The internet is full of advice on how to spot AI-generated images, videos, articles, newscasts, etc. But IMO, that’s entirely the wrong conversation.
Forget “How do we spot them?” We need to be talking about how society is going to function when the answer is: You can’t.
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In reality, we’re already past the point where everyone can spot the fakes. Even the experts can now be fooled with regularity, especially when they let their guard down.
In the previous world of print and broadcast journalism, you could at least put some faith in the sources of your news - the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star. In that world, the platform itself had a vested interest in protecting its reputation, and did so by holding its content to a rigorous standard. But these days, the platforms get paid regardless of the facts. All that matters is that the eyeballs stay glued to the stream. And worse, those retention rates go up as the material gets increasingly salacious or enraging. Facts are just an inconvenience to that revenue model.
Unfortunately, even if we still lived in that bygone era, where the news was delivered by platforms with integrity, we’re rapidly approaching the point where not even a Peter Mansbridge or a Lloyd Robertson can act as a reliable truth filter. What does “news” even mean when the media experts themselves can only shrug and hope that the feed they’re sharing from “Over There” is legit, and wasn’t manufactured entirely to serve someone’s commercial or political agenda?
Today’s insanity is brought to you by Rolaids.
The phrase “fog of war” describes a situation where billowing clouds of smoke, explosions, and chaos are so thick and disorienting that an individual soldier can’t trust anything except what he can feel under his feet and see for 10 yards in any direction. He’s cut off from the big picture and forced to function entirely on his own.
Well, we’re now entering a permanent “fog of discourse,” where the clouds of billowing disinformation are so thick, chaotic and contradictory that we cannot trust any of our inputs. All we can do is cling to the stability of whatever data affirms our core beliefs - the metaphorical ground beneath our feet - and disregard everything else. That fog gives each of us tacit permission to discount contradictory inputs, because “they’re probably fake.” So we hunker down deeper into our preconceptions.
And that’s where the algorithms find us - whether AI-driven or even just the old-school pattern-reinforcement ones - and wrap us deeper and deeper under layers of our own fears and biases. The modern web is spinning that fog into silk and wrapping us up in personalized information cocoons, where we can be sucked dry at leisure by the spiders who own the web.
It’s comforting to think that we could survive this fate by abandoning the web entirely. That might even work, if we do it soon - before we all get spun into our spider cocoons - since the web can’t come out into the real world and fake authentic face-to-face human encounters. But unless we all do it, those sticky strands can reach us even out here, by having shaped the worldview of the people around us. Two people could be standing in the same physical space, but seeing remarkably different worlds from each other. Imagine a MAGAnista standing next to AOC outside a Planned Parenthood office. Do you think they’re seeing the same scene?
To the spiders, the thing that most threatens their survival is exactly the above - everyone abandoning the web and returning to the real world. But don’t worry. They’ll probably take it gracefully. They won’t weaponize your fears to keep you from going there. They certainly won’t teach Westerners that Asians carry a deadly infectious disease. They won’t convince the elderly that teenagers roam the streets in drug-fueled rape gangs. They won’t tell young immigrant mothers that policemen are coming to deport their children.
What would they have to gain from teaching each person that the external world is a frightening and dangerous place; from making us terrified to go outside, to talk to strangers in the street, or to let our children play in the yard?
Besides, it wouldn’t actually be a lie, would it? The outer world really is scarier than home. So come back inside, all of you. Back where I can keep a protective eye on you while you play games with anonymous, totally real people online. Or read essays written by them, like this one.
Better the sanctuary you know than the wilderness that might eat you.
Better to come back into the loving arms of Mother Spider.
Now hold still. This won’t hurt a bit.
