An AI Guide To AI

Snowden muses about John Stuart Mill, The Tyranny of Mediocrity and Digital Sovereignty.

“I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public.”

In an address to the Redacted Web 3.0 conference in Bangkok, Edward Snowden, whistle blower extraordinaire, looks onto the shape of things to come and suggests ways to avoid the pitfalls of quickly evolving technology.

Snowden’s revelations in 2013 were a shock to the system when he provided incontrovertible proof of mass surveillance being practised on all electronic devices, with the data for sale to the highest bidders, namely governments and corporations.

A CIA security contractor, he had to flee and give up his life once the revelations became public and he still lives in exile in Russia. His intimate knowledge of cyber security and state surveillance made him a target of vilification to the world’s leading super power.

In this speech “Digital Sovereignty in the Age of AI” Snowden evokes the ideas of John Stuart Mill, a prominent enlightenment thinker, and his thoughts about the Tyranny of the Majority.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant who became one of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism.

He was known for his work on liberty, utilitarianism, and representative democracy. Mill was educated rigorously by his father James Mill and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (designer of the concept of the Panopticon) from a very young age, making him something of an intellectual prodigy.

The “tyranny of the majority” is one of Mill’s most important concepts, introduced in his seminal work “On Liberty” (1859). This idea refers to a situation where the majority in a democracy uses its power to oppress or discriminate against minority groups, not through governmental coercion but through social pressure and cultural dominance.

Key aspects of the tyranny of the majority include:

1. Social Coercion: The majority can enforce their moral, cultural, or social views on minorities through informal means like social pressure, ostracism or public opinion
2. Conformity Pressure: Society’s tendency to impose its customs and beliefs on individuals, limiting their freedom of thought and expression
3. Democratic Weakness: Even in democratic systems, the majority’s will can become oppressive if there aren’t proper protections for individual rights

Mill argued that society needs safeguards against this tyranny, including:

• Strong protection of individual rights
• Freedom of speech and expression
• Protection of minority viewpoints
• Limits on society’s power to interfere with individual liberty

He believed that true freedom requires protecting individuals not just from government overreach, but also from the societal pressure to conform. As he famously wrote, “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

Snowden sees a parallel with what is happening today in the digital world, which he calls “The Tyranny of Mediocrity”, as he sees the online world pulling to make us conform to the average. For him, our weirdness is our saving grace, the part of us that doesn’t quite fit the mould, the dough that stays out of the cookie cutter.

He calls the power structure that pressures us to subjugate ourselves to societal pressure and dulls our creativity and our very soul “The Architecture of Oppression”.

Stay free. And stay weird!