nefarious synthetic content risks increasing people’s scepticism towards digital information altogether
This is honestly my biggest concern with AI gen and information. I’m not so much concerned about “fake news” as I am about people who are already jaded becoming more cynical about information as a whole and effectively saying, “Let me just enjoy my Cheetos and iPhone 53 in my domicile and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist.”
The way I see it the general public is going to get a lesson about not believing everything one reads on the internet. This will lead to a general increase in internet literacy, which is great. Or maybe I’m just getting far too old.
Unless people learn how the media actually work, I don’t think they’re going to increase their media literacy.
The only people who are actually taught how the media and propaganda work are those who are earmarked to do that work for the bourgeoisie after they complete their degrees at elite universities.
As far as I can tell, base skepticism doesn’t accomplish much, if not grounded in a conscious understanding and embracing of one’s biases (such as a bias for the working class), as well as translating that to an understanding of the biases implicit in sources (not just whether they are “factual” or not). For example, an article could say, “A man at the supermarket today was wearing a pink shirt.” Okay, on its own, this may be factual, but why are they focusing on the color of one man’s shirt and specifically the color pink? Sometimes answering that is way more important than whether it’s strictly true or not that there was a man at the supermarket wearing a pink shirt.
But if people don’t even get to that stage because they’re too exhausted with the exercise of verifying whether what they’re being told is even true on a basic factual level, I’m concerned they’re just going to tap out in general. Do you see what I mean?
This is honestly my biggest concern with AI gen and information. I’m not so much concerned about “fake news” as I am about people who are already jaded becoming more cynical about information as a whole and effectively saying, “Let me just enjoy my Cheetos and iPhone 53 in my domicile and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist.”
The way I see it the general public is going to get a lesson about not believing everything one reads on the internet. This will lead to a general increase in internet literacy, which is great. Or maybe I’m just getting far too old.
Unless people learn how the media actually work, I don’t think they’re going to increase their media literacy.
The only people who are actually taught how the media and propaganda work are those who are earmarked to do that work for the bourgeoisie after they complete their degrees at elite universities.
I haven’t seen anything that increases internet literacy ever and I doubt generative AI is gonna help with that either.
As far as I can tell, base skepticism doesn’t accomplish much, if not grounded in a conscious understanding and embracing of one’s biases (such as a bias for the working class), as well as translating that to an understanding of the biases implicit in sources (not just whether they are “factual” or not). For example, an article could say, “A man at the supermarket today was wearing a pink shirt.” Okay, on its own, this may be factual, but why are they focusing on the color of one man’s shirt and specifically the color pink? Sometimes answering that is way more important than whether it’s strictly true or not that there was a man at the supermarket wearing a pink shirt.
But if people don’t even get to that stage because they’re too exhausted with the exercise of verifying whether what they’re being told is even true on a basic factual level, I’m concerned they’re just going to tap out in general. Do you see what I mean?