Should information be shared freely? Should information be controlled? What should it cost?

Should information be shared freely? That is, should content (text, images, videos, etc.) be shared without heavy external control (usually aimed at making as much money or gaining as much power as possible)? And should the information be able to be accessed and shared at no additional cost? Is transparency and free access a part of the common good?

Or, at the other end of the spectrum, is it a good thing for information to be deliberately and heavily controlled, manipulated, and limited–in the name of profit, ideology, and gaining or retaining power?

A middle road is information created and/or curated by experts. This can be “free” or come with an added cost to the user. Schools and Colleges/Universities often fall into this cateory paying large for-profit companies for access to curated databases and collections of academic information for the use of their faculty, students, and staff.

There is no purity in this debate. All information (even bad information) has a cost, and often it is quite expensive. Somebody/some organization has to pay that cost or the information won’t be created and distributed.

If the costs are paid, producers of information may then choose to give it away for “free” while often taking away your privacy in return which they then sell or use to make money–think of the tech companies who control social media platforms. In contrast, other producers may choose not to do this (feeling that you have a right to privacy) and, instead, they will charge an upfront fee (so much per month, so much per year). And there are those who both charge fees and steal your private information … and we often willingly allow them to do so.

And then there are those (often very well financed) who control, limit, and manipulate information to gain or retain power. Disinformation and misinformation flourish in these situations.

How does artificial intelligence fit into this mix? Right now, in a world dominated by big tech and astronomical amounts of money, AI is closer to the “control, limit, and manipulate” camp helping and allowing disinformation and misinformation to flourish and spread.

No information outlet, no information producer is totally objective or unbiased–whether it is human or machine (created by humans). We all carry preconceptions (good, bad, and otherwise) based on how we were raised, our educational and/or religious backgrounds, our jobs, our life experiences, our political preferences–all of which add up to our world view. These preconceptions become part of any information we curate or create.