I think AI is probably going to increase the amount of misinformation in the world rather than reduce it. I've actually been using certain AI apps that purport to be able to distinguish between human-generated text and AI-generated text. Unfortunately they're very unreliable. Pretty much every single one that I've used has accused me of being an AI when I uploaded my work to it. This is something that I fear is going to be a big implication of AI. Because AI can do the work of a thousand troll farms to just completely flood the internet with false information. And so I think the biggest impact of AI with regards to truth isgoing to be to flood the internet With falsehoods.
Gurwinder Bhogal is a writer and programmer who writes about the myriad ways in which technology and psychology conspire to fool us and how we can withstand the covert assault on our senses. Gurwinder is known for his epic Twitter ‘Megathreads’ which set out a series of powerful concepts for understanding the world. He joins the show to discuss our tendency to narrativize information, how to overcome the bandwidth tax, why Wikipedia is the world’s largest source of misinformation, and MUCH more! Important Links:
Show Notes:
- Megathreads & the Woozle effect
- AI, the Encyclopedia Disinformatica, and cultivating a garden of Mithridates
- Capturing the nuance between dishonesty and lying
- The Toxoplasma of Rage
- Overcoming the bandwidth tax
- Brandishing the golden hammer; why we can’t comprehend large numbers
- Tribalism & intersubjectivity
- The purity spiral
- Are we facing a lost generation?
- We are programmed to like complex explanations
- Narrativizing information
- “Certainty is the death of thought”
- Climbing the thinking ladder
- MUCH more!
Books Mentioned:
- The Fifth Science; by Exurb1a
- Talking to Strangers; by Malcolm Gladwell
- Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu
- What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies; by Tim Urban