The latest episode of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Podcast with computer scientist Yejin Choi mostly covered the capabilities of AI, but they also briefly talked about deep fakes, which reminded me of a thought I’ve had on this. Deep fakes could be truly dangerous, completely destroying our system of mediated reality.
We rely on media for practically everything we know about the world. Once seeing and hearing can’t even be believed, then all bets are off in the world of truth.
We’re already suffering quite a bit from tribal truth, in which we only believe people who share our viewpoints. Now even mediated reality that comes from our tribe will be questionable. How can we know anything?
It will be like a return to a time when we lived in villages. The only people you really trusted were those whom you grew up with, whom you knew personally, and that you knew their families and where they lived. Everything else will be suspect.
An extreme reality. And perhaps some technological tools and/or human interventions will step in to keep our mediated reality even somewhat trustworthy. But we could be in for some bleak times, well beyond the “misformation” struggles of today.