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Post-truth society is near

mindprison.cc

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Re: Post-truth society is near

#41

Post by diogenes4 »

I don't understand the fear—we have always lived in a society where truth exists in terms of degrees of certainty, and virtually any statement about the world can only be true with less than perfect certainty. Vagueness and ambiguity, floating signifiers, and the difficult-to-articulate impact of connotation ensure that we live in a state of constant uncertainty.

And, of course, there are always self-motivated incentives to directly mislead people about the world. If we really want to minimize the uncertainty that comes with relaying statements about the world around us to each other, we need to minimize the personal gain that can come from obscuring reality from each other. As I see it, this is inherently at-odds with the inherently narcissistic nature of market economics—there's nothing inherently special about that but being the primary mechanism of power in this world.

Re: Post-truth society is near

#42

Post by huytersd »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #7

There is so much baseless hysteria about this subject. If society actually cared about this issue (spoiler, it doesn't), we already have all the required cryptographic tools (PKI, trusted timestamping, remote attestation) to create/record verifiably sourced content. Nobody really cares though. But people sure do like to whine about it.

Nobody cares because atleast for entertainment, no one cares as long as the end result is good.

Re: Post-truth society is near

#43

Post by busterarm »

shadowgovt wrote: post #30
ironmagma wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be other reasons besides "they don't care". For instance, it's pretty dubious to say "they don't care" about the results of an election. But we still don't use encryption or really crypto at all for election results for reasons like logistics.

Logistics, and the hard constraint that we can collect the votes without being able to tie a distinct vote to a distinct individual. That last part puts some hard limits on what we can use for validation.

Hint, it's not biometrics.

Re: Post-truth society is near

#44

Post by mvdtnz »

huytersd wrote: post #39
mvdtnz wrote: post #8

There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that robots that are so real they are indistinguishable from people will come about in our lifetimes. The amount of breathless speculation since OpenAI released a kind-of-decent text completion program is so far beyond ridiculous at this point.

ChatGPT could fool a lot of people already. Unless you’re looking to probe and check it’s an AI you probably won’t detect it over a chat session, especially with the right prompt giving it a background, context and the right speech/chat patterns.

Maybe in a text chat, but in a fluid one-on-one in-person conversation, or in a group conversation? Absolutely no chance, and no reason to believe it will get to this level, maybe ever.

Re: Post-truth society is near

#45

Post by 13years »

mvdtnz wrote: post #8

There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that robots that are so real they are indistinguishable from people will come about in our lifetimes. The amount of breathless speculation since OpenAI released a kind-of-decent text completion program is so far beyond ridiculous at this point.

Humans perform terribly at exponential estimation. Many AI scientists and researchers are now saying AGI will be within our lifetimes and some are saying within a few years.

If that happens, lifelike robotics will be one of the lesser achievements.

If your opinion is that we will not achieve AGI, then I would say your outlook is probably consistent.

Re: Post-truth society is near

#46

Post by irjustin »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #24

Post-truth society has already arrived in the mid-2010's. Making fake content was never expensive or difficult to produce to begin with. Misinformation is already expensive to tackle and in many cases nearly undetectable without invasive data collection. Generative AI doesn't change the equation and was never a requirement to successfully manipulate public opinon. Hell, most of these problems with misinformation are…

Generative AI makes it easier to further weaponize, so I would say mid-2010's was the entry (key issues). Now we're about to see it happen everywhere even in places we "thought was safe" (mass market).

Re: Post-truth society is near

#47

Post by pdimitar »

> We are never going to know what is real anymore.

Yeah, except for all those aliens who actually go outside and see for themselves, or ask people who have been there. You know, like most of humanity would do. :D

I get the article's premise but it sounds like a non-issue midterm. A lot of people go through increased financial hardship currently, and their interest in news is waning so the whole thing kind of balances itself out: more manipulated online material, less engagement from people. I'd think the latter factor will prevail because the manipulated material is put online to achieve a goal (usually a financial one) and if that goal is not achieved then the manipulators will start losing interest -- eventually.

Though I am really curious to see how will the whole thing unfold in reality. Obviously I am not claiming I can predict the future.

Re: Post-truth society is near

#48

Post by diogenes4 »

O194673789 wrote: post #38
RIMR wrote: post #5

Post truth society is already here. Disinformation has been on the rise the past couple of decades, and the results are clearly visible: conspiracy theories, election misinformation, and divisive politics where people's worldviews vary across their perception of reality. Photoshopping and lying your way to a narrative is now the norm in the age of social media. No doubt that AI will accelerate this, but to act like A…

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Re: Post-truth society is near

#50

Post by cgio »

mvdtnz wrote: post #8

There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that robots that are so real they are indistinguishable from people will come about in our lifetimes. The amount of breathless speculation since OpenAI released a kind-of-decent text completion program is so far beyond ridiculous at this point.

My gripe is that, if a robot does something, it is not post truth, it is actual, real, truth. We should not confuse discourse on truth with discourse on identity.
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