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Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

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Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#61

I don't think we're mentally ready for social media, even. What something like Twitter can inflict on a person when it goes wrong is absolutely unprecedented, and we still haven't adapted to it. Think that for instance going to the cinema, watching a movie, walking out and venting to a friend "Boy, this one sucked. $ACTOR_NAME did a really bad job with this one" is a perfectly normal thing to do. But move that to Twi…

My point exactly. We are already living in a post-truth world in which the most likes or followers count, more than truth, not the factual accuracy of "influencers".

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#62

The church had the same complaints when the printing press undermined their monopoly on Truth. However, it's now clear that the technology gave rise to the renaissance, and the greatest discovery and propagation of truth that humanity has ever seen.

The church didn't object to the printing press, AFAIK. Unless you can produce a papal bull forbidding it, I think you've undermined your own argument.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#63
Each generation will be OK with the tools they grew up with.

I think of my now-deceased grandparents. They had to be closely monitored to avoid falling for mail-in scams, of all things. They were old enough that mail was a trusted source of information in their upbringing.

I like to think about what will tip us over, as technologists. Venturing into sci-fi a little, I think brain-computer interfaces are going to be impossible for us to adapt to, if they ever arrive. Imagine spam thoughts. We're not trained to ignore intrusive thoughts. But I agree we might just not be able to handle a website that constantly shifts its content to keep us engaged, blurring fact and fiction into the perfect narrative to keep you clicking.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#64
post #53

The comment by Yuval Noah Harari seemed insightful to me. If you argue against a bot about a political matter, not knowing it’s a bot - you always lose on a long enough timeline. ie you can never pursuade the bot but it can wear you down / eventually find an argument that works. The only winning move is not to play. So I could see this having a chilling effect on all discourse Aside from the whole skynet thing the ab…

From a Bayesian perspective, the only way to play and not lose is to not update your priors, at all, forever. (I suppose that "not playing" winds up much the same - you don't have any input on which to falsely update your priors.)

But people who absolutely will not update their priors is not likely to work out well in the long run...

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#65

I don't think we're mentally ready for social media, even. What something like Twitter can inflict on a person when it goes wrong is absolutely unprecedented, and we still haven't adapted to it. Think that for instance going to the cinema, watching a movie, walking out and venting to a friend "Boy, this one sucked. $ACTOR_NAME did a really bad job with this one" is a perfectly normal thing to do. But move that to Twi…

On social media, IMO, People have too much identity fusion with their online accounts. Including me. I think Karma points and all the clout people have over time creates an anchoring that is problematic.

In life, if things get toxic, the smart move is to just leave, and avoid the conflict and the personalities driving it. But so much work by the Meta's of this world has been done to make people nest in their accounts. This creates the belief that leaving and starting fresh with a new handle is a terrible prospect. An this is totally to the detriment of the user.

If you were in a cafe talking with a group, and someone started screaming at you over your personal opinion, and you found yourself getting upset, you'd probably just leave. For some reason that doesn't happen online, and I think it's due to the nesting.

Like if I say something on twitter that people disagree with enough to not let go after a few hours. I'm just going to block them. I just don't have the energy to bother with rando's beyond a civil disagreement. Or take getting banned on a forum because of some demigod style rule. well, shrugs, I'll just go slow and get another account and let that one sail by.

In a way, i think 4chan get's it right with everyone being anonymous to each other.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#66
The only way through is to teach information literacy.

One of the best (but not the only) way to learn this is by studying the trivium/quadrivium – formal logic, reasoning, rhetoric. Once you see how information can be manipulated, it becomes very clear HOW MUCH of it really is.

Initially it can be maddening, but eventually it becomes empowering.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#67

Post-truth has already been here for a long time, in fact when AI hits and we start to blame AI for post-truth it'll just be another post-truth lie.

I've heard so many people say "that's not my reality" or "that's not my truth" and actually be serious that "truth" can be different for each person... I was horrified each and every time.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#68

The church had the same complaints when the printing press undermined their monopoly on Truth. However, it's now clear that the technology gave rise to the renaissance, and the greatest discovery and propagation of truth that humanity has ever seen.

Invoking the name of another revolution doesn't automatically make this new one equally as beneficial. I don't follow your argument - what monopoly is going to be be undermined here? What information will the AI give people access to that wasn't already available?

I think AI will give broader and more convenient access to much of the same information that is technically already available, but requires additional work to discover.

For example, the books printed by the printing press disseminated information that was already known to tutors, scholars, etc. and often existed in handwritten manuscripts. Today, we wouldn't call that accessible, but that was the standard for accessibility (or word of mouth) before the printing press.

AI makes it more likely that people will find informaiton because it can do much of the work of searching billions of sources and synthesize the information far more convenient way.

That's not to say the information will always be true, just as the information in books is not always true. However, readers currently have far too much faith in authors. People believe claims because they're made using professional-sounding words, and published in a respected newspaper, by a human author, and accompanied by photographs. None of that is particularly good evidence if truth.

The last time this happened on this scale, people became more sophisticated consumers of information, with a healthier level of skepticism, and simply came to have less confidence in claims that they did not have personal knowledge of. That was a good thing, and probably will be again.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#69
Undetectable bots have been spoiling the internet since its birth. First our email, then our blog comments, then the review sites. LLMs will definitely contribute the next phase of this. Not only elevating the level of attack on those previously vulnerable areas, but also bringing social media and search engines far past their breaking point.

We need decisive online human verification technology. Nothing else is going to address this. Right now everyone is adding paywalls to everything and leaning on the financial system as a proxy for human verification. However this will not solve the root cause, because some bot activity is worth the price of admission. Internet businesses are fine with this, and will look the other way just like they did when engagement was the lifeblood of the internet economy and bots provided engagement.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#70
post #17

Really don’t like the idea that we will act as interfaces for the AI, I honestly believe it will only many the majority of people lazier and dumber. I’m also incredibly shocked that no one is talking about AI as a friend/companion, that has to not be good for you in the long run. Humans need real human connection, AI is too artificial for that (duh). Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead…

A lot of jobs are already human interfaces for computers. Ever talked or messages with a call center? They're following scripts and trying to pattern match your problem with what they have to work with manually, AI is just going to 10x this for both good and bad. Mostly bad, I suspect, because good luck getting an AI to escalate to a supervisor.

The AI is more than happy to escalate to a supervisor ... it's just that the supervisor is the same AI but using a different voice. After spending 30 seconds lamenting how you just can't get good help these days, the AI supervisor goes into the same script the original AI was going through. Except it occasionally throws in a "sorry we have to do this part again, the AI is always messing this stuff up".
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