Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Why there is Debate Between Content Moderation and Free Speech

Moderation on social networks is an essential feature. In an excellent essay on the Verge ‘The secret rules of the internet – The murky history of moderation, and how it’s shaping the future of free speech‘, the relation to free speech is discussed. “As law professor Jeffrey Rosen first said many years ago of Facebook, these platforms have “more power in determining who can speak and who can be heard around the globe than any Supreme Court justice, any king or any president.'”

The testimonies about content moderation are quite breathtaking, and the decisions whether to keep some videos that have shocking content but are important from the political perspective (like the murder of people during demonstrations) an example of tough decisions to make.

And because “The stakes of moderation can be immense. As of last summer, social media platforms — predominantly Facebook — accounted for 43 percent of all traffic to major news sites. Nearly two-thirds of Facebook and Twitter users access their news through their feeds“, this determines what people will ultimately see from the world.

Of course before there was journalism, a limited number of sources and effective censorship by governments. What has changed is that it is now privately handled and not susceptible to democratic control. I would anticipate that at some stage, guidelines might be defined by governments (e.g. related to anti terror campaigns) but at the moment it is an issue to be kept in mind.

How Artificial Intelligence is Still Mostly Human-Sourced

There is a lot of buzz nowadays about Artificial Intelligence (AI) starting to be present in our lives: virtual assistants and else. However as this excellent article in Bloomberg shows ‘The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots‘, this AI is still very much human powered. We are not really talking only to a clever machine, but to a system that is still highly facilitated by humans.

chess_turk — Like the chess machine, humans “turks” often hide behind Artificial Intelligence!

AI will certainly become sometimes in the future a real feature in our environment. For the moment we mainly observe systems that do increase human productivity to respond to requests. The limit is fuzzy to a real AI system that is only being administered, but we can be on the safe side to affirm that real independent AI it not there yet.

In fact, numbers are not known precisely but moderation on all social networks is certainly one of the first tasks that could be handed over to AI and at the moment it is still very much human powered (using workers from low wage countries). And that may remain the most economic option for a while.

What the Best Strategy in Complex Systems Is

“Stuart Kauffmann and John Holland, both complexity theorists affiliated with the multidisciplinary Santa Fe Institute, have shown that the evolutionary approach is not just another way of solving complex problems. Given the likely shape of these ever-shifting landscapes, the evolutionary mix of small steps and occasional wild gambles is the best possible way to search for solutions” writes Tim Harford in his book ‘Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure‘.

What I find extremely interesting in this statement is the affirmation that the evolutionary approach is the best way to deal with complex systems (in terms of survival), however this requires to be able to take some wild gambles from time to time, probably to adapt to the sudden changes that can occur in the environment.

The thing is that evolution as a process is dramatically wasteful: a few survive but many don’t as nature proceeds with ongoing experiments. If it is indeed the best way to deal with complex systems it means that there is going to be a lot of waste, also known as failures.

This is actually the theme of the book, but leaves us with the need to manage a large number of experiments without if possible, dying as a result. We thus need to develop a particular manner of evolution which remains survivable.

Still, in our complex world, we could learn more from evolutionary theory than we generally think.

Why We Should Consider a Situation to be a Dilemma When in Doubt

Following on our post explaining ‘Why We Are Moving From a World of Problems to a World of Dilemmas‘, let’s give ourselves some guidance when we can’t really be sure that what we are facing is a problem or a dilemma.

The rule is simple – in doubt, treat the situation as a dilemma.

This will force a much wider range of considerations and solutions, and will probably be more right. Consider a situation to be a problem only when it is clearly delineated and where linear thinking appears to be applicable. All the rest should be treated as dilemmas.

Dilemmas implies choice, it implies regret and it generally requires prompt action to be released. It requires character more than analytic thought. It is harder but nowadays it is often more useful to consider situations as dilemmas rather than problems.

Why We Are Moving From a World of Problems to a World of Dilemmas

One of the most interesting changes brought by the Fourth Revolution is that we are evolving from a typical world of problems to be solved (typical of the Industrial Age) to a world of dilemmas where we have to choose between options.

The reasons for this change are numerous. One is that we all have much more choice than before and so, there are many possible solutions for a situation. This forces us to make choices. The other is that because of our increased interconnectedness, our decisions can’t be independent of the decisions of others. We are thus forced to take into account others’ actions and reactions in our analysis, and this creates dilemmas.

Knowing how to resolve problems is thus not any more the key competency. Knowing how to manage dilemmas is, with all the issues related to possible regrets, and making choices in an uncertain and changing world.

Let us learn to face dilemmas better to thrive in the Collaborative Age!

How the World Becomes More Addictive

In this post ‘The Acceleration of Addictiveness‘, Paul Graham makes the case that the world becomes increasingly addictive, because of technological innovation.

“The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. And unless the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40.”

Paul Graham then goes on to remark that it took about 100 years for society to develop antibodies and new customs to reject cigarettes. Thus, “unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we’ll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us.”

And seeing how people get addicted by their smartphone nowadays it is certainly a concern. People that abstain or are able to limit their consumption are becoming fewer apart, and we also have more difficulty concentrating on a task without interruption.

This however, will become an essential skill in the Collaborative Age and we probably need to educate ourselves and our children how to have safe havens and time spans without connectivity and computers.

How We Can Shape the Fourth Revolution

The big talk at Davos this year was about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is best explained in Klaus Schwab‘s post ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond‘. This Fourth Industrial Revolution is in fact quite close to our Fourth Revolution in its premises, although of course the perspective is slightly different. Still it brings some interesting thoughts about the transformation of the world.

In particular, Klaus Schwab states that “An underlying theme in my conversations with global CEOs and senior business executives is that the acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption are hard to comprehend or anticipate and that these drivers constitute a source of constant surprise, even for the best connected and most well informed.” Even the best informed at Davos are struggling to anticipate what will happen.

Klaus Schwab goes on to describe the social tensions that are arising, in particular in the field of inequality: “in the future, talent, more than capital, will represent the critical factor of production. This will give rise to a job market increasingly segregated into “low-skill/low-pay” and “high-skill/high-pay” segments, which in turn will lead to an increase in social tensions.” Governments struggle to adjust and respond, and there seem to be a number of different path humankind could take in the near future – some acceptable, others not.

Finally he concludes that it comes to us to define what is acceptable or not, based on humanistic values.

How much can we influence collectively the path that the Fourth Revolution is taking? Reactions from governments are always too slow compared to the evolution of services, and it will come down to all of us to find the right governance to make the Collaborative Age an Age where most of humankind can see progress and contentment. Yet it will be tough and there will be crisis. The best solutions remains to be found.

Why It is Important to Take the Time for Real Work

“At many companies the proportion [of responding to emails and other solicitations] hovers around 80%, leaving employees little time for all the critical work they must complete on their own” (HBR – Collaborative Overload). That is evidently consistent with daily observations in most organizations today (when it is not 100% of the time spent interacting, and the important work done on overtime). Yet value is created mainly when one does the real work – reflection, strategic planning and research. There is thus an interesting contradiction, which is mostly created by the bureaucratic effect (organizations creating work for themselves with low value for the client).

collaboration excess — Collaboration Excess?

Reserving certain space for doing the important creative work is an increasingly demanding challenge, in particular in international organizations where time differences add to the calendar strain, and with the interruptions from smartphones. Yet it is so essential to create that value that it is nowadays a strong differentiator in the workplace.

It has actually come to a point where so many people are just reacting to the influx of information and triggers that it is less difficult than before to make a difference by taking some time on some longer term projects and contributions. For example, as a consultant, not being involved in the daily grind of my clients’ organizations is a tremendous competitive advantage that allows me to create value much quicker and effectively than if I was an insider.

Multiply your effectiveness by reserving 20% of your time for an interruption-free focused work on important matters. It will increase significantly your impact and make the difference!

How Individualism Returns after a Short Industrial Age Parenthesis

Paul Graham in his (controversial but thought provoking) post ‘Refragmentation‘ gives an interesting overall view of how the Industrial Age may have just been a short parenthesis in the history of humankind when it comes to lesser individualism and more even spread of wealth.

How Rockefeller was wrong. Individualism only collapsed for the Industrial Age.

He states: “The late 19th and early 20th centuries had been a time of consolidation, led especially by J. P. Morgan. Thousands of companies run by their founders were merged into a couple hundred giant ones run by professional managers. Economies of scale ruled the day. It seemed to people at the time that this was the final state of things. John D. Rockefeller said in 1880: “The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return“. He turned out to be mistaken, but he seemed right for the next hundred years.”

With the Fourth Revolution, large companies are not any more the most effective way of creating value. Individualism is enhanced by our capability to broadcast to the world, and the contribution of everyone is enhanced.

In many ways the Industrial Age was an exception to the way the world had been moving along, and it may have been a short exception in many ways regarding individual life, employment and our social contract.

How Powerful Algorithms That Shape Our Lives Still Rely on Human Creativity

The great Quartz post ‘The magic that makes Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists so damn good‘ gives a wonderful insight of the positive brought to us by advanced algorithms and basic Artifical Intelligence.

It goes into the details of how Spotify proposes new playlists based on one’s own preference, the playlists of other members with close preferences, and advanced algorithmic to bring all together into a wonderful proposal of new music tracks.

What I find extremely interesting is how the basis for the value that is created is actually human-produced: the playlists of other people. The algorithm does not find new tracks or discover new musicians by itself. It relies on the curiosity, the knowledge of its members. The algorithm exploits the community effect to create value for all members, leveraging the efforts and chance encounters of all subscribers.

“Spotify is also using deep learning—a technique for recognizing patterns in enormous amounts of data, with powerful computers that are “trained” by humans—to improve its Discover Weekly picks“. That’s where AI comes in to further improve the algorithm. But still at the core are the lists of others and how they interact with them to fine-tune their preferences.

All those algorithms enhance the power of the community but can’t replace it. All original creative data is still created by humans. Algorithms are still only powerful crutches to create value in our lives putting together all these individual contributions.

Why Increased Accessibility to Ideas Correlates with Overprotection trends

Broadening on our post on the recent trend in US colleges to overprotect from potentially offensive ideas, there is much more happening in the world with a growing contradiction with the much easier accessibility to all sorts of offensive ideas, pictures on internet and the increasingly defensive behavior of society.

For example, in some respect the development of head covering and niqab in the Muslim world (where in the 1960’s uncovered hair and face was the most common) is also some sort of reaction to this wider accessibility of non politically or socially correct sources.

It may well be that the development of these overprotective trends is the consequence of the wider access to disturbing ideas. The world would then be increasingly split between those that can deal with these disturbing ideas (without necessarily condoning them of course), and those that can’t or won’t.

Over time, this might become a bigger split in the world’s population than the issue of internet access, with pockets of overprotective societies in both developed and less developed countries.

How Overprotecting from Different Points of View is a Moral Hazard

There is a bit of a controversy in the US at the moment about excessive coddling (protection) of college students. Basically in some colleges, many issues can’t be discussed any more or taught because of the potential to offend some students. This created astonishing concepts such as ‘micro-agressions’ (move or words people feel aggressive) or ‘trigger warnings’ (the need to announce in advance that the subject or the words that will be used might offend, giving the opportunity to retreat in a safe space).

This has come to a point where President Obama had to comment: “I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, “You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.” That’s not the way we learn either.”

And more: “The purpose of college is not just … to transmit skills,” he said. “It’s also to widen your horizons, to make you a better citizen, to help you to evaluate information, to help you make your way through the world, to help you be more creative.”

What is the future of these students that can’t face certain issues and want to protect themselves from anything they might feel offensive? How are they going to manage being in the world? We can be sure they won’t move out from their cozy american environment and fear the world around them. This is the root of future US conservatism and protectionism, and dysfunctioning adults.

We all need to learn to face the world however uncomfortable it can be to us to forge character. Let’s not shrink from the nasty stuff surrounding us; let us face them and deal with them. Overprotection from offensive ideas is a moral hazard that needs to be addressed.

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