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Think we’re about 3-5 years from public completely losing trust in anything online. Political party propaganda cells are already using AI tools to distribute f

by spaceman_2020 3y ago

Think we’re about 3-5 years from public completely losing trust in anything online. Political party propaganda cells are already using AI tools to distribute fake images. Once the tech gets a little better, we’ll likely get videos and audio too. The Indian elections in 2024 will likely be the testing grounds for large scale AI generated propaganda. Just a few days ago, the ruling party’s IT cell was circulating morphed images of protestors that were impossible to tell from the real thing. I suspect this will ramp up to a massive scale within the next 12 months. I don’t know what happens once no one trusts anything online. Maybe we’ll finally give up our black mirror prisons.

xwdv 3y ago
People will only mistrust things that go against their beliefs and everything else “just makes sense”.
- mola 3y ago
  If that were true, then manipulation of the masses through media would be impossible. And you wouldn't see so much resources in to advertising and propaganda. We are susceptible to changing our minds. Some of us more by logical arguments, most of us by emotional means. The emotional response by itself is very complicated. It's influenced by your core values, which you usually indoctrinated into as a child, and by multiple other cultural and personal tendencies.
  - xwdv 3y ago
    We are not susceptible to changing our minds. A mind is a hard thing to change once it’s been made up. Manipulation is done by feeding information that already sounds like it’s true, but carries a payload of false information intended to influence people toward a certain goal. If you say the President is a pedophile, and provide fake evidence to people who don’t like him, they’ll just dislike him more, they aren’t going to go against their own thoughts and think “I don’t like the President but clearly he isn’t really a pedophile.” That is too complex for most people. They don’t want to defend something they don’t like. People are simpletons.
sph 3y ago
Agreed, but positions like yours tend to get dismissed by calling you a doomer. My enjoyment and optimism as a software engineer towards the internet at large has gone down dramatically, and I too believe we're 5 years away before quitting the Internet will be fashionable as not having a TV was in the 90s. Between government control, Big Tech, toxic social media and now AI generated bullshit, the Internet as we know it, the single virtual space where everything is accessible from everywhere by everyone, won't last for very long. But already today we're living on a dead Internet made of siloes and a single search engine hegemony. You can call it a meme, but the signs are all there, we're all enjoying our cozy FAANG jobs and any kind of tech activism pushing against this devolution, like the old cypherpunk movement or the hacking scene of the 90s, is pretty much extinct or too busy doing bug bounties for money.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > I too believe we're 5 years away before quitting the Internet will be fashionable as not having a TV was in the 90s Can you elaborate? My memory of the 90s was my mother saying that TV was considered so important that not having one was the official reason for her friends being denied the opportunity to adopt until they got one. Internet today is like that except quite a more than adoption depends on it.
  - sph 3y ago
    I probably meant towards the end of the 90s, early '00s, when it started to be cool among some young people to say "I don't have a TV. I don't need to be bombarded with ads and other nonsense." I know I did.
api 3y ago
That’s tremendously optimistic. What’s really happening is that people are being pulled into fantasy worlds that align with their preexisting beliefs and prejudices. This, not helmets, is actual “virtual reality” and it’s quite dystopian. In the US we are almost to the point where liberals and conservatives cannot even have a discussion because they have no shared context. They inhabit parallel universes with entirely different “facts,” many of which are either bullshit or cherry picked without context to support a narrative. At the center of each mob is a loose knit group of special interests and amoral online propagandists. It feels like the beginning of something incredibly dark. I can’t see it getting better since the incentives point the other way, including large monetary incentives and winning elections. Some people are turning it off but I fear they are very much in the minority.
- ben_w 3y ago
  I think the words you're looking for are "consensus reality" rather than "virtual reality"
  - api 3y ago
    I think it’s more akin to virtual because the vast majority are passive consumers or their reality. Reality is created by political propagandists, social media entrepreneurs, and soon AI. Consensus seems to imply that it’s a grassroots thing.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      I like your use of "Virtual Reality" to describe filter bubbles. That's really what filter bubbles are: virtual, parallel realities, built up from virtual, parallel first principles, distinct from everyone else's reality. They're even more virtual than actual "visual" VR systems.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > In the US we are almost to the point where liberals and conservatives cannot even have a discussion because they have no shared context. I don't think that's because of tech. I'm still optimistic about tech and the internet; I think the split society that we seem to have arrived at has other causes. The internet and cheap computers made it possible for kids to invent cool stuff in their bedrooms, without having to invest in expensive manufacturing machinery or employing people. That's still possible; CPUs, memory and storage are cheaper and more faster than ever, and 3D printers have democratized the prototyping of physical objects. I think the problem that hit tech was big money. Nowadays, if you invent something cool, one of two things will happen: either you'll get a cash offer so generous you can retire at 25, or you'll get hit with a meritless lawsuit that it's pointless to defend, because your adversary is backed by megabucks, and can litigate until you're bankrupt.
wslh 3y ago
It seems the part that is missing in the 1984 novel and Truman Show kind of films: you can build an entire reality and you know that but it is impossible to differentiate from the real thing. The two are simultaneous. It is more schizophrenic that dictatorial.

xwdv 3y ago

People will only mistrust things that go against their beliefs and everything else “just makes sense”.

mola 3y ago
If that were true, then manipulation of the masses through media would be impossible. And you wouldn't see so much resources in to advertising and propaganda. We are susceptible to changing our minds. Some of us more by logical arguments, most of us by emotional means. The emotional response by itself is very complicated. It's influenced by your core values, which you usually indoctrinated into as a child, and by multiple other cultural and personal tendencies.
- xwdv 3y ago
  We are not susceptible to changing our minds. A mind is a hard thing to change once it’s been made up. Manipulation is done by feeding information that already sounds like it’s true, but carries a payload of false information intended to influence people toward a certain goal. If you say the President is a pedophile, and provide fake evidence to people who don’t like him, they’ll just dislike him more, they aren’t going to go against their own thoughts and think “I don’t like the President but clearly he isn’t really a pedophile.” That is too complex for most people. They don’t want to defend something they don’t like. People are simpletons.

sph 3y ago

Agreed, but positions like yours tend to get dismissed by calling you a doomer. My enjoyment and optimism as a software engineer towards the internet at large has gone down dramatically, and I too believe we're 5 years away before quitting the Internet will be fashionable as not having a TV was in the 90s. Between government control, Big Tech, toxic social media and now AI generated bullshit, the Internet as we know it, the single virtual space where everything is accessible from everywhere by everyone, won't last for very long. But already today we're living on a dead Internet made of siloes and a single search engine hegemony. You can call it a meme, but the signs are all there, we're all enjoying our cozy FAANG jobs and any kind of tech activism pushing against this devolution, like the old cypherpunk movement or the hacking scene of the 90s, is pretty much extinct or too busy doing bug bounties for money.

ben_w 3y ago
> I too believe we're 5 years away before quitting the Internet will be fashionable as not having a TV was in the 90s Can you elaborate? My memory of the 90s was my mother saying that TV was considered so important that not having one was the official reason for her friends being denied the opportunity to adopt until they got one. Internet today is like that except quite a more than adoption depends on it.
- sph 3y ago
  I probably meant towards the end of the 90s, early '00s, when it started to be cool among some young people to say "I don't have a TV. I don't need to be bombarded with ads and other nonsense." I know I did.

api 3y ago

That’s tremendously optimistic. What’s really happening is that people are being pulled into fantasy worlds that align with their preexisting beliefs and prejudices. This, not helmets, is actual “virtual reality” and it’s quite dystopian. In the US we are almost to the point where liberals and conservatives cannot even have a discussion because they have no shared context. They inhabit parallel universes with entirely different “facts,” many of which are either bullshit or cherry picked without context to support a narrative. At the center of each mob is a loose knit group of special interests and amoral online propagandists. It feels like the beginning of something incredibly dark. I can’t see it getting better since the incentives point the other way, including large monetary incentives and winning elections. Some people are turning it off but I fear they are very much in the minority.

ben_w 3y ago
I think the words you're looking for are "consensus reality" rather than "virtual reality"
- api 3y ago
  I think it’s more akin to virtual because the vast majority are passive consumers or their reality. Reality is created by political propagandists, social media entrepreneurs, and soon AI. Consensus seems to imply that it’s a grassroots thing.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    I like your use of "Virtual Reality" to describe filter bubbles. That's really what filter bubbles are: virtual, parallel realities, built up from virtual, parallel first principles, distinct from everyone else's reality. They're even more virtual than actual "visual" VR systems.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> In the US we are almost to the point where liberals and conservatives cannot even have a discussion because they have no shared context. I don't think that's because of tech. I'm still optimistic about tech and the internet; I think the split society that we seem to have arrived at has other causes. The internet and cheap computers made it possible for kids to invent cool stuff in their bedrooms, without having to invest in expensive manufacturing machinery or employing people. That's still possible; CPUs, memory and storage are cheaper and more faster than ever, and 3D printers have democratized the prototyping of physical objects. I think the problem that hit tech was big money. Nowadays, if you invent something cool, one of two things will happen: either you'll get a cash offer so generous you can retire at 25, or you'll get hit with a meritless lawsuit that it's pointless to defend, because your adversary is backed by megabucks, and can litigate until you're bankrupt.

wslh 3y ago

It seems the part that is missing in the 1984 novel and Truman Show kind of films: you can build an entire reality and you know that but it is impossible to differentiate from the real thing. The two are simultaneous. It is more schizophrenic that dictatorial.