Dictatorship 4.0: How the digital revolution threatens our freedom - and what our alternatives are

by Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich/TU Delft)

Finally, it has become obvious that mass surveillance applies not only to terrorists, but to everyone! As Wikileaks recently revealed, more than $100 billion was spent by the CIA alone to hack our computers, smartphones, smart TVs, and even smart cars, and to tap our data on a regular basis. This equates to more than $1 billion per terrorist!

In today’s surveillance capitalism, we are the product. All of our clicks in the Internet are being recorded and evaluated. About each of us, more data have been collected than secret services of totalitarian states have ever had in the past. Meanwhile, some information systems know us better than our parents, friends and partners - or even ourselves!

What is this data collection all about? It is done in order to learn about our preferences and weaknesses and make us all manipulable. Personalized information can influence our attention, our emotions, opinions, decision-making and behavior. It is easier than ever to motivate us to purchase certain products or manipulate our voting behavior in democratic elections. If you want to find more detailed information about all this, the relevant keywords are "Neuromarketing", "Persuasive Computing", "Social Computing", and "Big Nudging".

These technologies are increasingly threatening our democracy and domestic peace. Social bots – robotic bloggers - bias public opinion in a much more powerful way than propaganda and censorship in the past. We have ended up in a post-fact society, in which fake news is increasingly difficult to distinguish from the truth. If you and I click the same link, we may see different content. While this is well known for booking platforms, personalized content is also spreading in news portals in the Internet. It is even possible to manipulate Youtube videos in real time: both facial expressions and what is being said can be changed without the observer noticing. So we can’t anymore rely on digital content. Remember, for example, Michael Jackson's "Slave to the Rhythm" video – it was produced after his death!

But that's not all. Each one of us has a digital double. This is a kind of blackbox, which is fed with our personal data. This data has usually been tapped without our knowledge and, thanks to machine learning, the resulting double behaves similar to us. What is the intended purpose of such digital doubles? World simulations such as "Sentient World" can simulate global war games on computers. But your digital double could also be used to identify the best ways to trick you into buying a particular product, downloading a Trojan onto your PC to make it hackable, or to hate particular colleagues, neighbors, or fellow human beings. In addition, one could find out who would protest if democracy or the freedom of press were abolished, and these people could be incarcerated proactively “for the sake of public security” - the keyword here is "predictive policing".

Since the "Arab Spring", such technologies have increasingly been used to destabilize states or to stabilize autocratic regimes. Since then, they have been continuously improved. Now, such cyber weapons are also applied to the own citizens. These technologies are suited to replace democracy – which many IT visionaries have called an "outdated technology" - with a data-driven "benevolent dictatorship". All what is needed for this is a big disaster or crisis fueling a public outcry for "more security". Then, the technological instruments of the "brave new world" might be fully used. Read the book "iGod" by Willemijn Dicke to understand how this could end. It’s an urgent warning, a final wake-up call!

In the event of a crisis, the Chinese "Citizen Score" would probably be applied, too. The Citizen Score boils all of your data down to a single number (which by the way encompasses your health data, which can continuously be monitored and evaluated by your smartphone). This number comprises all of your activities and your social network as well. You repaid your loan with a delay? Minus points! You read critical news about your government? Minus points! You have the “wrong” friends? Minus points! In any case, the resulting Citizen Score would determine your interest rates, the jobs offered to you, and travel visa for other countries - at least in China.

A similar system exists in the UK, where the Citizen Score is called "Karma Police". It also evaluates the videos you watch on the Internet and the radio programs you hear. Don’t believe such scoring systems do not exist everywhere by now! What is their purpose, you might ask? The Citizen Score would serve to decide who will get access to what kinds of resources, when they get scarce! Such scarcity may also be artificially produced, for example, to reach the goal of reducing global CO2 emissions and mitigate climate change. It is said that a related resolution of the UN General Assembly will be adopted on September 23, 2017. 

As a result, the Citizen Score would lead to a neo-feudal society. You can imagine who is most enthusiastic about the prospect of this system and who has brought it to life… If you have a high score, you will get everything you desire, no matter how bad the situation in the rest of the world are. The people who commissioned the system would certainly be among this tiny elite. For the rest of us, it would depend on our Citizen Score whether we could still have a car, obtain certain medicine, or eat meat regularly. In order to get plus rather than minus points, many would not question the instructions through their smart devices – they would just follow them. Thus, people may soon be turned from citizens into subordinates again. 

This sounds like a terribly dystopian science fiction - but unfortunately it is not! The technologies described above are available and ready for use. You might wonder why all this has been developed? The answer is that our economy is not sustainable! The world consumes 1.5 times the resources that are renewable. A typical European country consumes 3.5 times as much, and the USA 4.5 times as much. In order to avoid serious crises and disasters, humanity must quickly reduce this factor to one. The Citizen Score might help to get in this direction, but we would then live in a digital command economy with digital food stamps - a more totalitarian world than ever! For the most part, this would not be a life worth living anymore - we would simply struggle for survival. 

There are much better ways to create a sustainable world by 2030! So far, however, these alternatives have been blocked by people with vested interests who care more about power and wealth than about our future. Here are some options: First of all, we could regularly organize City Olympics, where cities around the world would regularly compete for the best environmental-friendly, energy-efficient, resource-saving and crisis-proof solutions. There would be different fields of competition, as well as various "weight classes" (small and large cities, for example). 

This competition would involve science, but also business, politics and the media. In particular, mobilizing the people to use resources more efficiently and to buy more environmentally-friendly products and technologies would be important. Information about the best technologies, organizational principles and mobilization strategies could then be exchanged between the cities every other year. This strategy implies a combination of competition and cooperation between cities. Moreover, if the resulting innovations were made available for free in the spirit of "Open Innovation", the solutions could be further developed by everyone. This would lead to a fast and widespread adoption of the best solutions. 

Second, the financial and monetary system, which has been in crisis for years, should be replaced with a socio-ecological “finance system 4.0+”. This would work as follows: Using the sensors of the Internet of Things, which are also in our smartphones, we could measure the impact of our actions on the environment and other people. This would enable us to quantify "negative externalities" such as noise, CO2, and all sorts of waste. Similarly, "positive externalities" such as cooperation, education, health, and the recycling of resources could also be measured. Using Blockchain technology – similar to the one behind the digital currency "Bitcoin" - different externalities could then be assigned a price or value. This would lead to a multi-dimensional incentive or financial system, which would be good for the real-time control of complex systems. 

With suitable incentives, the financial system could be aligned with social values ​​and environmental requirements. In this way, new market forces could be unleashed, which would bring about a circular and sharing economy. This could provide a high quality of life for more people with fewer resources. It would also benefit companies, citizens and the state alike.

Third, so-called “market-conform democracy”, which has obviously not solved the world’s problems and has weakened our democracy, could be replaced by "democratic capitalism". This would reinvent the way money is being created. Instead of feeding billions of fresh Euros into the system from the top, as it is the case with "quantitative easing", an "investment premium" would be transferred to a special bank account of each citizen. However, this money could not be used for yourself or saved. It would have to be invested in good ideas, projects and commitments of others, such that you could support whatever you consider important and right. This would be like "crowdfunding for all", or an economic “right to vote” for investments that affect yourself. If such an approach were combined with Open Data and Open Innovation, it would drive rapid and pluralistic innovation, which would lead to much faster and more flexible solutions of humanity's problems. 

These are just some of the untapped opportunities we have. An upgrade of democracy to boost “collective intelligence” and coordination by means of digital platforms would also be possible. All of these proposals are perfectly compatible with the fundamental values ​​of our society. Democracy and capitalism - so far the two most successful forms of organization in human history - could be “happily married” with each other and digitally upgraded. In this way, we could tackle the problems of the future more successfully - and reach the next level of our economic, social, political and cultural system. A new chapter of the history is about to begin. It's now up to us to write it! 

For further information, please visit the FuturICT youtube channel and blog. This video gives a good overview. Sources and documents can be found here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316989750_The_Dream_to_Control_the_World_-_and_Why_it_is_Failing

Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at ETH Zurich and also affiliated to its Computer Science Department. He received an honorary PhD at TU Delft, where he coordinates the PhD school “Engineering Social Technologies for a Responsible Digital Future”. Helbing is also member of the German Academy of Sciences “Leopoldina” and serves in various committees related to the digital society.

Google as God?: Opportunities and Risks of the Information Age

Google as God?

Opportunities and Risks of the Information Age

By Dirk Helbing

"You're already a walking sensor platform… You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off. You know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should… Since you can't connect dots you don't have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever… It is really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information." 

 Ira "Gus" Hunt, CIA Chief Technology Officer [1] 

If God did not exist – people would invent one! The development of human civilization requires mechanisms promoting cooperation and social order. One of these mechanisms is based on the idea that everything we do is seen and judged by God – bad deeds will be punished, while good ones will be rewarded. The Information Age has now fueled the dream that God-like omniscience and omnipotence can be created by man.

For many decades, the processing power of computer chips has increased exponentially – a process known as "Moore's Law". Storage capacity is growing even faster. We are now entering a phase of the "Internet of Things", where computer chips and measurement sensors will soon be scattered everywhere producing huge amounts of data ("Big Data"). It's not just cell phones, computers and factories that are more and more connected, but our coffee machines, fridges, shoes and clothes, among others.

Gold Rush for the 21^st Century Oil

This huge amount of data, including credit card transactions, communication with friends and colleagues, mobility data and more is already celebrated as the “Oil of the 21st Century”. The gold rush to exploit this valuable resource is just starting. But the more data are generated, stored and interpreted, the more will it be possible for companies and secret services to know us better than our friends and families do. For example, the company "Recorded Future" – apparently a joint initiative between Google and the CIA – seems to investigate people’s social networks and mobility profiles. Furthermore, credit card companies analyze "consumers’ genes" – the factors that determine our consumer behavior.

Our individual motivations are analyzed in order to understand our decisions and influence our behavior through personalized search, individualized advertisements, and recommendations or decisions of our Facebook friends. But how many of these “friends” are trustable, how many of them are paid to influence us, and how many are software robots?

Humans Controlled by Computers?

Today, computers autonomously perform the majority of financial transactions. They decide how much we have to pay for our loans or insurances, based on our behavioral data and on those of our friends, neighbors and colleagues. People are increasingly discriminated by obscure "machine learning" algorithms, which are neither transparent nor have to meet particular quality standards. People classified as dangerous are now eliminated by drones, without a chance to prove their innocence, while some countries are discussing robots rights. Soon, Google will drive our cars. And in ten years, supercomputers will exceed the performance of human brains.

Is Privacy Still Needed?

What will the role of privacy be in such an information society? Some companies are already trying to turn privacy into a marketable commodity. This is done by first taking away our privacy and then selling it back to us. The company Acxiom, for example, is said to sell detailed data about more than 500 million people. Would it be possible to know beforehand whether the data will be used for good or bad? Many will pay to have their personal data removed from the Internet and commercial databases. And where data removal is not possible, fake identities and mobility profiles will be offered for sale, to obfuscate our traces.

Information Overload

“Big Data” do not necessarily mean that we'll see the world more accurately. Rather, we will have to pay for “digital eyewear” that allows us to keep an overview in the data deluge. Those not willing to pay (possibly also with personal data) will be blinded by an information overload. Already today, we cannot assess the quality of the answers we get online. As the way in which the underlying data are processed remains hidden to the user, it is hard to know how much we are being manipulated by web services and social media.  But given the huge economic potential, it is pretty clear that manipulation is happening.

The Knowledge-Is-Power Society

The statement "knowledge is power" seems to imply that "omniscience is omnipotence" – a tempting idea indeed. Therefore, who collects all the data in the world, such as the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States, might hope to become almighty, especially if equipped with suitable manipulation tools. By knowing everything about us, one can always find an Achille’s heel. Even CIA director General David Petraeus was not immune to this risk. He became the victim of a love affair irrelevant to his duty.

The developments outlined above are not fantasy - they are already taking place behind the scenes or are just around the corner. Yet, our society and legal system are not well prepared for this.  

Each 1 dollar bill may be read to suggest that omniscience and omnipotence (see the “God’s eye”) and the belief in God (“In God We Trust”) should be the basis of a new world order (“Novus Ordo Seclorum”). Source: Wikimedia Common, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_one_dollar_bill,_reverse,_series_2009.jpg 

A New World Order Based on Information?

Some people may see information and technologies as new tools to create social order. Why should one object to a computer or government or company taking decisions for us, as long as they are in our interest? But who would decide how to use these tools? Can the concept of a ‘caring state’ or a ‘benevolent dictator’ really work? In other words, can supercomputers enabled by Big Data take the decisions that are best for us?

This has always failed in the past, and it will be also unsuccessful in the future. Not only do many systems fail under asymmetric information (if some stakeholders are very well informed and others very badly). The performance of all computers in the world will also never be sufficient to optimize our economy and society in real time. Supercomputers cannot even optimize the traffic lights of a big city in real time. This is because the computational effort explodes with the size and complexity of the system. Just a very simple society could be optimized top down, but who would want to live in it?

Privacy and Socio-Diversity Need Protection

The aforementioned "omniscient almighty society" cannot work. If we all did what a super-intelligent institution thinks is right – it would be as if children always did what parents are asking for, never becoming adolescents. Then they would never take autonomous decisions, and find their own way. Privacy is a necessary ingredient for the development of individual responsibility and for society. It should not to be understood as a concession to the citizens.

“Private” and “public” are two sides of the same coin, each of which cannot exist without the other. People can only adjust to the thousands of normative public expectations every day, if there is a private, protected space where they can be free and relax. Privacy is an invention that reduces mutual interference to a degree that allows us to "live and let live". If we knew what others think, we would have far more conflicts.

The importance of unobserved opinion formation is demonstrated by the crucial role of anonymous votes in democracies. Would we only adjust ourselves to expectations of others, many new ideas would not emerge or spread. Social diversity would decrease, and thus the ability of our society to adapt. Innovation requires the protection of minorities and new ideas. It is an engine of our economy. Social diversity also promotes happiness, social well-being, and the ability of our society to recover from shocks ("resilience").

Social diversity must be protected just as much as biodiversity. Today, however, the Internet recommends us opinions about books, music, movies and even about friends and partners. This undermines the principle of the "wisdom of crowds" and collective intelligence. Why should a company decide what is good for us? Why can’t we determine the recommendation algorithms ourselves? Why don’t we get access to relevant data?

An Alternative Vision of the Information Age

Also in an increasingly unstable world, surveillance, combined with the manipulation or suppression of undesired behaviors, is not a sustainable solution. But is there an alternative to the omniscient almighty state that matches our ethical values? An alternative that can create cultural and economic prosperity? Yes, indeed!

Our society and economy are currently undergoing a fundamental transformation. Global networking creates increasing complexity and instability that cannot be properly managed by planning, optimization and top-down control. A flexible adaptation to local needs works better for complex, variable systems. This means that managing complexity requires a stronger bottom-up component.

In the economy and the organization of the Internet, decentralized self-organization principles have always played a big role. Now they have also spread to intelligent energy networks ("smart grids") and traffic control. One day, societal decision-making and economic production processes will also be run in a more participatory way to better manage the increase in complexity. It seems the natural course of history. A growing desire of citizens to participate in social, political and economic affairs is already found in many parts of the world.

The Democratic, Participatory Market Society

In connection with a participatory economy, one often speaks of “prosumers”, i.e. co-producing consumers. Advanced collaboration platforms will allow anyone to set up projects with others to create their own products, for example with 3D printers. Thus, classical companies and political parties and institutions might increasingly be replaced by project-based initiatives – a form of organization that I would like to call “democratic, participatory market society”.

To ensure that the participatory market society will work well and create jobs on a large scale, the right decisions will have to be taken. For example, it seems essential that the information systems of the future will be open, transparent and participatory. This requires us to create a participatory information and innovation ecosystem, i.e. to make large amounts of data accessible to everyone.

The Benefit of Opening Data to All

The great advantage of information is that it is (re)producible in a cheap and almost unlimited way, so that the eternal struggle for limited resources might be overcome. It is important that we take advantage of this and open the door to an age of creativity rather than limiting access to information, thereby creating artificial scarcity again. Today, many companies collect data, but lack access to other important data. The situation is as if everyone owned a few words of our language, but had to pay for the use of all the other words. It is pretty clear that, under such conditions, we could not fully capitalize on our communicative potentials.

To overcome this dissatisfactory data exchange situation and achieve "digital literacy", one could decide to open up data for all. Remember that most countries have also decided to turn the privilege of reading and writing into a public good by establishing public schools. It is well known that this step has boosted the development of modern societies. Similarly, "Open Data" could boost the development of the information society, but the producers of data must be adequately compensated.

A New Paradigm to Manage Complexity

Access to data is essential for the successful management of complex dynamical systems, as it requires three elements: (i)  proper systems design to support predictability and controllability, (ii) probabilistic short-term forecasts of the system dynamics, which need plenty of reliable real-time data, and (iii) suitable adaptive mechanisms ("feedback loops") that support the desired system behavior.

Managing complexity should build on the natural tendency of complex dynamical systems to self-organize. To enable self-organization, it is crucial to find the right institutional settings and suitable ‘rules of the game”, while avoiding too much top down control. Then, complex systems can essentially regulate themselves.

One must be aware, however, that complex systems often behave in counterintuitive ways. Hence, it is easy to choose the wrong rules, thereby ending up with suboptimal results, unwanted side effects, or unstable system behaviors that can lead to man-made disasters. The financial system, which went out of control, might serve as a warning. These problems have traditionally been managed by top-down regulation, which is usually inefficient and expensive.

Loss of Control due to a Wrong Way of Thinking

Whether a system can be adequately managed or is self-organizing in the way we want is a matter of systems design. If the system is designed in the wrong way, then it will get out of control sooner or later, even if all actors involved are highly trained, well equipped and highly motivated to do the right things. “Phantom traffic jams” and crowd disasters are examples of unwanted situations that occur despite all efforts to prevent them from happening. Likewise, financial crises, conflicts and wars can be unintended consequences of systemic instabilities. Even today, we are still not immune to them.

Therefore, we need a much better understanding of our techno-socio-economic-ecological systems and their interdependencies. Appropriate institutions and rules for our highly networked world must still be found. The information age will revolutionize our economy and society in a dramatic way. If we do not pay sufficient attention to these developments, we will suffer the fate of a car driving too fast on a foggy day.

Decisions Needed to Use Opportunities and Avoid Risks

To meet the challenges of the 21st century and benefit from its great opportunities, a Global Systems Science needs to be established in order to fill the current knowledge gaps. It aims to generate new insights allowing politics, economy and society to take better informed, more successful decisions. This could help us to use the chances of the information age and minimize its risks. We must be aware that everything is possible – ranging from a Big Brother society to a participatory economy and society. The choice is ours!

About the author

 Dirk Helbing is Professor of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation at ETH Zurich, and member of its Computer Science Department. He earned a PhD in physics and was Managing Director of the Institute of Transport & Economics at Dresden University of Technology in Germany. He is internationally known for his work on pedestrian crowds, vehicle traffic, and agent-based models of social systems. Furthermore, he is coordinating the FuturICT Initiative (http://www.futurict.eu), which focuses on the understanding of techno-socio-economic systems, using Big Data. His work is documented by hundreds of scientific articles, dozens of keynote talks, and media reports in all major languages. Helbing is elected member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Complex Systems and of the German Academy of Sciences “Leopoldina”. He is also chairman of the Physics of Socio-Economic Systems Division of the German Physical Society and co-founder of ETH Zurich’s Risk Center.

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[1] See: http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-presentation-on-big-data-2013-3?op=1 and http://gigaom.com/2013/03/20/even-the-cia-is-struggling-to-deal-with-the-volume-of-real-time-social-data/2/. For similar recent FBI priorities see http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html