Digital MPS stunned by exec-bots of the planet Jargon
Sick of fake news? Don’t worry. The MPS of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee are on the case. Whatever it takes to defeat this insidious threat to our democracy, they’re ready. And if that requires them to undertake a taxpayer-funded jaunt to the United States, well then so be it.
Yesterday they arrived in Washington DC to speak to executives from Google, Youtube and Facebook. The big guns of the digital world. These were seriously important people.
I say people. They certainly looked like people. But they didn’t talk like people. They talked like highly sophisticated robots. And, bearing in mind the technological capabilities these firms possess, it’s more than likely that that is what they were.
In both tone and content, the exec-bots’ answers sounded prerecorded, automated, programmed. There was no um-ing and ah-ing, no pausing for thought, no attempts at humour or matiness. Instead MPS were subjected to an uninterrupted monotone of management jargon.
“Law enforcement can request information from us pursuant to their investigations,” MPS were told. “The trust that users have in our services is reliant on us providing a high-quality news experience”, they learnt.
They heard about “the dynamics of the ecosystem”, and the need to “address these issues at scale”. They were even confronted with the phrase “news and other verticals”.
Yes, verticals. That was the clincher. These were definitely robots. No human being would have used a word like that. (“Mind if I switch over to BBC One, Marjorie? Just want to catch up with the latest verticals.”)
The exec-bots said they “recognise there is a problem of misinformation”, and were “committed” to addressing it, because it was “a business priority for us”. (“I think of ourselves as being in the trust business,” said the exec-bot from Google.)
At times the jargon had a vaguely sci-fi feel. “Violent extremism,” said the exec-bot from Youtube, “has been identified by our algorithms.” That could have been a line from Star Trek.
“Violent extremism has been identified by our algorithms, Captain.”
“Prepare to engage. But don’t damage the dynamics of the ecosystem. We need to address these issues at scale. Target the verticals.”
Overall, the standard of artificial intelligence on display was impressive, but the linguistic capacity of the exec-bots will need fine-tuning before they can pose convincingly as humans. The exec-bot from Youtube, for example, had an obvious glitch: it began every answer with the word “so”, followed by an infinitesimal pause. “So, watch-time is an important metric for us….so, the security and integrity of our products is core to our business model…so, the community guidelines and content policies apply to all our creators equally…”
It may have cost the taxpayer a lot of money to send all those MPS to America, but in the end I think we got pretty good value.
Even if we didn’t learn much about fake news, we were given a fascinating insight into the progress of AI.