لخّصلي

Is there a crisis of trust in our digital age? In network
societies, trust is a basic foundation to our use of media,
communication tools, and related digital information
systems. Trust is largely based on levels of exposure
and familiarity - experience. As innovations driving
our network societies became more widespread, the
trustworthiness of technology underpinning this new
age has been taken for granted. No more. As the United
Nation’s incoming President of the General Assembly,
Csaba Kőrösi, said in September of 2023: “Our world is
suffering from a bad case of ‘Trust Deficit Syndrome’.”
While the General-Secretary referred to trust in how the
world is dealing with crises ranging from climate change
to wars across the globe, he captured a crucial concern for
businesses, governments, and the public that could be a
crisis for our network society. The changing ways in which
we acquire information, communicate, use services, and
engage with technology have presented challenges for
everyone, especially those who are digitally inexperienced
or unconnected, and least trusting in technology. However,
taken-for-grantedness has shifted to increased skepticism
towards the internet and digital technologies like artificial
intelligence (AI) not only among the digitally disconnected
but also among the general public, intellectuals, business
elites, politicians, and even computer scientists and engineers
driving the forefronts of change.
The past decade has witnessed an erosion of trust in digital
technologies, exemplified by worries over social media and
more recently by the step-change in the power of artificial
intelligence, so-called generative AI. There is clearly an
element of collective skepticism. However, various factors
have fed prevailing negative scenarios, from concerns over
fake news on social media and the undermining of privacy
in harvesting data generated by living in the digital age. All
are stoking greater concerns over how and by whom data
is being collected, stored, shared, and processed for various
purposes.
William Dutton
Oxford Internet Institute,
University of Oxford and Portulans Institute
Soumitra Dutta
Saïd Business School,
University of Oxford and Portulans Institute
Bruno Lanvin
Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD),
Descartes Institute for the Future and Portulans Institute
Rafael Escalona Reyonoso, Mariam Chaduneli,
Sylvie Antal, Shaijla Bang and Abdellah Bouhamidi,
Portulans Institute
Note: This chapter draws significantly on the book ‘The Fifth
Estate: The Power Shift of the Digital Age’, recently published
by William Dutton (Director of Portulans Institute).
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The Network Readiness Index 2023 Foreword
New approaches to artificial intelligence, driven by machine
learning and large language models (LLMs), further
complicates this landscape. AI promises major benefits to
the efficiency and ease of searching and virtually reading
the web. Yet it also raises concerns over the ability of bad
actors to generate fake news, images, and voices, while
undermining your privacy. The opportunities of AI are great,
but enabling malicious actors to create content that blurs
narrowing lines between reality and fabrication could further
undermine trust in online content.
There are growing fears over new technologies, questions
over appropriate forms of digital governance and regulation,
and concerns over the growing power of monopolies by
major ‘big tech’ companies. There are anxieties over state
interference, disinformation campaigns, and advances in
surveillance technologies. More recently, there is increased
apprehension over the rapid growth of AI and large language
models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. This all culminates in a growing
crisis of trust in the network society of our digital age.
As larger portions of the world continue to grow more
dependent on technology and the internet, it is ever more
crucial to ensure a learned level of trust exists across the
digital engines of our networked society. Any factor that
might prevent society from more fully leveraging digital
technologies for the public good needs critical scrutiny.
The Network Readiness Index (NRI) stands out as a pivotal
metric for assessing digital trends and understanding the
evolution of online trust in this networked era. The NRI seeks
to identify and analyze major trends, identify the driving
forces behind developments in media, information, and
communication technologies and their societal implications,
and offer actionable recommendations for policy and
practice. The aim is to assist policymakers, the industry, and
academia in establishing measures that amplify the positive
effects of technology on society and the economy, while
promoting positive relationships between individuals and
digital technologies.