Getting a serious message across with a light touch

By Brian Clegg

The other day I reviewed an interesting book by Virginia Dignum on the paradoxes we face when dealing with AI, not entirely surprisingly called The AI Paradox. While I thought the book made important and useful points, I commented ‘It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable’. This was not intended as a compliment.

As a result, I was delighted to read in The Register that the Norwegian Forbrukerrådet consumer council has published a report called Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future which in the words of the council ‘shows how this phenomenon [of ensh*ttification] affects both consumers and society at large, but that it is possible to turn the tide.’

In case you haven’t come across this term, the executive summary of the report begins: ‘Digital products and services are steadily becoming worse. Software becomes increasingly difficult and frustrating to use, websites and apps are littered with ads and spam content, and useful features are removed, degraded, or made subscription-only. This is part of a process called ensh*ittification.’

In many ways, the report is doing something similar for this aspect of IT to Dignum’s book for AI – identifying the issues and suggesting ways forward – but it does so in a surprisingly effective way for something that is, in effect, just the kind of government report I was complaining about. 

It is still 100 page long, which is at least twice the length it needs to be to get its message across, but sadly all too often reports are not considered satisfactory unless they run to book length. However, to their particular merit the Forbrukerrådet consumer council has also produced a four minute video which gets across the main points beautifully. 

Incidentally, I don’t know if I need the * in ensh*ittification, but since the video makers felt it necessary for YouTube, it may well also be the case to safely appear here. 

Before you go any further, just to let you know that my book Brainjacking on the science of influence and manipulation is now out in paperback in the UK. Find out more. Consider yourself influenced.

Back on topic – enjoy:

Image from Unsplash by Sopan Shewale. I struggled to find an image that really reflected the topic…

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.