diffuse end of the world scenarios, as the millions of active high definition surveillance facial recognition cameras constantly keep tabs on the population (slaves), and god knows how many government worker ants populate the master control centers processing individual behavior and interaction in combing for anomalies determined by complex statistical analysis algorithms. The modern iteration of mad mathematics is capable of conjuring up nightmares for the unfortunate citizen who does not fit into the gentle confines of the bell curve, regardless of routine or demeanor, innocent or criminal. Establishing deviancy is based on a formula rather than physical, visual, or audio evidence, with the complete absence of a reset button. The video gaming influenced style of governance has come into horrific fruition. Top off the pulsating future shock sundae of machines allowed to determine fate, with the unsettling addition of embittered military leadership officials at odds with the government and communist party as legions of troops are unable to provide for their families, and it can’t get any worse, can it?
The modern axiom of the internet, first explored in metaphors by philosopher Mencius in the middle of 300 BC, goes something like, “In the presence of fake news, create fog. With truth, unleash a burgeoning starry night.” Since humankind is currently afflicted by the former scenario, the great minds of the ancients calls for an informational typhoon hurricane blizzard of epic proportions. Something along the lines of replacing human news broadcasters with software avatars, a technology that is thoroughly being explored, reports Reuters.
As society endures the growing pains of a 24 hour news cycle administered with the assistance of automated software and emanated by biased social networks, the reckless and overzealous campaign of the Chinese to add further ambiguity into the already confusing whirlpool of “what is real?”, does not seem to be a very reasonable course of action in promoting accountability and stability. However, if the tyrannical reign of Beijing wishes to execute a tighter choke hold on the populace in amassing a tragic slew of human rights violations, what better way to articulate proclamations than through an artificial medium that resembles the human form, yet lacks a conscience, a soul, and the glaring security issue that keeps the devious hacking community awake at night in frenzied anticipation of programming the news bot with customizable and inaccurate content broadcast to a captive audience of just over a billion. The prize of the head gallery foyer, would immortalize the one who successfully negotiates through a series of complex firewalls, in proving that the news is best presented by human beings.
The bumbling pratfalls of F***book in assembling an biased editorial team in deliberately burying conservative content from the “trending” stories section on the right side of the screen, and abruptly and aggressively scrapping the department in exchange for a low grade infusion of flawed AI algorithms, perfectly illustrates the dangers of tossing the merits of humanity aside in placing all available innovative technological directives in a single basket. As a result of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s horrendous decision to throw accountability completely out of the window in forwarding a well orchestrated agenda of intolerance heightened by the implementation of software, the world is a worse place, than the gold rush days of the chat rooms and message boards, where the concept of Big Brother was limited to a sleep deprived moderator, who often times participated directly within the thread of conversation.
The singular conceivable positive outcome of the Chinese experiment in completely abolishing the crucial founding journalistic principle of objective reporting, is the possibility that some of the more polarizing and controversial talking heads may be replaced by pixelated software suites. Certain anchors and reports from CNN, MSNBC, and the major networks facing the realm of unemployment due to the shimmering presence of news bots is a tantalizing fantasy and the proper fate for a collection of some of the most insufferable narcissists in the entire galaxy.
While software is corruptible and prone to glitches, especially in the first few generations, it will be interesting to note the performance and capabilities of the ageless electronic ghosts of the Chinese airwaves in presenting the blatant lies of the government as a fine tuned direct mouthpiece of Beijing, or will a conflict with the truth render a chaotic future even more impossibly tumultuous?
Read the Reuters story here.