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One mid-future prediction I've been making for a while: eventually we will make lying in the public sphere either a crime or a civilly actionable tort. Libel an

by api 7y ago

One mid-future prediction I've been making for a while: eventually we will make lying in the public sphere either a crime or a civilly actionable tort. Libel and slander already can be, but I am suggesting something more broad: the criminalization of the promulgation of fiction, opinion, or propaganda not labeled as such. We've always had tabloids and dumb mass media but smart microtargeted mass media powered by machine learning is to these what the machine gun is to the flintlock. Add deep fakes and machine generated text crafted to appeal to each reader and it's a tactical nuclear weapon. Many religions believe in intelligent literal demons assigned to individuals to deceive them. Seems to me we are busy inventing a real version of that. Seems to me that lying at industrial scale with AI and big data and social media is just not something society will be able to tolerate.

carapace 7y ago
> Many religions believe in intelligent literal demons assigned to individuals to deceive them. Seems to me we are busy inventing a real version of that. The Daemon-haunted World. (In case it's not clear, I'm playing off the title of Carl Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World". We haven't fully exorcised "real" demons from our world yet here we are developing artificial ones, eh?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World > The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in which the author aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.
seppin 7y ago
What you're talking about isn't really possible, however establishing trust is. And relying on 3rd parties for trust when you don't know someone is also possible.

by api 7y ago

carapace 7y ago

> Many religions believe in intelligent literal demons assigned to individuals to deceive them. Seems to me we are busy inventing a real version of that. The Daemon-haunted World. (In case it's not clear, I'm playing off the title of Carl Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World". We haven't fully exorcised "real" demons from our world yet here we are developing artificial ones, eh?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World > The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by astrophysicist Carl Sagan, in which the author aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.

seppin 7y ago

What you're talking about isn't really possible, however establishing trust is. And relying on 3rd parties for trust when you don't know someone is also possible.