Seven Grey Swans a Swimmin’ in 2025: #2 Mutant AI and the Death of Free Speech

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

–Stephen Hawking

December 30, 2024— Did Elon Musk save democracy by buying Twitter, ending its policy of content moderation? In some right-of-center circles, that’s the claim.

Either way, the 2024 election, like the 2016 election, saw a decisive win for Donald Trump.

On both occasions, there were plenty of online platforms for anyone to share their views without having to worry about censorship, even if they were made under the more gentile-sounding term “moderation.”

In 2020, questioning the then-sitting president was enough to get “shadow banned,” where your posts would lose visibility to others. Asking simple questions about, say, the efficacy of vaccines was downright dangerous. “Trust the science and the experts,” we were told during Covid.

Never mind that the experts were lining their pockets with Big Pharma. Science isn’t about blind trust; it’s about experimenting and determining the validity of a hypothesis.

Either way, the battle for free speech has taken some twists and turns in the digital age. And it’s by no means over. The rise of AI could mean new challenges ahead.

Grey Swan Investment Fraternity contributor Zoltan Istvan, our AI expert, believed that deepfake AI tools could have been used to manipulate November’s election.

As Zoltan noted in late November in our monthly Grey Swan Investment Bulletin newsletter:

I was surprised that AI has not played a bigger role or made a bigger impact on this election.

That surprised a lot of technologists. We thought we’d all be seeing fake videos. But the truth is everyone’s become so skeptical of mainstream media and media in general. It doesn’t matter for social media that AI has not been as impactful in this election as I think a lot of people thought. It doesn’t mean it won’t be here in the future, as it’s moving forward so quickly every day.

We’ll see what the 2026 midterms bring. By then, we may be seeing the rise of AGI, or artificial generalized intelligence.

That’s potentially a whole new ball game and one that could mutate AI from a useful tool that’s still easily controlled by human beings into one that isn’t. And that could unleash new grey swan events.

Grey Swan #2: Mutant AI and the Dark Ages of Free Speech

Artificial intelligence has helped America advance significantly, but AI also poses a huge threat to one of the foundational pillars of our democracy: freedom of speech.

As AI systems become more sophisticated, they are increasingly being used to censor, manipulate, and control the flow of information in ways that undermine free expression and independent thought.

AI has grown so quickly that regulation can’t even keep up with it.

This has given governments and tech companies unprecedented power to monitor, filter, and censor online content at massive scale and lightning speed.

Major social media platforms are already deploying AI-powered content moderation systems to automatically detect and remove posts that violate their policies.

While it’s framed as “curbing harmful content like hate speech and misinformation,” these AI censors often lack the nuance and context awareness to distinguish between genuinely dangerous material and legitimate speech, resulting in more hassle than help.

A recent report by Freedom House highlighted how AI is “supercharging” online censorship and enabling governments to exert greater control over the digital information landscape.

The report found that in at least 22 countries, social media companies were required to use automated AI systems for content moderation to comply with government censorship rules.

This outsourcing of censorship to AI algorithms creates an unnerving precedent where machines, not humans, are the arbiters of acceptable speech.

This “prior restraint” to filter offensive speech before it’s even expressed can hinder our ability to turn ideas into speech. So, while Meta’s use of AI to monitor social posts can save the company money, make it more efficient, and boost share price, it comes at a cost.

Regards,

Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan

P.S. Reader Gordon mentions another Grey Swan event well outside of financial markets: Mother Nature. Specifically, volcanic activity in Iceland.

More eruptions could mean more cloud cover, particularly over Europe. This would be good for the global warming crowd, as it would lower temperatures, but it would be bad for anyone who cares for abundant crops.

Gordon provides a helpful video on the developing situation and notes:

Here is a possibility that not many of your readers will mention, but I watched the following video (12 minutes) that indicates that several volcanoes in Iceland are waking up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nKZt9D4aRA

Historically: The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull Eruption in Iceland was a significant volcanic event that caused widespread disruption, particularly to air travel across Europe.

Perplexity gave me this answer about an earlier eruption:

The significant volcanic eruption you are recalling is likely the Laki eruption in Iceland, which occurred from June 1783 to February 1784. This event had catastrophic effects not only in Iceland but also across Europe, leading to widespread famine and health crises.

Your thoughts on the top Grey Swan events of 2025 or any other bug buzzing around your head are always welcome here: addison@greyswanfraternity.com.