AI is destabilizing 'the concept of truth itself' in 2024 election
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
People are very used to being deceived by advertising in general and political media especially. The article mentions certain politicians dismissing any media critical of them as AI deepfakes, a claim the article then instantly fact-checks (without irony).
Denial and lies are not new in any sense. Fake media is not new, and analog fakes have a very long history. Photoshop didn't destabilize anyone's concept of truth beyond the extremely gullible.
It's hard for me to imagine AI having significant, let alone measurable impact here.
But now, AI has democratized these actions. A 15yo with an internet connection can make the fake Biden voice calls in about 10 minutes.
The reason I mention Photoshop is because it is many orders of magnitude more automated than photo editing using previous tools. The social perception of truth wasn't effected despite this new efficiency, because a faster to make lie isn't significantly different from the absolute deluge of lies people deal with every day.
And if it was ever here, it was only here for the blink of an eye, relatively speaking. Almost all of human history took place before recorded media was invented.
AI will simply accelerate the creation of already effective targeted propaganda.
Like all those people who work for money, to buy things; repeat, repeat.
Take away human language and its hallucinated meaning and we’re just meat based cassette tapes repeating yesterdays application of agency; output complete sentences, feel validated by the dopamine buzz for engaging in anything, eat, shit, go to bed.
A whole lot of daily life is just repeating yourself. Office jobs are “capitulate to group think”. Society requires a whole lot of capitulate to group think; everyone needs a tribe and finds one in the end.
Only people working directly on infrastructure, health, and tech breakthroughs are moving the needle and even then in small repetitive steps.
If you think you’re above that altogether then you’re the one chanting propaganda. Given the complexity of the universe, no center, you have no idea if you’re moving anything forward or backward; you can’t even point in the direction “forward”. Make more 1900s technology and software? Repeat. yawn
Time to repeat sleep. Good night.
AI sitting on it's own on a computer won't do this. Someone has to compel it.
My question is if it can be used to destabilize truth, how can AI help make inherent truth (true from all/most angles and interpretations) stand out more?
I'd say that it can't, because it's not an AI problem, but rather a media problem.
In general, people are more interested in sensational reporting ("You won't believe what X did") than well thought out, factual reporting.
The solution is a slower news cycle with enough time to do fact checking and analysis of how the events fit in the bigger picture, but that's incompatible with up to the minute news. AI doesn't help with this.
Click Bait will be effective as long as the human brain is wired to process the environment for threat. "You won't believe what X tried to report on Y was doing".
A slower news cycle could be useful, but it makes me wonder if that's not how it was already.. in the past, and also centralized the news.
Learning from news itself may be part of the issue. I remain surprised by what a large percent of the population doesn't know the difference between journalism and opinion/editoral writing. Maybe something like www.mediabiaschart.com can help.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10415a.htm
Pontius Pilate asked the rhetorical question, "What Is Truth?" as Truth Himself stood before him on trial.
It's not a new technique or anything.
As Individuals of a content derived species we can now backup our bubbles on the internet with ease.
Can that be conveniencemated?
Where is the uMatrix Original SaaS that takes my chromegmailfacebookX data and publishes the truth I want to live in to my localhost?
The media have been going out of their way to elevate themselves as the arbiters and gatekeepers of “truth” all the while using their coverages and how they frame the coverages to push people towards their view of the world.
Says the News.
It's definitely better for respectable publications than tabloids or random blogs, but still, getting a story covered doesn't take much in the way of convincing evidence in this day and age.
Ultimately this is a pointless argument though. Humans are flawed and can never truly know what is true - we don’t know what we don’t know. Today’s truths (even if arrived upon honestly) may not be tomorrow’s.
Example: This recent Hollywood Reporter article <https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/c...> on Cheryl Hines, wife of presidential candidate RFK Jr. Note the huge tone shifts between what the author wrote, and what the editor hamfistedly inserted throughout the piece about "dubious and disproven claims".
Unless I missed the headline where AGI and a sentinent system has come online.
- President Biden teaches you how to get a goth girlfriend
- The three last players^W presidents have a Metal Gear Solid let’s play (Trump is surprisingly level-headed so far)
And there has already been a roller coaster 'fake' news already, these recent years, back and forth, Hillary, Trump, Biden, Hunter, Covid origin, vaccine safety, election interference, Pizzagate, QAnon, Russiagate, Top secret documents, impeachments...
The voters have become so entrenched and polarized, there isn't much that will sway them
But the problem exists, probably social media websites should have a notification for videos flagged late "You have watched video X, since then context has been added: This was AI generated"
Ignoring the evidence of your eyes and ears is just part and parcel for members of political groups. It’s a bit silly to think that people actually believe these things due to logical reasoning when you look at the reasoning that’s gone into all the other things they believe. If not AI it would be “taken out of context” or crisis actors, or a hoax by the elite, or communists, or aliens, etc.
I guess washingtonpost is upset because historically it was the job of washingtonpost, foxnews, msnbc, nytimes, etc to destabilize the concept of truth. But they shouldn't fret. They should view AI as a tool rather a competitor.