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While this may be a particularly dangerous way of thinking[1], it might be good that everything on the internet is becoming obviously fake, AI-generated junk.
by goles 3y ago
While this may be a particularly dangerous way of thinking[1], it might be good that everything on the internet is becoming obviously fake, AI-generated junk.
So that peoples attitude toward things that are real or borderline but are manipulated by bad actors, whatever their motivations may be, also lose some of their influence over the public.
And (hopefully) the public becomes more skeptical about everything on the internet.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
- pavel_lishin 3y agoSure, but the flip-side is that the truth becomes harder to ferret out as well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoMaybe it's time to stop caring so much about things on the internet and focus on the truth that is in front of you, the real things.
- usrusr 3y ago[flagged]
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoYou can't do anything about it aside from getting stressed at your device. How would you feel if you were now getting stressed at a chatbot?
- tharne 3y agoYou really think more people rage-commenting on clickbait news articles makes the world better? The parent commenter is right. We should be spending our time on the people and relationships near to us in the real world, not junk on Facebook.
- revscat 3y agoInteresting that you are getting downvoted here. I have come to a similar conclusion, for my own mental health if for no other reason. My ability to affect the course of human civilization is next to zero, and worrying about AGW, etc., is simply not something I feel driven to do anymore. Instead I’m baking cookies for friends and family today.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoI wish we could get other people to agree, the internet was great until it started leaking out into real life and affecting day to day existence. The internet is a meta-reality that keeps asserting itself into our perceived reality and convinces people it should be paid attention to.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoAmen to that!
- pavel_lishin 3y agoThe internet is a reflection of reality, and mirrors are useful things - as long as not too many of them are fetched from a funhouse.
- coffeecantcode 3y agoNothing to add, just wanted to say this was very well put.
- simiones 3y agoWell, if you care about your city or country, you have to care about many things that are not immediately in front of you. And the Internet is one of the main places where such things can be learned about.
- randomdata 3y agoMost cities and counties see the people of those cities/countries hire representatives to discover and report on the things that should be cared about that are not immediately in front of the average person going about their day. If you alone feel you also need to duplicate their efforts, you may just have control issues, but if the need is genuine and shared by many then you need to rally the people to get the problem solved. Paying an employee to do nothing while you pick up the slack is a plain waste of resources.
- simiones 3y agoYou still have to care whether your representatives are actually doing the job you voted them in for and are paying your taxes for. You can't just say "I voted for someone who promised to build shelters for homeless people, so homeless people now have shelter". Ideally, the press would actually report on what is happening, but the incentives just aren't there for thorough and accurate reporting. You either get highly partisan press that lies or just omits important parts of what is happening because the ones paying the bills want them to, or you get an anemic press that can't do more than trawl FB or, worse, official declarations for info.
- randomdata 3y agoWhen you sit down and go over the reports and give direction with your employee each week, it should stand out pretty clearly if they are not doing their job. No different than any other organization where you hire employees. Cities and countries are not somehow magically different. Of course, you don't just vote for the employee you like and never speak to them again. That would be just plain silly. Being the boss doesn't mean you can sit idle on a sandy beach for the rest of your life. Although that is not nearly as silly as hiring an employee and then doing their job for them. There is no point in hiring anyone if you want to do the job yourself. You go through the employee election process because you recognize that it is more efficient for one person to do the work on your, and your neighbour's, behalf. You are choosing to hand off the work to someone else precisely so you do not have to do it.
- keybored 3y agoThis is the Postmodern Age. People have been writing about this phenomena decades before the widespread adoption of the Internet and before geniuses began penning opinion pieces about how it’s possible to believe untruths now.[1] Which means that (in turn) you can’t just “log off” and be rid of the problem since it predates... logging off. Neo thought he could just “log off” in The Matrix. But then then it turned out that the illusions ran deeper than first thought. [1] Filter Bubble quacks et al
- int_19h 3y agoOrwell wrote this in a letter in 1944: "Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible."
- keybored 3y agoI get the impression from Orwell that he thinks of these issues in too much of a top-down way. “prophecies of some infallible fuhrer.” It’s easy to mentally resist the propaganda of the fuhrer and his henchmen. You just have to parrot the lines, you don’t have to believe it.[1] But these issues have become internalized, not merely something that the Ministry of Truth or whatever says. I think the introduction to Eclipse of Reason explains it better (published 1947). In general I think “Truth” died due to Hyperreality. (If I could read French. Or understand Postmodernism.) Orwell’s vision has become too simplistic. I don’t really understand why his memes are so popular. Although perhaps on a meta-level it could be understood. [1] The propaganda in Animal Farm was mostly delivered through the henchmen who personally berated the animals and gaslit them. It’s harder to resist even that.
- toss1 3y agoThat is the literal plan of disinformation campaigns. The few who actually believe the BS is merely a bonus. The real goal is to get people to give up on finding the truth. At that point, they become easy to manipulate (because there is no outside standard of facts to work around).
- randomdata 3y agoIt has never been realistic for people to find the truth, perhaps save those who are focused on a very narrow subject of truth and are dedicating their lives to the study. We have always relied on a collection of people with the aforementioned focus with some system of accreditation to tell us what is true. While far from perfect, I'm not sure a deluge of generated AI nonsense outside of the vetted channels, complementing people already stirring up nonsense, changes anything.
- toss1 3y ago>>It has never been realistic for people to find the truth, Rather strained definition of truth there. The truth that matters is a basic not-very-wrong version of what is happening. Examples: 1) The earth is roughly spheroidal. 2) NASA is a real space agency and landed people on the moon in 1969-1973. 3) The trails behind airplanes are condensation particles, not sprayed chemicals. 4) Vaccines are safe and effective, and the ratio of issues to prevented disease is on the order of millions-to-one, a vast benefit to society, especially those who medically cannot get vaccines. 5) Hijacked airlines and not pre-set explosives brought town the WTC towers in NYC on 9/11/2001. Etc. Etc. Etc.... We do NOT need a doctorate in Geology, selection into NASA Astronaut Corps, graduate astronomic physics course, PhD-level immunology, or a structural engineer's license to understand any of the above to a useful level. Yet, there is sufficient human-generated noise to convince millions that none of these are true. And you are claiming that adding industrial-scale AI agents to the public 'conversation' at a scale never seen in history will have zero effect? Sure, it might completely fizzle. But the normal and prudent expectation when something comes in and "floods the zone with shit" [0], especially when that shit has the potential to be at a volume that is far beyond anything experienced, is to expect that it will have some effect. What evidence do you have that it will have no effect? In answering, consider another top HN story at the moment "Facebook Is Being Overrun with Stolen, AI-Gen Images That People Think Are Real". [1] [0] Steve Bananon's description of a disinformation tactic [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684309
- pluc 3y agoTruth is whatever advertisers pay for it to be
- bigEnotation 3y agoTruth has always been hard to figure out. An old mentor once told me to be skeptical of everything I hear and only trust half of what I see. When I asked about which half to believe, he said that’s something I needed to figure out.
- the8472 3y agoNot every equilibrium is a good equilibrium.
- visarga 3y agoAI hallucinations are kindergarten level compared to what humans do online.
- kube-system 3y agoI don't think it actually is obvious to many. What will probably (and already is starting to) happen is that people will revert to deriving truth through tribalism rather than evidence.
- wimp 3y agoI'm more worried about the lower tail end of the bell curve that doesn't get the memo, and they become increasingly deranged. When 1/4 of the public is essentially brainwashed, your society is in deep trouble.
- Nasrudith 3y agoYeah, 25% is way too low a threshold for brainwashed to be useful to those at the top. They need at least 50%, 70% would be good but 90% is ideal. Society being defined as in peril is basically a rhetorical constant however. On a more serious note haven't societies long been based upon common brainwashing? The Bronze Age and before are fuzzier on the details but propaganda certainly existed then as well at a smaller scale.
- wimp 3y agoI think this is a commonly shared miscalculation. In the grand scheme of things, relatively little is required to destabilize society. Technology advancements raise the danger potential almost exponentially when compared to late history, or even recent history. It doesn't take much to tip the course of history. The bronze age didn't require the same type of risk assessment that we have the burden of managing.
- pixl97 3y agoPeople don't seem to understand the massive amount of specialization that's occurred with humanity, especially since the start of the industrial revolution. The most distant you go in the past the more general your title was, for example farmer. Now you can have some extremely narrow field, say EUV lithography, and if you and the other 10 experts on it on the planet decide to go bonkers you could cost billions of dollars to the processor industry.
- saulpw 3y agoThat's definitely happening for some people, like yourself and others here on HN, but it's also pretty clear that there is a large % of people, whether MAGA or older or dumber or less educated or something else, who aren't ever going to figure it out. All the science and expertise and logical arguments and appeals to sensibility do not matter, and this has become readily apparent over the past 5-10 years. So while it might feel good to hope that there is a silver lining, it's just wishful thinking. Let's not accelerate towards a mirage.