Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
“You pity the moth confusing a lamp for the moon, yet here you are confusing a screen for the world.” — Jay Alto
Our fixation is intense. We cling to tiny dopamine hits, scrolling unaware of the world around us. Ironically, what we are doing is dividing our attention into tiny video clips, catchy sound bites, and dancing in an emotional roller coaster between humour and rage, while simultaneously focusing our attention on a single screen.
We are merely moths, our screens are the light to which we fly. Our humanity suspended as we meet some primordial desire in a way that would be considered comical if it wasn’t also sad, if not tragic.
If I wanted to make light of the sense I’m feeling, I’d say that I feel ‘a disturbance in the force’. Or I’d reference that meme of a dog in a house fire, sitting at a table having coffee, as if the world is fine.
But the new normal is not normal. The dichotomy of politics, the hatred between religious extremists, the focus on vengeance and public shaming in social media, police violence against citizens, the inability to share middle-ground opinions without fear of being ‘othered’ by both sides of the political dichotomy… it’s like we’ve slipped into a dystopian movie, and we are left wondering if this is real life?
It is.
We are bearing witness. We are seeing the collapse of modern society. Sovereignty used to matter, it doesn’t matter anymore. Neighbourly love used to matter, it doesn’t anymore. The rule of law used to matter, it doesn’t anymore. Civility, etiquette, respect, and even kindness used to matter, they don’t matter anymore.
And yet in our day-to-day not much is different. We can rant because we don’t like what we see, or we can move forward blissfully and blind to the world beyond our own existence. Our tolerances vary, but the shenanigans that alter what’s normal in society seem to slip greater into the abnormal without us being able to influence it in any way.
Pick a decade after WWII and tell me how it was more abnormal than what we are seeing today. I can’t.
When I say, “We are seeing the collapse of modern society,” I am not being hyperbolic. I’ve only mentioned social/political abnormalities, without mentioning climate change, microplastics, artificial intelligence, or even cost of living and the decline of the middle class. Factor all these things in and the new normal is anything but normal. Except that’s exactly the point… somehow this is what normal is.
I just watched a video clip of Sir Ken Robinson promoting a product to reduce your blood sugar. I’ve already shared ‘An AI Advertisement’ with a fictitious expert, and broke down the flaws with the ad. But now we have an actual (now deceased) celebrity figure doing the promotional plug. It looks and sounds like him, but he never said anything he says in this video advertisement. I know this, but how many people will recognize him and pay a little more attention to this advertising scam because it is delivered by someone famous?
This is just the beginning. We are moving into a ‘post truth era’, where nothing is inherently believable. A decade from now we’ll have multiple alternate identities to choose from… Was the real Al Gore the one warning us about global warming, or was the real one promoting fracking, or alternative medicine, or socialist communism over capitalism? Every video will seem equally real, every source seemingly legitimate. One real, all the others alternative histories indistinguishable from reality.
Will it only be famous people that will fall victim to these alternate identities or are we all going to be replicated? When I’m in my late 80’s will I be watching a video of 50 year old me oblivious to whether this recording actually happened or if it was invented with a perfect imitation of myself?
The implications for scams are immeasurable. Live video of a seemingly real son or daughter extracting banking data from a senior parent. A meticulously created alternative you moving all assets over to someone else. The scams are limited only by imagination, not by technology or capability.
Alternate identities indistinguishable from reality, all playing out as if real. Sir Ken Robinson plugging health suppliments is only just the beginning… We are in for some reality warping performances from AI alternatives to us, and the people we think we trust… This is only just the beginning!
Never mind the ridiculous videos of Mr. Rogers chatting with Tupac Shakur or Bigfoot vlogging, these AI videos seem real enough while fully intending us to know they are AI. What we are seeing now is an indistinguishable bending of real and fake with videos that are completely altering our ability to know what is real and what isn’t.
Voice mimicking was already almost perfect. I saw a video post today from a man whose dad called him to ask what their shared bank account password was. One problem: His dad died last year, he just hadn’t taken his name off of the account yet. He said it sounded so real that had his father been alive, he probably would have shared the password, thinking his dad forgot.
Now AI videos are just as good as AI audio and the combination of the two truly are steering us into a post truth era. People are sharing AI videos completely unaware that they are fake. Even news stations are getting it wrong.
Soon web sites will become bastions of truth. Want to know what someone actually said? Go to ‘their name’ .com or .org and see the actual video shared there. Anything else will be questionable. And wherever else the video is shared must be watched with skepticism. Subtle or overt, very important changes in a message will occur as a result of someone, ultimately anyone taking the original video and making an AI version that gives their message instead of the intended message.
Following specific domains, and maybe a handful of legitimate news channels, are the only suggestions I have. Legislation won’t keep up, and the fakes are just getting better. Essentially, find reliable sites and distrust everything else. Intuition and common sense won’t be enough.
“…society is obsessed with authenticity and terrified of sincerity.”
For me it’s the perfect vacation photo, but it took 20 minutes to take because that’s how long it took to have a split second of time when the scene doesn’t look over-crowded.
It’s the beauty advice from people with injection enhanced lips and inch long false eyelashes.
It’s the made-to-look-candid moments that are completely contrived.
It’s the ‘I’m an influencer’ entitlement.
It’s the beauty filters that remove wrinkles and age lines while enhancing complexion.
… I could go on. The point being all this happens with an air or attempt to share an authentic moment, a real, ‘this is me’ connection’, or a ‘I’ve got what you want’ attitude, all the while masquerading as sincere.
It’s conveyed as authentic, yet there is pretence, deceit, and/or hypocrisy. It’s the promise that you can have it all: the beauty, the physique, the wealth, the perfect significant other, the happy and fulfilled life.
‘If I can do it, you can too.’
Never mind genetics, forget about privilege, disregard the challenges that are proclaimed as easy or simple to overcome. Leave behind sincerity.
Real authenticity comes with vulnerability. But vulnerability is seen as weakness. So everyone’s afraid of sincerity because theky don’t want their message, and more importantly themselves, to appear vulnerable and weak.
What are we left with?
“…society is obsessed with authenticity and terrified of sincerity.”
What do we see?
False authenticity thinly vailed as sincere but really just an illusion. It’s performative rather than practical. And yet somehow it gains traction, and social media algorithms just feed us more. More vapid messages pretending to be genuine but never sincere enough to be truly authentic.
Be controversial but wrong, say it with confidence, and watch the likes and re-shares come your way. I had an Instagram video shared with me. The ‘influencer’ who posted it has over 600,000 followers and she claims to be an autoimmune specialist.
“You’ve got to see this,” she says, after saying that a man tested his blood before and after EMF (Electric and Magnetic Field) exposure. Then the clip changes to a guy looking at an image on a screen of what he claims to be red blood cells in “pretty perfect blood… I, mean these cells are absolutely amazing cells… it may even be hard actually to mess them up.”
Then they do a ‘phone test’ where the test subject sits between two cell phones, and has a third one between his legs on the chair, to test how “these EMF’s are affecting his ‘perfect blood’… Admitting that this is, “A bit of a risky game,” He then pricks his finger to draw a drop of blood after this supposed EMF exposure. They put a drop of the blood on a microscope plate and we switch views to see the screen again.
The contrast from the original image is comical. Worse yet the person is scrolling on the screen to a point that would go far beyond the edge of a drop of blood on a microscope plate. The difference in the slides is described as “A lot of inflammation. It’s all over.” After a very non-medical, exaggerated analysis, it concludes with, “None of this is good.”
When the video got to me it had 336,000 views and over 9,500 likes. And again, it was sent to me by someone who was concerned by this and wanted to share it.
We live in an era where confidence trumps competence. Be controversial and convincing and you are going to get not just attention, but believers. If I were to make a video debunking this, it wouldn’t get traction. Even scientists with large followings would likely not get 336,000 views on a debunking video.
So the inventive is huge. This influencer probably gained thousands of followers from this video. She made hundreds if not thousands of dollars from it going viral. And so it pays to put intentionally fake pseudo-scientific crap on the web. Just pick a controversial topic, lie with confidence, and watch the profits flow in. No backlash, no consequences, just greed, and incentives to continue to lie.
My fear? I see this getting worse, not better. AI will only serve to exaggerate the problem with more convincing lies that cater to wider audiences. It feels like as a society, we are actually getting dumber and social media is incentivized to make the problem exponentially worse.
Where else have we seen lying with confidence working? Everywhere from biased news outlets, to product advertising, to politics. Whether selling ideas, products, or partisanship, lying with confidence seems to gain far more traction than telling the truth.
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Update: After posting this, (and probably thanks to re-watching the above video a few times to get the quotes right), I opened Instagram and the first post had dramatic music and warned against wearing polyester on planes:
I took the screen shot and didn’t watch the rest of the video. People actually fall for this crap? 🤦♂️
This is a simple, but potent message. Before hitting the ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ button, before telling someone about the interesting fact you heard online, verify it in some way. Is it true?
Do some Ground Truthing. Can you verify the claim? Is it real or AI? Is it worthy of your amplification or are you just contributing to the spread of something unworthy to be shared.
How much better would the internet be if everyone paused and verified what they were sharing before amplifying misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and AI deep fakes?
The term ‘ground truthing’ was shared with me last night by a friend, Neil. I had never heard the term before so did a quick MS365 Copilot request to learn more.
Ground truthing is the process of collecting data on-site (in the real world) to validate and calibrate information obtained from remote sensing technologies, models, or other indirect methods… It’s essentially a reality check to ensure that what the data suggests matches what’s actually happening on the ground.
While it is primarily used in Geography & Remote Sensing, Environmental Science, Agriculture, and Machine Learning & AI, I think it’s a term (or at least a practice) we are going to see a lot more use of in the future. More and more, when I receive information I’m immediately questioning if it’s real. Anything remotely controversial, or surprising, easily falls into a category of doubt… ‘I wonder if this is real or AI?’ But more recently, almost every video and article I see seems to sit in an uncanny valley of almost true or almost real. Before I accept new information, I have to ask myself, ‘Where can I verify this?’ In other words, ‘How can I ground truth this?’
Here is a simple example, in that the information is obviously false, but the deep fake is impressively realistic.
I also saw a video of Physicist Brian Cox saying that comet ATLAS 3i was definitely a spaceship. I didn’t bother fact checking it, I new it was fake, but enough of his followers questioned these kinds of videos that Brain came out on social media to say this:
“I keep seeing AI shite of me popping up on YouTube. The general rule is that if I appear to say something that you agree with and you are a UFO nobber, flat earth bell end or think comet ATLAS 3i is a spaceship, it’s fake.”
Where it gets more complicated is where actual facts are taken and then exaggerated. On the same theme of science and space, I recently saw a video that was talking about the theory that our entire universe might be in a massive black hole. From Copilot:
Some physicists propose that our universe might exist inside a black hole. This idea stems from the observation that black holes warp space and time so intensely that they could create a new, self-contained universe within. The consistent spin direction of many galaxies could be a result of the angular momentum inherited from the parent black hole, influencing the structure and motion of matter in our universe.
This is indeed a theory that is being considered by some scientists and I find it very interesting. So when a video comes up on my social media stream about it, I watch it. But when 20 seconds in I hear the narrator say that this is now considered true, I can’t even get myself to watch to the end of the video. These kind of videos really piss me off. I am angered that someone would create a video based on factual, interesting and novel ideas, but exaggerate the information and outright lie about it for the sake of views, clicks, and likes.
All 3 of these examples are actually easy, because my BS detector goes off. Where I’m concerned now is where that detector does not go off. What happens when the lies are more subtle, when the information is more nuanced? For example, do I really understand the issues happening in one of the many global conflicts right now? What’s the bias of the news or broadcasting station sharing the information? Where do I get more authentic information? How do I go about ground truthing what I’ve heard? Can I even get access to information ‘from the ground’?
It’s getting to the point where I have to question almost everything I hear. Is it real, what is the source, and where can I verify this? I hadn’t heard the term ground truthing before last night, but I realize that I’ve already started doing it, and I’m going to be doing a whole lot more of it in the future.
What if AI created media completely changes our online habits? I’ve already noticed that I’m disappointed when I realize a video that caught my attention is not real… That it’s not (for example) a video catching a house cat scaring away a bear from a child, but rather an AI imagined scenario. Right now that’s about 5-10% of me feed, but what happens when that percentage is over 50%?
Am I going to pay as much attention to what I watch and read when I know more than half of my feed is artificially concocted to attract and hold that attention? Will the appeal be there?
I’m already gravitating to podcast conversations, and a smaller communities of people I actually know, as places to get new information from, will my social media stream look the same as it does today? Or will it shrink away from seeking new, but likely artificially created information, to smaller communities that I know are real?
And how will this affect younger generations and their addictions to their phones? Maybe it will just redirect their attention to seeking real connections, but they’ll still do that digitally, not changing habits as much as where their attention goes. But maybe, just maybe, AI infiltration or perhaps I should say infestation, of social media will see us all living a little further away from our screens.
I heard a quote, not from the original source, which said young people today are going to be the first generation to die with more memories of other people than memories of themselves.
Social media has become so pervasive and so consumed that people spend more time watching other people do things than doing things themselves. And now it’s getting even more extreme with AI videos becoming a large part of social media, with some videos being obviously artificial, but many more seeming real… I fear that not only are people growing up living the stories of other people, but also living invented stories simply to keep them watching. Sure I can say the same about television. I still have memories of watching Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart, Hogan’s Heroes, Looney Tunes cartoons, and yes, even The Brady Bunch. Television gave us stories long before social media. But there was always a hard ending time for tv shows, or at least until the, ‘Same bat time, same bat channel,’ the next day or next week.
The entertainment stories now are not formatted the same. They aren’t designed to hold your attention for 20 to 22 minutes out of a half hour with commercial breaks. Instead, they are like an unlimited stream of commercial breaks. Quick soundbites to grab your attention. Short bursts of information, excitement, or extravagance. All designed to keep you watching the next clip, and the next, and the next. Soon an afternoon that could have been spent creating your own memories has disappeared and memories of other people (real or invented) sharing their experiences becomes the only thing you have to remember.
What are the stories that are defining us today? How are they different than ones previously shared? Are they making our lives richer, or slowing replacing our lives? At the end of a week, how much of your life are you remembering and how many stories that you share and talk about are actually not your stories at all?
