THE MADCOM FUTURE:
Research Report
THE MADCOM FUTURE:: HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL ENHANCE COMPUTATIONAL PROPAGANDA, REPROGRAM HUMAN CULTURE, AND THREATEN DEMOCRACY… AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT.
Matt Chessen
Copyright Date: Sep. 1, 2017
Published by: Atlantic Council
Pages: 30
OPEN ACCESS
https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep03728
Table of Contents
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. None)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. 1-1)
  3. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (pp. 2-2)
  4. PART I: THE EMERGENCE OF MADCOMS
    PART I: THE EMERGENCE OF MADCOMS (pp. 3-11)

    Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will soon enable highly persuasive and manipulative machine-generated communications. Imagine an automated system that uses the mass of online data and easily available marketing databases to infer your personality, political preferences, religious affiliation, demographic data, and interests. It knows which news websites and social-media platforms you frequent, and it controls multiple user accounts on those platforms. The system dynamically creates content—everything from comments to full articles—specifically designed to plug into your particular psychological frame and achieve a particular outcome. This content could be a collection of real facts, outright lies, or a mix...

  5. PART II: THE IMPLICATIONS OF A MADCOM WORLD—THREE SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE
    PART II: THE IMPLICATIONS OF A MADCOM WORLD—THREE SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE (pp. 12-16)

    The rise of MADCOMs can lead to several possible scenarios over the next ten years. Section II of this paper explores the implications of these scenarios for individuals, organizations (corporations, nonprofits, political parties, charities, and other nongovernmental groups), and governments. Section III provides recommendations for how the public should respond to the threats and opportunities posed by MADCOMs.

    A World Gone MADCOM: Global Information Warfare—MADCOMs dominate conversations online, and the information environment devolves into a morass of manipulative machine-driven speech.

    Muddling Through: Measures and Countermeasures—MADCOM countermeasures spur propagandists to develop more sophisticated tools and an arms race ensues—...

  6. PART III: IS INFORMATION NIRVANA POSSIBLE?
    PART III: IS INFORMATION NIRVANA POSSIBLE? (pp. 17-22)

    Even in a best-case scenario, AI technology will profoundly shape the future of human civilization. AI tools will shape our culture, make decisions for us, and serve as loyal machine companions and assistants. Eventually, sentient AIs may take humanity into a post-scarcity civilization—if we can survive the MADCOM years.

    How do we get to this ideal future, in which MADCOMs are used for the benefit of humanity, and not to its detriment?

    As a first essential step, the community of democracies must recognize the serious threats posed by MADCOMs, computational propaganda, and weaponized narratives, and must move aggressively to...

  7. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR (pp. 23-24)
  8. Back Matter
    Back Matter (pp. 25-26)