Unlike younger generations, who are growing up surrounded by AI-generated content, many of us older folks have had the experience of engaging directly with people and evaluating their competence. We developed a knack for quickly determining someone's skill level through just a few minutes of face-to-face conversation—a skill that was essential for navigating various life situations.
Now that anyone can use AI to generate seemingly competent text, videos, and more, and as in-person interactions decline, the conditions that once allowed us to gauge competence are fading. I worry that in the future, no one—including AI trained on our outputs—will be adept at making these assessments.
Those of us who take time to carefully compose arguments and revise them, as Paul suggests, will have a better handle on this, so that's a helpful consideration.
I worry strongly about a future like that in Ideocracy[1], where nobody has a clue bout actually judge competence, and instead goes with the best sound bites.
The one path out that I can see, and it's unlikely, is to teach the skill of explicitly tracking history, and reviewing how well someone predicted the future, over time.
The explicit generation and curation of a reputation is part of that priceless nexus that they'll all be seeking in future generations, and yet it'll pale in comparison with the ability to size someone up in a few minutes of interaction.