The issue is trying to look for technical solutions to what is fundamentally a social problem. That problem is trust. Over the previous few decades, the web ha

The issue is trying to look for technical solutions to what is fundamentally a social problem. That problem is trust. Over the previous few decades, the web has slid from a place that felt like a small village to a bustling metropolis. In a large city, trust is maintained first via politeness norms suited to anonymised societies (like civil inattention) — we trust that others will leave us alone — and second (and perhaps more prominently) by explicit institutions (emergency services, businesses, media). Similarly, trust in information on the Internet has been mediated by implicit rules (consider how many people will add "Reddit" at the end of their Google search) and explicit institutions (such as search engines and social media platforms). Though I agree with a lot of the article's conclusions, I feel that it falls into the same trap that a lot of tech commentators do. Ultimately, though I'm certainly worried (like most of us) about the ramifications of AI, including as the article mentions how we'll navigate a noise-saturated information environment, I think we will find a way. No technology will alter the fact that humans will always seek out trust*.