In an era where generative AI and surveillance capitalism pose unprecedented challenges to democracy, FreeThought aims to develop a societal response. Our project focuses on enhancing critical thinking skills and fostering truth-seeking institutions to combat the spread of disinformation and protect democratic values.

The Challenge

ChatGPT, the most known generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, reached 100 million monthly users in a month, making it the fastest-growing digital technology in history. Generative AI has an unprecedented capacity for increased quantity, quality, and personalization of disinformation. The World Economic Forum ranks misinformation and disinformation at the top of their list of ten significant threats for the next two years (ranking above war, economic crisis, and extreme weather). The Norwegian government has established an expert group to assess how AI and the potential for disinformation can influence democratic elections and how Norway should prepare for the upcoming 2025 election.     

Generative AI and disinformation

is an umbrella term for a wide range of content-producing AI solutions, providing unprecedented generative capabilities for audio, text, images, and video. However, these capabilities also enable the generation of disinformation nearly undetectable as AI-produced. In today’s digital landscape, the rapid spread of such disinformation is amplified by a digital platform-based surveillance economy characterized by oligopolistic control of information spaces (such as, e.g., X, Facebook, and TikTok) with algorithms geared towards the attention economy accelerating content that spurs human (negative) sentiment (Zuboff 2022).

Societal responce

Society does not yet have a working response to the threats of surveillance capitalism and generative AI-fueled disinformation. Critical thinking remains essential in combating disinformation because other approaches, such as regulation, open source/explainable algorithms, and ethical development, seem insufficient. Regulatory efforts like the EU’s Digital Services Act and AI Act are commendable. However, rapid technological advances frequently outpace regulation, and regulation must balance enforcement with the protection of free speech in liberal societies. While open-source/explainable algorithms may offer transparency, the infrastructural characteristics that digital platforms and Generative AI have in our information landscape mean that not using them is not a viable option. The platforms and tools used by “everyone” prevail. Ethical development within these digital platform companies is also challenging because they are locked in a race to maximize shareholder value, and their business model is based on the attention economy, monetizing user data through targeted advertising.

Objectives

The main objective of “FreeThought” is to begin formulating a societal response to the threats to democracy posed by Generative AI combined with digital platform-based surveillance capitalism. The response is focused on strengthening sociotechnical critical thinking skills in the population and truth-seeking institutions. “FreeThought” will do that by reaching the following sub-objectives:

O1: Establish an interdisciplinary network of people willing and able to formulate such a response and seek their insight 

O2: Document the state-of-the-research on generative AI, surveillance capitalism, and democracy  

O3: Disseminate findings of the project to the public (popular science paper)

O4: Apply for funding for main projects   

Reports

• Workshop 1: Arbeid med en forskningsagenda (in Norwegian)
• Workshop 2: Læring, kritisk tenking og generativ KI (in Norwegian)

References

Zuboff, S. (2022). Surveillance capitalism or democracy? The death match of institutional orders and the politics of knowledge in our information civilization. Organization Theory, 3(3), 26317877221129290