Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist, Sunday Review, Sept. 24, 2017<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 The idea of Mark Zuckerberg running for president was always sort of scary.<\/p>\n
But now it\u2019s really scary, given what we\u2019ve discovered about the power of his little invention to warp democracy.<\/p>\n
All these years, the 33-year-old founder of Facebook has been dismissive of the idea that social media and A.I. could be used for global domination \u2014 or even that they should be regulated.<\/p>\n
Days after Donald Trump pulled out his disorienting win, Zuckerberg told a tech conference that the contention that fake news had influenced the election was \u201ca pretty crazy idea,\u201d showing a \u201cprofound lack of empathy\u201d toward Trump voters.<\/p>\n
But all the while, the company was piling up the rubles and turning a blind eye as the Kremlin\u2019s cyber hit men weaponized anti-Hillary bots on Facebook to sway the U.S. election. Russian agents also used Facebook and Twitter trolls, less successfully, to try to upend the French election.<\/p>\n
Finally on Thursday, speaking on Facebook Live, Zuckerberg said he would give Congress more than 3,000 ads linked to Russia. As one Facebooker posted: \u201cWhy did it take EIGHT MONTHS to get here?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillary is right that this $500 billion company has a lot to answer for in allowing the baby-photo-sharing site to be turned into what, with Twitter, The Times\u2019s Scott Shane called \u201cengines of deception and propaganda<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert Mueller\u2019s team, as well as House and Senate investigators, are hotly pursuing the trail of Russian fake news. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security told 21 states, including Wisconsin and Ohio, that Russian agents had tried to hack their elections systems during the campaign.<\/p>\n As Vanity Fair pointed out<\/a>, Mueller\u2019s focus on social media during the campaign could spell trouble for Jared Kushner, who once bragged that he had called his Silicon Valley friends to get a tutorial in Facebook microtargeting and brought in Cambridge Analytica \u2014 Robert Mercer is a big investor \u2014 to help build a $400 million operation for his father-in-law\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n Some lawmakers suspect that the Russians had help in figuring out which women and blacks to target in precincts in Wisconsin and Michigan.<\/p>\n Senator Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee looking into Russia\u2019s intervention in 2016, has a suspect in mind. \u201cPaul Manafort made an awful lot of money coming up with a game plan for how Russian interests could be pushed in Western countries and Western elections,\u201d Heinrich told Vanity Fair.<\/p>\n ProPublica broke the news<\/a> that, until it asked about it recently, Facebook had \u201cenabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of \u2018Jew hater,\u2019 \u2018How to burn jews,\u2019 or, \u2018History of \u201cwhy jews ruin the world.\u201d\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook\u2019s C.O.O., apologized for this on Wednesday and promised to fix the ad-buying tools, noting, \u201cWe never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way \u2014 and that is on us.\u201d<\/p>\n The Times\u2019s Kevin Roose called this Facebook\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein moment<\/a>,\u201d like when Mary Shelley\u2019s scientist, Victor Frankenstein, says, \u201cI had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness.\u201d<\/p>\n Roose noted that in addition to the Russian chicanery, \u201cIn Myanmar, activists are accusing Facebook of censoring Rohingya Muslims, who are under attack from the country\u2019s military. In Africa, the social network faces accusations that it helped human traffickers extort victims\u2019 families by leaving up abusive videos.\u201d<\/p>\n The Sandberg admission was also game, set and match for Elon Musk, who has been sounding the alarm for years about the danger of Silicon Valley\u2019s creations and A.I. mind children getting out of control and hurting humanity. His pleas for safeguards and regulations have been mocked as \u201chysterical\u201d and \u201cpretty irresponsible\u201d by Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n Zuckerberg, whose project last year was building a Jarvis-style A.I. butler for his home, likes to paint himself as an optimist and Musk as a doomsday prophet. But Sandberg\u2019s comment shows that Musk is right: The digerati at Facebook and Google are either being na\u00efve or cynical and greedy in thinking that it\u2019s enough just to have a vague code of conduct that says \u201cDon\u2019t be evil,\u201d as Google does.<\/p>\n As Musk told me<\/a> when he sat for a Vanity Fair piece: \u201cIt\u2019s great when the emperor is Marcus Aurelius. It\u2019s not so great when the emperor is Caligula.\u201d<\/p>\n In July, the chief of Tesla and SpaceX told a meeting of governors that they should adopt A.I. legislation before robots start \u201cgoing down the street killing people.\u201d In August, he tweeted that A.I. going rogue represents \u201cvastly more risk than North Korea.\u201d And in September, he tweeted out a Gizmodo story headlined \u201cHackers Have Already Started to Weaponize Artificial Intelligence,\u201d reporting that researchers proved that A.I. hackers were better than humans at getting Twitter users to click on malicious links.<\/p>\n (Musk also tweeted that it was a cautionary tale when Microsoft\u2019s chatbot, Tay, had to be swiftly shut down when Twitter users taught her how to reply with racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic slurs, talking approvingly about Hitler.)<\/p>\n Vladimir Putin has denied digital meddling in the U.S. elections. But he understands the possibilities and threat of A.I. In a recent address, the Russian president told schoolchildren, \u201cWhoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.\u201d Musk agreed on Twitter that competition for A.I. superiority would be the \u201cmost likely cause of WW3.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, touring the Moscow tech firm Yandex, Putin asked the company\u2019s chief how long it would be before superintelligent robots \u201ceat us.\u201d<\/p>\n Zuckerberg scoffs at such apocalyptic talk. His project this year was visiting all 50 states, a trip designed by former Obama strategist David Plouffe, which sparked speculation that he might be the next billionaire to seek the Oval Office.<\/p>\n