It may be for the better. For all great things that the Age of Internet brought to the humanity, detrimental effects of social media (and other non-traditional

It may be for the better. For all great things that the Age of Internet brought to the humanity, detrimental effects of social media (and other non-traditional information sources) on our democracies is evident. Counter-intuitively, the democratisation of the mechanisms for dissemination of information ultimately led to weakening of institutions that consist the pillars of our democratic societies. My take is that this was largely through the dilution of authority brought about by the cambrian explosion of sources of “information” (more accurately: sources of content). Symptoms of this include various manifestations of populism, which are typically fueled or at least helped by a mix of establishment-challenging conspiracy theories (including the harmful challenges to well-established scientific conclusions based on objective and impartial process of reasoning). If the generative AI will drive us to assuming everything we see online is fake, this would take us back to a state where track record in informational integrity would grow authority of individual information sources, and reverse the effects of authority dilution. If that happens, it will be a full circle, driven by successive technological advancements.