In a second, most people can spot obvious AI distortions. Given a few more seconds, we get even better at it. Slowing down to look at it instead of immediately reacting impacts our ability to spot falsehoods.
Because if you read enough misinformation, you can’t help but be influenced by it. The people who put out all this false information know it, too.
The only way to combat it is to ignore it. We must leave spaces where it occurs, cut ourselves off from people and sites promoting it, and never share anything we haven’t vetted with trustworthy fact-checkers. We need zero tolerance for ourselves when it comes to false information online.
I thought about these headlines yesterday. Maybe we shouldn’t consider X-Twitter’s market-value collapse a horrendous business decision. Perhaps this was always a $44 billion donation in kind to the Trump campaign in exchange for an oversized level of power and influence. Musk turned Twitter into X – a right-wing propaganda machine.
This story seems inevitable to me. As the tech world pushes us increasingly into asking an AI chatbot for information instead of looking it up ourselves, and the AI model has incorrect information, where do you get it corrected? When OpenAI was asked to correct or remove this misinformation, they said it was ‘technically impossible’…
There are a handful of cultural issues that I don’t think are overblown by media attention. This is one of them. It is simply impossible not to be exposed to misinformation in 2023. We all need better critical thinking skills.
I wish I could take credit for the line in the title. But, I can’t. It has, however, been rumbling around in my brain for the past couple of days since I heard John Amaechi say it on a recent episode of Adam Grant’s podcast “Worklife” (Go listen to the whole episode, it’s very thought-provoking)
In an episode about how to build an anti-racist workplace, this was the line that sort of stopped not only me, but Adam as well. And, I think it applies to much more than anti-racism.