I have been reading Caulfield and Wineburg’s book Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and to Make Decisions about What to Believe Online. The book makes me feel a bit more optimistic about online BS detection…until I ran across Bruce Sterling’s tumblr post. The sheer sketchy ease of the disinformation in that post is appalling. Plus, if the post was created by a chatbot, then we are supremely screwed. The universe of discourse is now a sargasso of digital stuff, some good (true) and some bad (false), harder to differentiate every day. I never knew truth was an RPG to be gamified. Now I know better.
Either way, Caulfield and Wineburg need to expand on their “Postscript” where they share afterthoughts on generative AI. I am very skeptical, very much a curmudgeon, and someone I don’t think of as easily duped. This image taken from the wild completely fooled me. I found myself want to respond to “her” text even though I am naturally suspicious of emotional appeals. Did you see what I suspect was an intentional mistake? Verified’s authors are going to have to step up their game. So must we all. I am not very sanguine about this possibility.
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Stepping up our collective game is just the start, alas.
Kevin
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In the 1990s as people began to use computers and the internet, someone recognized the potential of scammers, and created an internet security industry, which now has many wealth companies. The fuel this with fear-based advertising, “you’re going to be hacked”, to make people buy more of their products.
I wonder which came first, the people wanting to sell security technology, or the threat.
Now we’re entering another phase, with AI generated baloney. I suspect a new industry will emerge of people with the expertise to detect this stuff, and they will get rich, too.
Are the ones who will sell the security the ones manufacturing the threat?