Like nearly every 21st-century American, I rely on technology for information, communication, entertainment, shopping, and bill-paying. So it feels like a nightmare when it goes haywire, whether on purpose or by mistake.
This has been the stuff of fiction for decades. In the 1990 film “The Handmaid’s Tale,” ATMs wouldn’t let women withdraw their own money, paving the way for a patriarchal society to force them into slavery.
Last year, the movie “Mountainhead” showed Silicon Valley bros partying, dealing, and double-dealing while fake news from their artificial intelligence technology caused a global crisis.
And “Law and Order” just kicked off its 26th season with a murder committed by a hit man hired by an aggressive AI system that the developer’s CEO refused to restrain.
With news outlets reporting case after case of Big Tech, cybercriminals, and AI itself running amok, nothing seems too far-fetched these days.
Even AI executives are begging the government to set some limits.
Good luck with that right now, given Donald Trump’s infatuation with a technology he’s trying to rebrand as “super intelligence” and GOP lawmakers’ reluctance to buck him.
Blocked for no reason
For a short time, I experienced my own digital nightmare.
As co-chair of Schuylkill Indivisible, I regularly send bulk emails to people who signed up to be on our list, and I’ve always honored unsubscribe requests.
I had no serious problems until two weeks ago, when my routine Gmail message was rejected as spam from numerous accounts served by the same webmail provider.
I tried sending the same email to a couple of those people individually. I even sent a short one to a childhood friend as a test. But whatever I did was “prohibited by policy” and blocked, with no further explanation.
I tried to resolve the problem with the subscribers’ service provider, which I also do business with, but the people I spoke with, after I got past a bot, insisted the problem lay with Gmail.
So I contacted Google customer service and discovered it’s only for owners of its physical products. Since Gmail is free, I guess I’m not considered a customer.
Fair enough, but Google apparently caused the problem and wasn’t doing anything to solve it.
Since I was angry enough to write about this situation, I emailed the company’s PR department to ask for an explanation and whether there are any remedies for situations like this.
Meanwhile, someone who also has a large mailing list suggested a workaround that’s … working.
A few days ago, I discovered that my Gmail address is no longer blocked, at least from my friend’s mailbox, but I’m still leery.
And because I never heard back from the PR department, I still don’t know what happened. Maybe it was a glitch. Maybe AI got carried away. Maybe something got hacked.
In moments of paranoia, I even wondered if progressive groups like mine are being censored.
Potential chaos
In any event, this incident scared the hell out of me as I imagined something like it happening on a much larger scale.
Staying in touch with family, friends, and like-minded people would be difficult to impossible, as would keeping up with what’s happening in my community, my country, and the world. Catastrophes might not be averted.
Except for Donald Trump, his family, his cronies, and perhaps his lackeys, we’d all be left in the dark, figuratively and maybe even literally if that’s what the powers that be want.
For even though they belittle knowledge and education, they recognize both as major obstacles to their goal of establishing a dictatorship and accumulating even more money than they know what to do with.
Just look at the attempts by the Trump/Project 2025 regime to ban journalists who report and investigate its disastrous plans and policies. And how it has used the courts and its Department of “Justice” to try to silence criticism and dissent.
We’re already seeing how AI can cause substantial harm by itself, but it and other digital technologies can also be powerful tools, not only for criminals but also for aspiring autocrats who are already working nonstop to delude, intimidate, and oppress their people. And Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump has been on display even before the top CEOs got prime seats at his inauguration.
Early in this century, a minister said the internet was taking us into an age of information but not necessarily wisdom.
She had no idea what lay ahead. And if we fail to elect a Congress to rein in Trump, his Project 2025ers, and, yes, the tech titans, it will be harder than ever to find information we can trust.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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