World Faces 'TechEnabled Armageddon,' Maria Ressa Says
By the end of 2024, the world will know whether democracy is "alive or dead," Nobel laureate Maria Ressa said Tuesday afternoon at an event at the National Press Club in Washington.
The fight for truth and journalism is at the heart of this fight, the journalist added.
"If we don't have factual integrity, we can't have electoral integrity," he said.
The root cause of this crisis: the "technological Armageddon" the world is currently facing, says Ressa, and exacerbated by the rise of generative artificial intelligence. "Technology Secretly Manipulates Us."
"The price is our concern. "It's a new economic system, attention to the economy," Ressa said. "We are Pavlov's dogs doing a real-time experiment with very poor results."
Research shows that false information spreads faster online than real information. “This is a problematic incentive structure that technology platforms are responsible for, and has serious implications for democracy around the world,” said Ressa, founder and CEO of Filipino Online. Rappler news website.
"If you don't have the facts, you can't get to the truth. Without truth one cannot believe. Without these three elements we don't have the same reality, there is no rule of law - we don't have democracy," he said. It is this process that "turns our world upside down".
According to a report released by Freedom House in March, levels of freedom around the world have declined for 17 years in a row.
Attacks on press freedom are also part of a democratic crisis, of which Ressa is well aware.
Over the years, the Philippine government has filed repeated lawsuits against Ressa, all in retaliation for Rappler's critical reporting. In January, Ressa and Rappler were acquitted of tax evasion charges, but he still faces three other criminal charges, including one count of online defamation.
"We are not out of this crisis yet," he said on Tuesday. “To be with you today, I had to go all the way to the Supreme Court of the Philippines. You must approve my itinerary.
According to Ressa, winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, Rappler is still struggling with a possible network shutdown.
Last week, the Russian government officially declared the co-prize winner, Russian journalist Dmitri Muratov, a "foreign agent".
Muratov, head of the popular Russian investigative magazine Novaya Gazeta, said on Monday that he would take legal action against the designation. His media announced that he would temporarily resign from his post as editor-in-chief pending the hearing of the case in court.
The information war in the world has been going on for many years. In 2014, for example, "we saw an information operation that literally changed the history of the Philippines before our eyes," said Ressa, who described former President Ferdinand Marcos as a kleptocratic and ruthless dictator. The best guide the Philippines has ever had.
“Technology makes us forget — technology changes history,” he said. "If you can make people believe that lies are facts, then you can control them."
The rise of generative AI, "which is neither artificial nor intelligent," Ressa joked, has only made things worse.
"There are no barriers and the responsibility for our protection remains in our hands - actually I think it's mostly the men who seek the benefits," she says.
Digital rights and disinformation experts have raised concerns about how generative artificial intelligence could be used to spread disinformation online more easily and quickly.
But using generative artificial intelligence isn't always bad, Ressa added. For example, Rappler uses ChatGPT to create biographies of political candidates, which staff then verify for accuracy.
The battle for facts has enormous implications for all other global problems, such as climate change, Ressa said.
"We cannot solve the world's existential problems unless we win the battle based on facts," he said. "The future is in our hands. It's here".
