The totalitarianization of society

At first sight, programs like OpenAI, with its sections ChatGPT for making texts and DALL.E for making images, seem a step forward in human development, despite all criticism you can make against them. Maybe the present shortcomings of such programs will only be temporary and once its flaws have been improved, they will be powerful tools for making life better. Boring text writing tasks, for example, can be left to machines, and humans will get more freedom for real creativity. That is possible, indeed. Many technical developments have made life better. On the other hand, there is also a dark site of this new technology, as we saw in my last blogs, when I talked of a Big Brother Society in this respect. Technical developments can bring more welfare, but they can also lead to more control over society by a small number of rulers. It can lead to a totalitarianization of society. Why? Let me start with a historical perspective.
Originally, dictatorships were personal. It was about personal power, wealth and honour. Some people (usually men) tried to get leadership positions, preferably be head of state, for so they could amass wealth, exercise power and be honoured. Power and honour gave the possibility to become wealthy but were also valued as such. In the end, there was no other way to control people than by violence and by creating dependency relations, but so long as “the people” did what a ruler said, it was okay. Note that dictators can exist at all levels. They don’t need to be heads of state, but also a local boss, dependent on someone above him, can be a dictator, albeit locally. However, by violence and dependency structures, maybe you can make that people behave the way you like, but in fact you cannot control their private lives. As long as people pay their taxes and say “you are great”, it’s difficult to get a real grip on them. Especially, dictators of this type can’t control ideas. Ideas can be dangerous, since they can undermine authority and power structures. It was not without reason that Galileo was forced to say that that the sun revolves around the earth although he believed that the earth revolves around the sun, for the latter idea undermined the authority and so the power of the roman-catholic church (or so it believed).
This changed with the invention of printing. Now ideas could be quickly and widely distributed with the help of books. So, it became easier to undermine dictatorships. It is no surprise that many books were forbidden by dictators. This had two effects: Dangerous ideas were stopped and ideas positive about the dictator still could be widely spread. However, the distribution of dangerous books could not be effectively stopped. In addition, other new developments influenced the distribution of ideas. I’ll only mention them here:
- The rise of education for everybody during the ages; first only primary education but later also higher education.
- New means of transport: Trains, then cars, then aeroplanes.
- The invention of radio and TV.
- The invention of the computer and then the internet.
These are only the most important developments, but they all had, step by step, important effects. Ideas could be distributed in an easier way, but also life became better. On the other hand, humans became more dependent on their new way of life. The backside was that there came also new ways of control, with the result that a new type of dictatorship came into being: the totalitarian dictatorship. While in the old types of dictatorships in essence it was enough that the subjects did what the dictators ordered them to do, totalitarian dictatorships try to control everything in society including what the subjects think. The first completely totalitarian state was the Soviet Union. Everything was in the hands of this state (or so it tried): education, mass media, transport, culture, organisations of all kinds (including sports clubs, theatre, etc.). The whole society was completely controlled by the state, although it appeared often difficult to control the ideas, for ideas from abroad still trickled in. But not only “official” dictatorial states became totalitarian, also democratic states got totalitarian traits.
It is in this in historical perspective that we must see the development of programs like OpenAI. My historical description could only be sketchy, but I think that you see the point: Through the ages, especially since the 15th century, rulers have got increasingly a grip on what their subjects do. More and more leaders got the means to control their subjects. Originally dictators could enforce only the right behaviour but gradually they could also enforce the right ideas. By influencing the ideas, dictators tried to force people to think in the right way. And here it is that chatbots can help dictators. For till now, people still had to think themselves with the help of the enforced ideas. But now there is a machine that thinks for you: Just give the chatbot a hint, and you can stop thinking, for the chatbot tells you what you think. The perfect chatbot will be the one that you need to give only one order: “Tell me what I think” and the chatbot will tell you. That’s the ultimate control of thinking! The ultimate? No, the ultimate control of thinking is a machine that fully thinks for you: You don’t need to ask it any longer “What do I think?” It just thinks for you. The machine is you.