AI has taken the world by storm. Mainly because companies are forcing their AI implementations on users without the ability to opt out. Most users view them positively as they answer simple questions and, most importantly, align with user interests, even if they make things up while doing so. Companies focus on AI being people pleasers rather than a tool that can accept its own shortcomings. AI chatbots, as the most popular public-facing medium, have persuaded many people to believe dubious lies. It has led lawyers, scientists, journalists, and even government officials to include fake events and facts as truth.
The “AI” companies have not been very truthful about their token generators as artificial intelligence. They have shifted the actual intelligence to a different field called “AGI” where, again, it hallucinates. They initially started by misleading the users into thinking the AI has all the knowledge and cannot lie. Once the lies became too big to hide, they included a text to warn users they might lie.
The Good
Let’s face it, people aren’t computers; we need help in managing our everyday hectic lives. Computer technology has evolved to assist human with their goals. From alarm clocks to virtual assistants on smartphones, they supplement our lives, letting us multitask somewhat efficiently. They are still machines with a limited scope. They work within the limits of their code, algorithms, and instructions, giving us the illusion of intelligence. As a kid would think of a calculator being intelligent.
This is how I think we’re supposed to treat the current boom in AI tools. You can use it to assist you in your everyday work, but understand that they have a limit with the information they have and the models that they use. They aren’t a doctor, lawyer, or your friend, no matter how many time it tells you that you’re the best.
They are good at pattern recognition and data analysis. There are a lot of applications of these abilities. There’s a century of medical research, but people cannot go through it all. Bio-medicine, for personalized medicine according to the patient’s medical history. Testing theory in many virtual simulations without threat to scientists.
In entertainment, movies can have user character selection and their own preferred paths. Personal music generation according to your preferences. Games can use it to have immersive experiences with dynamic content and smarter enemies. It can be a tool to look through a ton of data that humans can not in a reasonable time period. There needs to be a consensus that it isn’t an all knowing, all understanding machine.
Use but verify. Ask it for the source of the information it provides. It may summarize the article you provide it just fine, but it is not the best at history, science, medicine, politics or any complex topics. Not from commercially available ones, at least.
Tools like Perplexity are popular for this reason, as it uses search results to create its responses. It checks data from credible results to make its answers. As the content across the web gets tainted with AI content, Perplexity may slowly become less authentic.
The Bad
With many content creators using AI to create content without verification, the content users interact with becomes less credible. In the current form, AI content has a lot of mistakes; written content can contain factual errors, videos are still not perfect, the advice it gives may not have a scientific basis, and the art is barely passable. For the untrained eye, just skimming through their internet feed, and that’s most of us, it may not be noticeable.
It can push a narrative of its creators. Grok, the Twitter AI bot, was subject to change in its bias to support the claims and political leaning of its owner. It even occurred multiple times, and it is still operational. Scientists have used ChatGPT to create reports with fake studies, lawyers have used it to reference cases that never happened, and politicians have used it to push their agenda on the wider social media platforms.
These are just examples of things that have come to mainstream attention; who knows what else has gone with no one noticing.
The Ugly
AI chatbots have led to deaths and suicides. Deepfakes ruin lives and pose a significant problem on social media and in politics. People are overtly trusting and revealing their most personal details to chatbots. These conversations can leak online for everyone to see. There are also people who think the current AI implementation is sentient. It has also become an easy scapegoat for politicians to discredit criticism against them.
The world, which already has a short attention span, is now poised to consume itself with AI-generated content. It becomes challenging when sorting truth from lies during the unfolding of an important event. There are malicious actors who want to sway public opinion and content creators who want a quick boost to their viewership. It all adds to the uncertainty and chaos of the reality happening around us.
Where It All Started?
Our acceptance of incomplete knowledge
Humans condition themselves for convenience. Everyone can’t be an expert in every field. People rely on information from other sources. People set aside complex topics for knowledgeable people in the community. As people are busy making a livelihood, they cannot spare time for activities requiring research and analysis. Secondhand information is accurate in most cases, so why waste your valuable time in uncertainty? It’s still better than nothing, right?
Secondhand knowledge, when spread too far, may lose its original meaning. Incorrect information can persist and form biased, alternate versions of the truth. That causes issues.
Tendency to hand over the thought process to an authority.
In the past, the ruling class kept certain information hidden from the lower classes. The working class didn’t have the resources to conduct research independently. They depended on the authorities. These were kings, rulers, religious figures, or elders to shape how they learned and thought about things they didn’t understand.
People tend to adopt the same perspective when a crowd views something positively or negatively. Groupthink causes many of the world’s problems. The independent news media is hence one of the most important aspects of modern society. Governments can turn authoritarian and turn the news into propaganda tools. Social media offers an alternative to news aggregators, but it brings its own bag of problems.
Add social media as a source of information
This problem exasperated with the explosion of internet and social media. People now consider “influencers” to be authorities on a topic. Influencers are on these platforms to make money through user engagement. Nothing drives more engagement than controversial baiting.
Social media is also full of bias and isn’t always friendly to people who are seeking information. Many political discussions are full of propaganda and other communities toxic to outsider or newcomers. There are also marketing and online reputation management agencies that brigade online discussions disguised as users to sway a discussion to fit their own narrative.
AI Craze
Add AI to the mix, which supposedly has processed most of the knowledge on the Internet. People are depending on this text generator as if it is the definitive source of truth. Even with several reports, studies and news of hallucinations and incorrect data, people still use it as a search engine for complex topics. It can, in reliable terms, make a summary of text when provided, but it is something that can claim it doesn’t know everything. Instead, it will make up things to please the user. Not confirming the details leads the user to be deeply misguided, which affects other conversations.
Moving forward with skepticism and interest in research
Based on the topic, using online information for anything beyond a basic understanding can be risky, especially medical and politics. Political discussions are unhelpful and often heavily biased, reflecting the perspectives of the community members involved. Anonymity adds to the uncertainty of the genuine conversation.
Marketing firms and government-led initiatives both try to shape narratives in ways that serve their interests. As users, you cannot prove that someone on the other side of an online conversation is a human or a bot.
Rely on full, accurate information rather than the fragmented sound bites you encounter on the internet and social media. Cross check information on reputable sources. The internet is full of echo chambers. Echo chambers only conceal the inconvenient truths from people and have a negative effect when confronted with reality. Discuss things with real people rather than strangers online who may not have the best of intensions.
