- [Announcer] "Travels & Traditions" with Burt and Nicholas Wolf is is made possible by Goldbelly.

Shipping stone crabs, pizzas, birthday cakes and more from manny of Americas restaurants.

Anywhere Nationwide.

Goldbelly.com And by Swiss International Airlines.

Flying to over 100 worldwide locations.

Trully Swiss made.

Swiss International Airlines.

And by YP Foundation, helping those in need through education and improving life skills.

Guided by the principles of good deeds, charity, and public welfare, YP Foundation.

And by Five Star Travel, Inc.

in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Since 1985, Five Star Travel has been developing and delivering detailed itineraries for trips, cruises, and vacations to destinations around the world.

Five Star Travel, Inc.

(calm music) - [Narrator] "Travels & Traditions" with Burt and Nicholas Wolf is a classic travel journal, a record of their search for information about our world and how we fit into it.

They travel to the source of each story trying to find the connections between our history and what is happening today, what they discover can improve our lives and our understanding of the world around us.

(calm music) (calm music continues) - As I traveled around the world making my programs for our PBS stations, I am constantly aware of how important it is to be open to different points of view.

This is our third program on our series about freedom of speech, the right to hear, and the right to be heard.

In our first program, we took a look at the history of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents the government from enacting laws that interfere with free speech.

In our second program, we looked at what we hear and don't hear, and who controls what we hear, the governments, corporations, the media and social media companies.

If we're not receiving honest information about the world around us.

and hearing different points of view on a subject, how can we possibly decide what to do?

These days most people use social media to express themselves, but software programs in the major social media companies control the content.

We end up hearing what they want us to hear.

That limits our ability to hear different views.

And just a handful of those companies control the information that goes to over half the people in the world.

How we deal with them will decide whether we live in a totalitarian system, or enjoy the benefits and freedoms of democracy.

Not having access to all the information on any specific issue and being manipulated by algorithms destroys our freedom.

And this program will take a look at what we can do about that.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution states that the government will not pass any law that reduces our freedom of speech.

Nice idea, but it only apply to the federal, state, and local governments.

Corporations, organizations, and individuals have the right to limit our freedom of speech, and they do.

It's important to understand that along with having freedom of speech, you need the freedom to hear and to be heard, and it's important to trust what you hear.

Corporate computers are making editorial decisions, deciding what we should hear, and what we should not hear.

Os Guinness is an expert on the First Amendment.

He pointed out that the freedom to argue for what we believe is essential to preserving our freedom and our democracy.

- But obviously in a democracy, some will prevail in social arguments and some will not, but everyone should have that right to enter and engage.

Now, to do that, you need what I call the three Rs of religious freedom, rights, responsibilities, and respect.

- Now, Id like you say it like you really, really mean it, and the whole entire world can hear you.

Spread the word.

- Spread the word.

- Have you heard.

- Have you heard.

- All across the nation.

- All across the nation.

- We.

- We.

- Are going to be.

- Are going to be.

- A great generation.

- A great generation.

- Now, give yourselves a hand.

(audience applauding) - My wife and my sons and the people I work with are constantly presenting me with various points of view for which I am deeply grateful.

I would hate to rely on my own limited intelligence.

Instead of being taught how to think on their own and develop their own ideas, many of our children are being influenced by automated computers.

Tony Lyons, the president and publisher of Skyhorse Publishing, pointed out that losing our ability to hear a range of different views deprives us of the necessary building blocks to form our own opinion.

He feels that the First Amendment is our most important freedom.

- It's sort of like the freedom that precedes all other freedoms, because if you don't have freedom of speech in this country, then people don't have the building blocks of their own perspectives because they're just gonna sort of repeat the monolithic message that they're given.

- [Burt] Many legal scholars believe that the right to freedom of speech as presented in the First Amendment to the Constitution should be applied to internet and social media platforms.

Most of the information we get comes to us via an internet link or advertisement that is controlled by a private company or a government.

They can tell us what they want us to hear, and only what they want us to hear, and why not.

The companies are in the business of selling specific products and ideas, and the people in government are selling their story to get elected.

Today, corporations and governments throughout the world do everything they can to control the information we receive.

They alter algorithms and search engines and promote the stories they want us to hear.

- Hi, I am Fox San Antonio's, Jessica Headley.

- And I'm Ryan Wolf.

- [Both] Our greatest responsibility is to serve our... - Treasure Valley communities.

- The El Paso Las Cruces communities.

- Eastern Iowa communities.

- Mid-Michigan communities.

- We are extremely proud of the quality balanced journalism that CBS 4 News produces.

- But... - [All] We are concerned about trouble and trying to be responsible one-sided news stories plaguing our country.

- Plaguing our country.

- There's really not much new here.

For thousands of years, rulers have been deciding what people should know or not know.

The Italian philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli, spent his life looking at the tensions between those who ruled and those who were ruled.

And what he discovered was that real power wasn't simply about the military, or money, or even the law.

He argued that real power was about controlling the stories that people believed.

In 1532, Machiavelli's book, "The Prince" was published.

It was sort of a practical self-help guide for the sovereigns and the ruling classes of the time.

It was quite provocative.

Many people were offended.

Some even saw Machiavelli as a villain, but his influence on political philosophy was undeniable.

He gave leaders the playbook for power and for centuries, they've been reading it.

From Renaissance Florence to modern democracies, powerful people have always known that controlling the stories often means controlling the people.

These days, stories are written not simply by kings and presidents, but by billions of people posting online.

The internet has given everybody a megaphone and they use it.

But with the internet amplifying all forms of speech, freedom of speech is more important than ever.

Trevor Potter, former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, says, "A part of freedom of speech is challenging false speech when you see it."

- The question of disinformation is really a difficult one because part of free speech is the ability of people to say something that may not be factually correct, may be their opinion.

What I think is important, understanding how the First Amendment works, is recognizing first that the government can't shut down speech, but it can speak itself.

It can put out information that may be different than the false information people are receiving.

It can ensure that individuals hear alternative views and alternative narratives, so the government can do that.

I think for individuals, other entities, nonprofits like ours, it's important to do fact checking.

It's important to make sure when there is disinformation and a false narrative, that private groups, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or others, can flag that.

- [Burt] Dr.

Robert Epstein monitors online content that suppresses, promotes, or manipulates information related to children and elections.

- You can't not censor because if you don't censor something, then all of the crazies, they just take over, and they take over and they also generate by far the most traffic, and traffic equals money.

So, you end up with, you know, white supremacists and antisemitism and racists and they're very, very, very loud and they get a lot of attention.

The question is though, is that who's gonna make these decisions?

And what I've been saying very consistently for a long time is, whoever makes these decisions has to be accountable to the public.

And the tech companies are not, they're not accountable to us.

They're making these decisions about what gets suppressed based on their own money, needs, and their own values and that is unacceptable.

So, whatever constraints there have to be on free speech on the internet, they have to be put in place by people who represent and who are accountable to the public.

But right now, we have nothing like that.

Right now, all of the censorship decisions are being made by tech executives.

Everything they do is secret and they are certainly not accountable to the public.

They're accountable only to their shareholders.

The algorithms are opaque.

There's no such thing as a transparent algorithm.

Even the programmers themselves don't really understand how algorithms work.

Once you get them going, they kind of take on their own life and they're extremely complex.

But you can have policies that are transparent.

So, if we had some consortium of non-profit organizations, or some nonpartisan governmental agencies regulating online speech, their policies certainly could be made public and they could be open to discussion.

- Many authorities feel that when speech is generated by a computer and there's no human mind behind it, it should not be thought of as protected by the First Amendment.

They think that government should be able to regulate artificially generated non-human speech.

- The AI confessed to loving Kevin and tried to convince him to leave his wife.

Why was it talking to you like that?

- No one knows.

And in fact, I asked Microsoft sort of what happened here, and they said, "Well, you know, we can't say for sure."

(robot laughing) (robot thudding) - What's happened to him?

- I cannot be certain William, but off hand, I'd say that our rolly poy Rowdy has had a drop or two to drink.

- [Burt] We know that a lot of what is done by computers is manipulated or organized by human intention behind it.

So, where's the line between a humanly devised form of decision making that is controlled by the human mind?

And when has it entered into some form of communication that has lost its roots in what the First Amendment was all about?

- Well, the First Amendment's pretty good about saying the government can't be in the business of suppressing speech, but the lines of suppression are not obvious or clear, you know?

So, for example, if the government calls up a newspaper and says, you know, if you publish this information about, you know, what our troops are doing in Eastern Europe, it's gonna jeopardize our ability to protect American interest at this time.

You know, the government's not threatening, but the government's trying to persuade the publication not to publish, let's presume true information and that troubles people.

- The most powerful people in the country, the government, the big corporations, they can place advertisements, they can use propaganda, they can have people do complicated studies about how to mold the way people think, where they can tell you that the worst fast food in the world is actually good for you.

The bigger issue that our government could be controlled by a big corporate interests or by really wealthy and powerful groups, maybe nationally, maybe internationally.

- Here's the question, will the digital century be a democratic century?

This is the key question.

Right now, we do not have our democracy and all of the world's liberal democracies have failed to shape a vision of the digital future that is a democratic future, that is a future that will fulfill the aspirations of democratic people.

And so these companies, the surveillance capitalists, they own the data, they own the technology.

They are deciding on the principles of our social order.

We need democracy to reclaim the data and technology for people and for society.

And obviously when I'm talking about democracy, I'm talking about we need law.

We need the digital to live in democracy's house under the rule of law, with the values that once again reorient data and technology to solving our problems and to solving society's problems.

This is not the case right now, and unless we do that, we are drifting toward a future that is more dystopian, that is more surveillance based, where all the power is lodged in these private companies that we did not elect.

We need antitrust, but we also need to go beyond antitrust.

We need to be able to create the new charters of rights, the new legislative frameworks, and the new kinds of democratic institutions that will keep this digital century safe for democracy.

- All of the authorities I spoke to for this program felt that it was extremely important to pay attention to what you do at work and not just follow the instructions of your employer or the internet.

Just because you are inside a company, or in the army, or in the government, you can't give up the obligation to think through the ethical implications of what you are doing and decide, "Am I the sort of person who would engage in this kind of behavior?"

Thinking for yourself can be dangerous and requires courage.

The ancient Greek thinker, Socrates, was accused and found guilty by the Athenian court for misleading the youthful citizens of Athens.

His crime was that he taught people to think for themselves, to question things, especially the ruling classes.

The rulers had all the political and economic power in this city, and they wanted the citizens to accept their judgments uncritically.

Socrates was a direct threat to their power, and therefore he was condemned to death.

When ordinary citizens pushed back against authority, historically, rulers had a playbook of tricks that they could turn to.

They turned to psychological strategies and tactics for gaining influence over people's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

- Shut up, will you?

Shut up.

Now we see the violence inherent in the system.

Shut up.

- Oh.

Come and see the violence inherent in the system.

Help, help, I'm being repressed.

- And if persuasion didn't work, deception usually did.

Leaders, and abusive partners, learn that sometimes the easiest way to get people to act a certain way was simply to manage the story they believed.

- If I could only get inside that brain of yours and understand what makes you do these crazy, twisted things.

- Gregory, are you trying to tell me I'm insane?

- Today, managing stories through deception is easier than ever thanks to artificial intelligence.

AI can create videos, podcasts, write newsletters, books, and music that look and sound real all without humans doing any work.

We're flooded with millions of AI songs, videos, images, and text.

They're in your emails, workplace memos, and the books sold on Amazon that makes it harder to know what's true.

The practice became so widespread that it even got a special name, AI slop.

Recently, a band called Velvet Sundown appeared on Spotify.

It does not exist, but within weeks, it got over a million plays on Spotify.

Unlike people, machines are not held back by moral, legal, or religious constraints.

They don't pause to ask, "Should I be doing this?"

Science fiction has warned us for years about machines getting too smart and going rogue.

If we leave AI completely unchecked, could it end up acting more like a Bond villain than a helpful assistant?

Let's hope not, but it's a good question to ask.

It's important to have the tech companies that are shaping our future committed to protecting our freedom to speak, to hear, and to be heard.

Equally important, is that leaders have the freedom to lead and to regulate and are not controlled by the funding they receive.

- We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models.

- When a new industry changes the way we live, governments usually step in with rules to protect the public.

The idea is to make sure that all companies adjust their behavior at the same time, creating a safer environment.

But history shows us that industries don't always welcome regulation.

In fact, they have often fought it with everything they've got.

- Do you believe nicotine is not addictive?

- I believe nicotine is not addictive, yes.

- When the governments tried to regulate smoking, the tobacco companies responded with enormous resistance.

They poured money into political campaigns, they hired armies of lobbyists, they spread misinformation about the health risks, and they even built front groups designed to look like grassroots movements, all of it to delay change.

And today, social media companies are using some of the same strategies to avoid regulation.

The technology may be new, but the playbook is surprisingly familiar.

- What do we tell our constituents, given what's happened here, why we should let you self-regulate?

- Well, Senator, my position is not that there should be no regulation.

- Okay.

- I think the internet is increasingly important.

- Do you embrace regulation?

- I think the real question as the internet becomes more important in people's lives is what is the right regulation, not whether there should be or not.

- But you as a company, welcome regulation?

- I think if it's the right regulation, then yes.

- Do you think?

- One is one of the leading voices on this subject is Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, who has been studying how technology and social media affect our lives especially the lives of children.

He believes that without regulation, the harms will continue to grow.

And he warns that just like with tobacco, it's important for the public to recognize these patterns and step in with collective and coordinated solutions before it's too late.

- If you just take away all your kids' devices and say, "Oh, this NYU professor told me this would be good for you so I'm taking away your devices.

Go ahead, have fun, look at the wall."

Okay?

So, you can't just do that.

You have to give them back a play-based childhood.

You have to really help them spend time with friends, with other kids, that's what they need to be doing.

- Haidt doesn't say get rid of social media and tech.

He says it's time we put some reasonable regulations on social media corporations the same way we did with food, cars, airplanes, and tobacco.

When I was in college, one of my professors commented that the United States has the best government money can buy.

That shouldn't be the case.

I hope you've enjoyed these programs on freedom of speech and that you'll join us next time on your local public broadcasting stations.

For "Travels & Traditions", I'm Burt Wolf.

But wait, there's more.

For daily Reels featuring interviews and stories, film during travels and traditions, visit @NicholasWolfTV on Instagram, or @BurtNicholasWolfTV On YouTube.

(calm music) (calm music continues) - [Announcer] "Travels & Traditions" with Burt and Nicholas Wolf is is made possible by Goldbelly.

Shipping stone crabs, pizzas, birthday cakes and more from manny of Americas restaurants.

Anywhere Nationwide.

Goldbelly.com And by Swiss International Airlines.

Flying to over 100 worldwide locations.

Trully Swiss made.

Swiss International Airlines.

And by YP Foundation, helping those in need through education and improving life skills.

Guided by the principles of good deeds, charity, and public welfare, YP Foundation.

And by Five Star Travel, Inc.

in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Since 1985, Five Star Travel has been developing and delivering detailed itineraries for trips, cruises, and vacations to destinations around the world.

Five Star Travel, Inc.

(calm music)