What is currently happening in the world of Artificial intelligence was only talked about in science fiction 20 years ago. Today you are able to generate any image you can think of within seconds, replicate someone’s voice to say whatever you want, and create a deep fake video so realistic it is almost indistinguishable from real videos. With new technology developing at a growing rate, we are on the brink of what the future has in store for us.
With all this being said, we must think back to the creepy vs cool matrix. Most of the technology coming out is new, fun, and exciting. However most people are blind to the dangers this artificial technology really possesses. Dr. Gary Marcus discusses this in the YouTube video listed below. The truth about artificial intelligence is that it has made the ability to spread misinformation easier than ever. The consequences that could come with this, could involve conflicts in politics, race, and religion. All which have led to wars in world history. It is vitally important that there are regulations and rules placed on the use of Artificial intelligence and who is able to access and broadcast this information.
According to SocialMediaToday.com 71% of Americans get their news content through social media platforms, and as stated by Science.org fake news spreads faster than real news on twitter. A tweet that has misinformation whether purposeful or accidental has a 70% higher chance of getting retweeted, than a tweet with real news and real information. Pairing these numbers together, with convincing AI generated videos and pictures, becomes a recipe for disaster. In the future, the problem will only partially be humans creating AI generated videos and false information. The bigger problem will be the overwhelming amount of Artificial Intelligent bot accounts that are not owned or managed by any humans. The AI will have full reign to post and say whatever it generates without understanding the ramifications of the information it is putting out for the world to see.
Policy and Regulations
Public policy and regulation of Artificial Intelligence will be vitally important moving forward. John Villasenor discusses policy considerations in his article “How to deal with AI-Enabled Disinformation”; he states that it is important that social media companies must set up a set of guidelines on how to proceed with a disinformation attack. It is important to have humans on standby to be able to intervene with multiple bot accounts spreading false information. John Villasenor goes on to say it is even more important that they protect their social media platforms on important days such as the day of the national election where AI will be more prone to spread misinformation. Moving forward the best way to detect AI spreading false information, would be to use another AI. As the progression of Artificial Intelligence becomes more advanced more policies and regulations will need to be put in place.
Conclusion
The fears and boundaries of Artificial Intelligence are limitless. However the single fear I believe we as humans should fear the most is this spread of misinformation. This fear is the most relevant for the time being. I would not fear AI taking over multiple jobs anytime soon, but I am fearful of AI spreading false news and the implications this will have on our society. This could persuade presidential elections, promote hate speech, influence radical groups, and create crisis and chaos over nothing. This is my biggest fear with AI and it should be yours too.
Thank you so much for reading!
Garrett Goff.
I found your blog to be very insightful! While it’s possible for AI to be beneficial, it’s also just as important to see how harmful it could be. There’s so much uncertainty that comes with AI and the only way to see its impact will just be to wait and see.
Hi Garrett, this was a great blog! I do believe that people forget that there are pros and cons when it comes to the topic of artificial intelligence. Almost every week on social media, I witness some type of voice manipulation with a celebrity and come to find out that it’s fake. There will soon be endless possibilities with AI and we need to trust the public to use it in a socially responsible way, this definitely requires some type of regulation as you mentioned above. Now, all we can do is sit back and for these policies to be passed into society.
Hey Garrett, your blog discussion brings up great points. I have somewhat come to the conclusion that you really can’t trust most of the internet. Politics is a big issue as most Americans get their information from social platforms. However, I do believe that most people who believe the fake facts on social media without doing more research tend to be the older generations or people who are not very well educated. As our generation gets older I think (and hope) that people will take this into consideration and do more research before forming a solid opinion about anything. Stuff like this makes having reliable news sources more crucial than ever.
Hey Garrett! Really interesting blog. Every day I see a new development with AI so this blog post was perfect to shed light on what to look out for. I completely agree with you that we should fear misinformation, but I fear that’s hard with our generation. A lot of people believe things at first sight, rather than doing a little bit of research to see whether or not it is actually factual.
Nice post. I wonder if the backlash will be that we inherently believe less of what we see online. OR, we develop better AI image detectors, which can check and screen which images are created by AI and which are not. Of course, that could even complicate the problem further!
Great job on highlighting the importance of regulations and policies on the use of Artificial Intelligence, particularly in the spread of misinformation. Your blog post is very insightful and thought-provoking, and it serves as a reminder to all of us about the potential dangers of AI.