TECHNOLOGY in and of itself is neutral – neither good nor bad. It provides benefits that are potentially transformative. Look at how computers, for instance, or the internet, have revolutionized the way we live and work. Today we can no longer imagine how it is to not be connected.
At the same time, technology has traps into which we could fall if we are not careful, or aware. It can be misused or weaponized to gain advantage over others, especially those who lack technological sophistication or who uncritically accept and pass on whatever they receive.
Artificial intelligence, for one, offers opportunities – and commensurate risks.
In recent days, Senator Ronald dela Rosa and Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte shared a video showing students defending Vice President Sara Duterte amid her looming impeachment trial. The students said the process was politically motivated and that justice would be selective.
The video was exposed to have been created through AI. The senator and the mayor thus were criticized for spreading the AI-generated content.
But dela Rosa, after initially insisting that the video was legitimate, said it was the message that was important.
The Vice President herself, the beneficiary of the video, downplayed the transgression.
“There’s nothing wrong with sharing AI video in support of me as long it is not used for business. If I were a social media account owner and I will create an AI to support a certain personality, but not as business, there is nothing wrong with that,” she said.
The importance – and legitimacy – of the message is greatly diluted when it comes from a messenger that is not a real person, and that is especially skewed toward a particular political bent.
And everything – definitely not nothing — is wrong when technology is used to sway people into believing something that was manufactured specifically for the sole intention of manipulation.
The gesture is aggravated by the fact that Dela Rosa and Duterte are elected officials, elected into office by popular vote. They swore to protect the interests of their constituents against the many threats that confront them. And disinformation is one of those threats that is the consequence of an unquestioning mind and is one of the causes of our poor democratic choices.
Dela Rosa and Duterte deserve the flak they are getting for resorting to AI in peddling falsehoods. But the real tragedy is that the people holding them to account for doing so are not as many – and certainly not as noisy – as those who believe that these two officials are justified in doing so.
