> Michael Graziano, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University, says he thinks AI could create a “post-truth world.” He says it will likely make it significantly easier to convince people of false narratives, which will be disruptive in many ways Significantly easier? I would have thought that it would get harder to convince people of anything.
Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug. If people want to believe something, and AI provides somewhat believable fake evidence, they will believe it.
And, the more flavors of lies there are (and the more they are able to manufacture "evidence" to support the lies), the more effort it takes to figure out what's actually true, and the more people give up. That's the "significantly harder" part - if people have given up, they won't buy a lie, but they won't buy the truth either.
In C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle, Aslan says of some dwarves, "They are so afraid of being taken in, that they cannot be taken out." (Quoted from memory, may not be word-for-word.) If people are so afraid of being suckered by a lie that they can't be convinced of the truth either, then those people are at "post truth" in a very real sense.
So we're left with either confirmation bias driving you to a comfortable lie, refusing to believe anything, or a huge and increasing amount of work to sort out what's actually true. The path of virtue grows harder...