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Comment by gdulli | Hacker News Reader

We talk too much about hallucination and too little about the more mundane elephant in the room that AI, whatever its effectiveness, will simply be used more for scam and deception than positive uses.

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I find it fascinating that this is a popular anti-bitcoin argument, but (often) the same people making that argument actually find AI useful. So they experience a mild case of cognitive dissonance.

The Bitcoin argument is usually paired with "there are no non-scam use cases which aren't better served by other methods/tech."

Which is an obvious falsehood for both bitcoin and AI.

Obvious falsehood for AI.

What can bitcoin "obvious" uniquely do that cannot be done better by other coins / tokens out there ? (As in privacy tokens have a blockchain and privacy, stable coins have utility of actually being able to be used as a means of payment etc etc ) en

Just make scams illegal — problem solved.

If only it were that easy! The economy would collapse if scams were stopped. There would be no progress. The president would be poor. We are already losing the scam war with china, this would just hand victory to them. Is that the world you want to live in? /s

But seriously, I wonder how much of the economy is scam activity?

I dont think a few scams here and there outweight positive usecases

We're about to see our political campaigns flooded with fake videos, slander, fabrications, and misinformation. Used to be you could be relatively certain if something was a video it was too much effort to be photoshopped. Not true any more.

Maybe it will make ppl to be skeptic?

I take it you haven't met people.

I’m curious as to both of your media markets, because my perception is that this is already the mainstream.

AI generated political ads are something I see multiple times per day. Not even just shadow actors on social media, but also TV ads from registered lobbying groups

And comment sections of the social media I consume are filled with “AI!” on any post about a politically sensitive topic even from reputable sources.

The same was true for photographs yet we survived following the invention of photoshop. The truth is that you don't even need video or photos to trick stupid people. Text alone allows for political campaigns flooded with slander, fabrications, and misinformation and some percentage of the population will fall for it. I'd say the best thing we can do is better educate the public to think critically and become media savvy, but instead we'll be forcing our children to read bible verses in school so I don't see the situation improving any time soon.

Yep, people forget that this was how things worked for most of human history. There was only a very short period of time where you could reasonably trust photos/videos as "objective" evidence.

Words could be falsified, signatures and stamps could be falsified, witnesses could be bribed. Critical thinking is now back in vogue after a brief intermission.

It's not just a few scams though. It's a lot of scams, and a lot of propaganda, and a lot of CSAM, and even beyond the overtly negative, it's a tidal wave of slop in music, in publishing, in everything else.

Some technology has more negative use cases than positive; this appears to be one of them.

I don't think a few stock photo replacements here and there outweigh the negative use-cases.

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