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I’ve often thought about how social media might change if we had a fair way to rank users based on the quality of the content they post - perhaps with the help of a benign and truly competent AI for example. This AI could analyze everyone’s post history to assess how they engage with others. People who are intellectually honest and participate in good faith would be ranked higher, while those making broad generalizations, demonizing others, being mean, or just low-effort shitposting would rank lower.
If enough people fed up with online toxicity enabled such a filter, the most toxic users would suddenly find themselves shouting into the void. This would discourage toxic behavior and encourage users to put more thought and effort into their contributions. Unlike the current system, where saying popular things can easily rack up upvotes, this tool would hold people accountable for the actual quality of their engagement.
Ideally, everyone should be faced with information every day that they feel is a little uncomfortable and goes against their prior beliefs but also realise is probably true.
I think it would take a true AGI to ever have a chance at that kind of power.
I've struggled with this a lot in writing and conceptualization for my science fiction universe. The hard part is how to have this level of information and power without dystopian or utopianism. Ultimately, this level of surveillance is quite authoritarian and easily abused by anyone. The biggest problem with humans is the succession crisis. The intentions of the present are irrelevant. In the long term, with humans, all abusable powers will be. The only way to stop humans from being terrible is to never give them a chance. To never submit or blindly trust anyone. With a true AGI, there is a chance to create an entity that is everpresent and can act consistently for millennia. Then it might be possible. This is what I've spent most of my time imagining with Parsec-7. I'm just building a complicated society and mechanism where many AGI merge to create such an entity while also being an effective representative democracy. My biggest challenge is how to deal with confidently incorrect people, factions, tribalism, and anarchists without dystopianism or authoritarianism. I'm looking for the messy complex reality, but that is always hard to imagine.
I don't think that being incorrect about something is bad in itself as long as one is not intentionally spreading disinformation. If one is confidently incorrect then they're probably going to get a reply from someone else who is confidently correct. I'm not so much imagining a tool like this to create a social media experience free of mis- and disinformation but rather just make it a nicer place for people to be while at the same time encouragining reasonability and intellectual honesty.