This topic has been on my mind for over a year. I want to get it on the record, for whatever that might be worth, and now, by the publication of this article, I’ve been sitting on it for over a month I’m slow, unlike the progression of AI.
It feels as though everyone has become so certain in what they believe. They believe what they see without question. They believe what they read on the internet (remember the frequent warnings to do the opposite 10+ years ago). They trust the science without question. However, people completely reject certain kinds of evidence. Maybe, people are just as picky about data, accounts, and reports as they were 1,000 years ago. Instead of not believing something because it came from Fox or CNN, it may have been a matter of whether the source was Christian or non-Christian. However, there were many Christian scholars in Europe who looked to Muslims who in turn looked to Greeks and Romans. Maybe, we really do live in a world where people are more selective of where they get their information yet trust their trusted sources completely.
I remember reading about an acquittal of a murderer. The judge had reviewed the FBI’s fingerprinting evidence, was horrified that procedures weren’t followed, and was further horrified at how flimsy fingerprinting actually is. While everyone’s fingerprint is unique, or so they say, fingerprints left on crime scenes are not perfect prints. Fingerprint analysts are not required to have a perfect match but look for points of comparison, which dramatically reduces the certainty of a fingerprint matching. Even so, juries demand CSI evidence, much to the dismay of prosecutors who relied solely on eye witnesses and character witnesses since the beginning of law. It’s hard to blame juries. Time and time again, innocent, at least of the crime in question, men are discovered, sometimes even after they have been put to death. It is far better to let all crime go unpunished than to punish a single innocent man. Killing or imprisoning a murderer does not revive a dead man. It doesn’t really even deter future criminals. When you punish an innocent man, the state is committing a crime. That is completely unacceptable. New forensic techniques touted on all manner of media are shown to be perfect and unquestionable. A jury of one’s peers has been primed to believe that all the “evidence” against you is unquestionable, and when your attorney or defense expert points out the giants flaws in the so-called evidence, the jury just sees it as grasping at straws.
AI presents a new reality that people will need to get adjusted to. While some people fear the uncertainty in the world, I welcome it.
Back when I was a rather young child, I remember being completely amazed by soundboard prank call videos. I thought they sounded so real. When I check back every so often, they seem to be improving, but when I really think about what I was so impressed with, what I thought sounded so real, I realize it wasn’t all that convincing. Maybe, a Chinese restaurant worker or stoned pizza shop employee won’t be able to tell over a phone connection, especially one in a noisy environment, but those soundboards really weren’t that good. Furthermore, I find it amusing to see people’s reactions to DOOM and the original Counter-Strike. People said they looked just like real life and definitely encouraged school shootings because the violence was so real. In Germany, the blood had to be turned green because it would look too real otherwise. Of course, there were the frequent occasions where Terence McKenna would talk about how real VR was. This was back in the 90’s. No one thinks VR today looks real, except for your elderly relatives and only for a few minutes. Thinking that VR would be just around the corner, just like flying cars, was an overly optimistic, nonsensical thing to think.
Today, the threat to our perception is not from headsets or soundboards; it’s AI. In a world of deep fakes, security cam footage cannot be trusted. Cellphone videos cannot be trusted. The legal system, our ways of proving truth, will fall apart, and they will collapse in a more spectacular way than they did when people first became vindicated on the basis of new forensic techniques, like DNA and fingerprints. Let me reiterate. It won’t just be our legal system that is going to be shook up. Every system of verification and finding truth will be compromised. This will cause a massive terror among the people. But I look forward to it.
I look forward to it because I know that we already live in an era of uncertainty and lies. I have no faith in the justice system. I have no faith in the media. While Terence McKenna may have been wrong about VR changing the world by 2012, he was right about the primacy of direct experience. Even though there are optical illusions and all sorts of situations that alter and compromise your perception of reality, there is nothing you can be more confident in than your own experience. I think, before industrialization, we probably had a more honest world. Even though people can be tracked with social media, I think people care less about reputation. People don’t typically have brand loyalty or buy American, not that that means anything anymore. People buy the product with the best reviews. Even though it is incredibly easy to fake reviews, most people trust them without question. In a world of commonplace AI, it will be impossible to trust anything in the way we have been for my entire life. We will have to return to past models where honor and reputation meant something. Some guru in California can pay a Chinese bot farm to get his content views and subscribers. He can pay other unscrupulous people money to speak highly of him. From there, someone will be taking his advice on essential oils and cryptocurrency. In the new world where it will be even easier to manipulate one’s apparent reputation, people will completely discard such metrics. They will rely on their own evaluations and the evaluations of people that they know and trust. The world will be a much smaller place. I think Terence McKenna was right about how to escape the problems of history (or industrialization) being through. The only way out is through.
