How prepared are we for AI?
Many people warn that artificial intelligence must be regulated to combat its power to deceive
erhaps social media has done us all a favour over the past 15 years or so. It has taught us to trust nothing we consume over the internet, apart of course from that rather crazy conspiracy site you might be addicted to.
These days, unless you’re living in an extremely robust information silo, it’s likely everyone is a tad sceptical about what they pick up on the web. This means we might nearly be ready for the onslaught of artificial intelligence (AI) and all the versions of ChatGPT that lie ahead. Or at least we’re not starting from the same position of innocence as 15th-century Europeans when they first encountered the printed word.
The head start provided by
Psocial media is evidently not enough for Israeli public intellectual Yuval Noah Harari, who is convinced that AI has already “hacked the operating system of our civilisation”.
In a recent article in The Economist, he states that AI has gained remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images. There is no underestimating the importance of language, “language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of”. Human rights aren’t inscribed in our DNA, says Harari, they are cultural artefacts we created by telling stories and writing laws.
“Gods aren’t physical realities. Rather they are cultural artefacts we created by inventing myths and writing scriptures.” Even money is a cultural artefact, whose value is based on the stories told by finance ministers and bankers. And let’s not forget music and art.
Like many commentators, Harari fears the power assumed by AI will be used largely to malevolent ends and believes governments should move speedily to regulate it before it is too late.
The first such regulation, suggests Harari, should be to make it mandatory for AI to disclose that it is AI. So we know precisely what it is we’re engaging with.
With regard to this, for a while it did look as though AI might create an opportunity for a revival of the print media, providing some security of provenance in its ability to assure readers what was and wasn’t AI. This might yet happen, but it won’t come automatically.
Media owners will have to work hard to assure readers there is a role for journalists who investigate, first hand, the events and issues of the day. This role should include the close interrogation of AI wherever it is used.
To secure a future in an AIdominated world, the media industry will have to scrutinise the facts and sources of all the information and opinion it uses. This is pretty much what most reputable media groups are doing, or at least should be doing. In future they may have to up their game and make it part of a strong sales pitch.
What they will certainly be hoping to avoid is what happened to The Irish Times recently. It turns out the newspaper’s editorial oversight process was not as rigorous as its readers might have expected, possibly because of the alluring content of the article in question. A 29-year-old Ecuadorean health worker living in Dublin submitted an opinion piece slamming the Irish for their rather excessive use of fake tan, which the author described as cultural appropriation.
“By artificially darkening skin, fake tanning culture inadvertently perpetuates the fetishisation of high melanin content, without acknowledging the struggles faced by those who naturally possess it,” wrote blue-haired Adriana Acosta-Cortez.
Unsurprisingly, given the industrial scale of fake tanning in Ireland, where the sun shines about six days a year, the article caused a stir and led to much introspection. The mood was sombre; might this also presage an end to holidays in the sun and to Ryanair?
And then, just as things were getting truly grim, the article disappeared from the website. Its disappearance wasn’t an attempt to save the flagging Irish psyche, which had been too distracted by fake-tan guilt to get any lift from news of a record budget surplus. No, the article was made to disappear because it was a hoax.
This was discovered only after a number of radio stations tried to get hold of AcostaCortez. The still unknown person who duped the Irish Times said it had all been generated by AI, including the byline photo and the biography. It was done to “stir the shit”.
The uncovering of the hoax has led to further introspection and hints at the utter confusion that lies ahead. It inadvertently also raised the issue of how important the identity of the messenger is to the effectiveness of the message.