Letter to the Editor: “Demonizing the hammer” by Senior Ian Yong

To the Editor:

After reading the Smoke Signal’s article about Charlie Kirk’s legacy in “AI tools highlight the decline of empathy in digital culture” in the December issue, there are a few concerns that I would like to address. While Kirkification and “people not seeing death as death” are all key symptoms of a larger problem, I believe that the Smoke Signal misdiagnoses the root cause of the issue. The lack of empathy inherent in and synonymous with the echo chambers of the Internet doesn’t come from AI, nor does it come from memes and satire. Instead, the root cause of empathy’s decline comes from the Internet itself, and its inherently amplifying and anonymizing nature. Pundits and scientists alike have long expressed their concern regarding the effects of the internet on human interactions. The internet removes a face from a person, and simultaneously empowers potential bad actors with anonymity. While those of us mature and logical enough to be able to express basic empathy despite the apparent lack of consequences are able to remain respectful, however, there are many who use this anonymity as a shield to manipulate, blackmail, and threaten others. From behind this curtain of anonymity, these bad actors inject their venomous ideas into the echo chamber of the Internet, where bots, mindless lemmings, and similarly unempathetic individuals parrot their harmful rhetoric. This is the core problem with the Internet’s anarchical freedom, and is the underlying cause for the degree of AI’s perceived harmful effects. AI itself is neither good nor evil, merely a tool that individuals can use to make tasks more efficient. In demonizing the hammer, the Smoke Signal shields he who swings it.

Senior Ian Yong