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

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401–410 of 548 posts

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

#401

Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…

Disinformation is the narrative constructed by crumbling authorities of mainstream media desperately trying to preserve their power. You might think like their narrative is "think critically, and consider everything critically". But the actual message is, your fellow humans are stupid, they fall for misinformation and fake sources. Ignore all alternative sources of information and most importantly, do not trust your…

Well, yesterday Youtube served me up an ad for an "AI" algorithmic trading service "only available to Canadians" and "backed by Elon Musk. It used "AI" generated audio and video of Musk to peddle an unregistered securities trading firm that tries to prey on the uninformed.

That video is clearly disinformation / misinformation. There is zero chance that video would be played on a conventional broadcaster. Why? They have to be accountable for the content they put in front of viewers. Conventional broadcasters have to participate in advertising standards councils and answer to regulators.

On the other hand, platforms are unaccountable and unwilling to act in the public interest. Profit trumps all. The average person has no idea how to record an ad that was just shown to them by a "platform". That video that was in the corner of the webpage that turns out to be scammy? Ooops, you scrolled too far or used the back button and it's now gone.

There's a large swath of problems online that are clearly misinformation and / or disinformation. Nothing is going to improve on this front so long as "platforms" are wholly unaccountable to the general public. And we're running blindly forward into making this far, far worse before anything will change now that generative AI lowers the bar to produce bullshit that looks convincing on the first pass.

Big tech disappoints me to no end.

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

#402

Humans spent thousands of years in a pre-truth world believing all sorts of crazy things, and many of those societies produced great things and had people living normal lives. It's only been the last 100 years or so that people's perception of reality has been anywhere close to accurate. And even then, most people believe plenty of things that are false. So basically people and civilization are going to muddle along…

>Humans spent thousands of years in a pre-truth world believing all sorts of crazy things, and many of those societies produced great things and had people living normal lives.

Also burned a couple of people as witches in the process...

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

#403
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 years ago humans weren't prepared for a smartphone, internet "post-connected" world and here we are. We adapt and grow.

Someone would argue that humans still haven't adapted to smartphones or the internet post-connected world and that constant connectivity is a cancer that's destroying our minds, emotions and civilization at large.

Perhaps the ones to best adapt are simultaneously the ones to be the least sensitive to or caring about its ill effects. Not a great setup...

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

#404
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 years ago humans weren't prepared for a smartphone, internet "post-connected" world and here we are. We adapt and grow.

No hasty conclusions. We switched to this always connected world only 10-15 years ago and I think we are far from having seen all the consequences. Algorithmic bubbles, mass surveillance, addictive algorithms and applications are fairly recent and we can already see really disgusting consequences. Our civilization is resilient so it takes time to erode but since a few years, I have hard time imagining a positive tech…

The sum of all human knowledge in every pocket and all we use it for is to view fake photos of fake people living their fake lifestyles.

We were gonna cure cancer and explore space. It’s shameful.

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is estimated that between 50% and 70% of folks have no inner monologue.

CPU savings for the simulation they aren't "real" like the rest of us.

so by your logic, it's the "real" entities which will inevitably experience pain, suffering, and death; meanwhile I will reincarnate eternally as part of the program's grand design, simply because my thoughts are abstract instead of an auditory hallucination? ever consider maybe your "internal dialogue" is actually the instructions the programmers have to keep ramming in your face so you actually complete your quests?

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

#406
post #320
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think about it as a one-off amusement it's no big deal. This is how most people are evaluating it. But consider iterating such an interaction over the course of, say, 25 years, and comparing the person who was interacting with humans versus the one who interacted with LLMs, and any halfway sensible model of a human will show you what's dangerous about that. Yeah, the former may well have some more bumps and br…

I think a lot of this is based on circular reasoning. The people who interact with other humans will have relationships with those humans. And those relationships are the evidence that they're way ahead. I do think there is higher maximum with other people. But relationships are hard. They take work and there's a decent chance you invest that work in the wrong people. I can see a life with primarily AI social interac…

Absolutely agreed. For many individuals “hell is other people”.

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

#407

Counter point: sure they are. Humans are highly adaptable and like other changes to information availability in the past they will adapt. This is what societal norms and cultural memes are for. “Don’t believe everything you hear” “Don’t believe what you see on TV” “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” These are all ways that the human species uses memes and cultural norms to teach ourselves how not to f…

Disinformation is the narrative constructed by crumbling authorities of mainstream media desperately trying to preserve their power. You might think like their narrative is "think critically, and consider everything critically". But the actual message is, your fellow humans are stupid, they fall for misinformation and fake sources. Ignore all alternative sources of information and most importantly, do not trust your…

I think a great many people are actually stupid and easily lead astray. There are large numbers of people who won’t vaccinate their children (not talking about Covid vaccine). Such a person is either stupid or a victim of misinformation. Humans are easily persuadable. This is particularly true with a group of people echoing who feel slighted or are angry about some perceived injustice.

The mob mentality is real and it makes its participants vulnerable to making bad decisions and going with the flow. We see this with the cult like devotion of Trump supporters. We see examples in consumerism. There was a time when people fought each other over a Cabbage Parch Doll. Our moments of lucid analysis of an issue or speech occur far less often than our moments of “going with the flow”.

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

#408
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disinformation is the narrative constructed by crumbling authorities of mainstream media desperately trying to preserve their power. You might think like their narrative is "think critically, and consider everything critically". But the actual message is, your fellow humans are stupid, they fall for misinformation and fake sources. Ignore all alternative sources of information and most importantly, do not trust your…

Well, yesterday Youtube served me up an ad for an "AI" algorithmic trading service "only available to Canadians" and "backed by Elon Musk. It used "AI" generated audio and video of Musk to peddle an unregistered securities trading firm that tries to prey on the uninformed. That video is clearly disinformation / misinformation. There is zero chance that video would be played on a conventional broadcaster. Why? They ha…

So you assume your fellow humans are stupid and will fall for this crap, and must be protected at all costs including the cost of regulation preventing speech?

By the way, how's that scammer SBF doing? I heard he managed to scam even more money than that funny YouTube ad, and I think he was advertising on mainstream media too. Even got to lobby in Congress.

This is still far from the leading mainstream narrative that "your fellow humans are stupid". By your anecdote I can learn that here we have another person who's capable of recognizing false information, therefore it isn't dangerous.

Anyone who fell for disinformation is welcome to step in and contribute an anecdote to the opposite statistics so maybe I'll be convinced people really are guillible and need protecting.

Somehow it's always other people who the speaker thinks are more stupid and will fall for something he sees as a scam.

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

#409
We've never been ready! The 'mid-truth' media was already so full of propaganda and misinformation and inaccuracies that there was no hope of sorting through it all reliably.

People have been experiencing and complaining about information overload since the invention of the printing press, and then the telegram, and on and on.

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason an LLM could not be programmed to disagree? Perhaps the level of disagreeableness would be a tunable parameter and could be cranked up when in the mood for a fight or down when one one just wants to converse. Some randomness could keep it from getting too predictable.

Yes you can, but AFAIK AI doesn't have moral basis and at best the confrontation will be random. Sure you can program the AI to have some moral basis but people will choose to flock with those that have the same alignment with them and keeping the confrontation at minimum, thus the flaw still exists even if it doesn't bore you. In real life, we need to interact with several people at minimum normally, weekly. Those a…

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