AI Bulls*** Is Still Bulls***

Chris Mims asks “Is Anything Still True … on the Internet?” Then opines, “No One Knows Anymore” & “this is how authoritarianism arises.” So gone is the old saw, “don’t believe everything you read in the paper”?

It's true of course that “new tools can create fake videos & clone the voices of those closest to us … Creating & disseminating convincing propaganda used to require the resources of a state. Now all it takes is a smartphone.” As Mims notes in his WSJ op ed, “Generative artificial intelligence is now capable of creating fake pictures, clones of our voices & even videos depicting & distorting world events.” But, can we, too, question the proffered “result”, i.e., that “from our personal circles to the political circuses, everyone must now question whether what they see & hear is true?”

Sorry, Chris. While the Internet et al has magnificently sped up the dissemination of bullshit, old fashioned BS has certainly been with us since Biblical times ... and, rather than the state, all it often needed was somebody’s big mouth. Throughout history, only the gullible believed the propaganda (or gossip) du jour … or, they wanted to believe it because it smelled like their own rotten ideas. Look at what happened in the Garden of Eden … After the coming of the Messiah … The convenient theory behind the Divine right of kings. And, did Communism or Fascism need AI to soil us with today’s cow chips?

Davd Soul