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Is Google a Rhetorical Agent?

ByMeg

“What are the best restaurants near me?”

“Where is the best all-inclusive beach resort in Europe?”

“Who is Andy Burnham and why is he the new Prime Minister?”

Everyday people use Google, and most recently AI, to ask questions like the above, seeking trustworthy, relevant and truthful information.

I specify truth here because truth is integral to trust. If a restaurant is recommended and you end up not liking it, you no longer trust that information, or the person or thing providing it.

But truth is subjective, and maybe that restaurant is someone’s favorite place. And if truth is subjective, do you think it’s truthfulness that means a website or restaurant appears in Google? Is it “truth” that deems an answer or suggestion trustworthy and relevant?

Or, is it rhetoric?

While trust, accuracy and relevancy are big components in what content is served on Google, I argue these aren’t ingredients for truth, but rather ingredients of persuasion, of rhetoric. And Google, as the middleman between users (like us) and information, is the rhetorical agent deciding what information we see, and how we use it.

 What is Rhetoric?

Let’s initially think of rhetoric as the art of persuasion. The techniques and analysis of what makes someone or something persuasive. It is not a pejorative applied to language or arguments you don’t agree with.

For example, when you hear something absurd on the news and think “Ugh, this guy’s rhetoric!”

This… this isn’t rhetoric. Or at least, not all of it. Speeches and political dialogue have had their roots in rhetoric since ancient Greece, but the drive to manipulate and fear monger audiences – that’s a symptom of the individual.  

Rhetoric is all the many different ways we try to communicate to others about our ideas, thoughts and beliefs. Like using research and statistics to back up a claim, or waiting until it’s a good time to ask your mom to go play with friends. Logic, timing, emotions – these are all things that impact persuasiveness. They impact whether we agree with what’s being communicated and how we perceive a person or things trustworthiness.

Google and Chat GPT are no different. They too need to be persuaded if information is trustworthy enough to be served as an “answer”. So companies spend time learning all the tactics needed to persuade Google to serve them in search results.

But what does it mean for us to finally get our answer, but it’s Google and AI deciding first what’s persuasive enough to be true before we can decide? For Google to take on the role as rhetorical agent?

The Rhetorical Agent is the Decision Maker

Now, simply because rhetoric or persuasion is involved, doesn’t mean the information isn’t “true”.

Every day all day everyone uses rhetoric. Maybe it’s to convince your friend to watch Severance because it really is that good, or maybe to showcase your work performance to your boss to prove you need a raise. These things require persuasion, but also hold some truth.

However, rhetoric does influence decision making by shaping how we perceive information and whether we see it as valuable or not.

And just like a company’s aim to persuade Google of their value, Google tries to persuade you, the user, the value of the information it’s serving:

Google’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The key here is useful. Not just to organize it and get people to access it, but to make it something of value to you.

It does this by only serving you the most relevant info first and using algorithms to personalize your experience and further ensure the information it provides to you is useful.

So if Google is actively shaping what information we receive and how we perceive it, then it’s also deciding what we do with it, as we can only make decisions based off what we know.

Google has always tampered in some way with the information provided, because let’s be honest, how many of us ever scroll past the first page of Google? However, AI has changed this substantially. It’s no longer an endless list of resources or recommendations, it’s a conversation. One that continuously narrows down answers the more you talk to it, and decides for you what the answer or truth to your question is.  

Decision Making is Changing

As Google and AI use embeds itself in society, our decision making evolves. It changes.

Whether this is “good” or “bad” is another debate, but what’s true is it is happening. And undoubtedly there will be long term impacts from this shift in decision making, as access to information becomes limited the more Google and AI prioritize “personalization” and “usefulness”, narrowing down what information we see.

This article was written by Meg Reichenbach

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