Am reading a great biography of Ben Franklin by Isaacson. Highly recommended.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2011
Many people are trying to figure out exactly what Musk is up to with Twitter. While no one can be certain except him, a strong case could be made that he is inspired by the ideal of free press that Benjamin Franklin seemed to believe might be possible.
Musk has often cited Franklin as one of the individuals he admires most in history. Walter Isaacson in his book “ Benjamin Franklin “ states, “The opinions people have are ‘almost as various as their faces.’ ‘There would be very little printed,’ Franklin noted, if publishers produced only things that offended nobody.’” Isaacson shares how Franklin summed up the Enlightenment position in his famous statement:
“Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public, and that when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.”
Now there is certainly a massive range of opinion on what constitutes “fair play.” For more fascinating details around how Franklin attempted to resolve the inevitable dilemma of deciding whether to accept money for publishing something that might not be true, read Isaacson’s book.
One could speculate that dedicated, skilled human editors could be augmented with some form of AI to achieve an ideal of non-partisan oversight - yet to be achieved in history. Much is at stake. It seems like an ideal almost impossible to achieve. It would require the most sophisticated AI systems ever developed, with advanced autonomous learning capabilities to process the shear quantity of data required to conduct a public, global forum. Some might say it is more difficult than putting a man on Mars.
If it was ever possible to create the ideal of “free press” that Franklin imagined, Musk appears now poised in front of the initial technology, resources and platform to take a run towards it. All efforts towards this will face significant setbacks. But it just might be like watching America redefine its leadership position in space exploration, at the same moment when almost every aeronautical engineering expert is saying that reusable boosters are impossible.
Suspending disbelief for a moment, what could an ideal, non-partisan moderated, social platform look like? Could comments pass through self-learning algorithms that accurately screen for hate speech and bots? Could another icon be provided next to the heart and reply that links to alternative, factual summaries on that subject? What is the operational goal for the platform? Is it simply to allow the smaller percentage of more vocally passionate users to express whatever they want, or is to enable the larger percentage of the population to learn from discussion, freely voice their own similar or alternative views, and become more self-informed?
While Musk may not ultimately lead this, the opportunity exists to refine the operational design so that an improved system can emerge. If Franklin’s Enlightenment ideal to enable Truth to overmatch Error can somehow be maintained as the primary goal, there is no telling what could happen next.