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Beware of A.I. in Social Media Advertising

Bill Hibbard March 2018

I submitted the following letter to the editor of the New York Times on 27 March 2018, although they did not print it:

• Dipayan Ghosh is exactly right that A.I. in the persuasion industry (Beware of A.I. in Social Media Advertising, 26 March 2018) poses a great threat. Integrating information about billions of humans and their social relationships, especially once it can converse with us in our own languages, A.I. will transform persuasion into total surveillance and control.
  • Countering this threat requires transparency from A.I. developers, enabling informed consent from individuals about how their information is used. However, we must avoid the temptation for government or social media companies to censor the speech of individuals to remove "fake" information; central control of individuals is the real threat of A.I. and we shouldn't ask for more central control.