With an election around the corner, what will the third wave entail? Does our coverage of wars in Ukraine and Yemen accurately depict the conflict, protagonists, and antagonists? How can a public figure fight the tide of hate from an off-color, falsified recording purporting their prejudiced character traits? Will the next “Tidepod challenge” be one that more than simply uneducated and attention-seeking teens try?
These are part of the dangers of democratizing access to a weapon of mass destruction. The companies leaking language models are unable to vigilantly police bad actor’s use of emerging tools. The fight to understand and regulate AI is already underway in congress, and the stakes are clear: the breakdown of liberal democracy and the extinction of our current way of life.
More fundamental to what the fight for AI represents is a question of truth. What is truth in a world where our five senses can no longer be trusted?
The morosely comforting truth is that we’ve been nearly at this point for a long time. We shifted our thinking circa 2008. The internet introduced us to the idea of bots and false facing. We quickly understood that not everything online is vetted by editors, publicists, and the library of Congress. Our social media personas are just that- “personas.” [1734] nn. pl. outer or assumed aspects of character.
Now that images, videos, and recordings require a tale of provenance (on a scale of accessibility unseen in history), our habits around consuming media must shift again. We must become better at two things to avoid falling prey to mistruth and emotional manipulation: indifference and contextualization.
Billions of dollars and thousands of engineers lie in wait behind your computer’s screen to ensnare your attention. The so-called economy has perfected techniques and models that permeate our lives. A viral dance video appears next to a politically charged rant, but we fail to ask why, much less comprehend the disjointed nature of such a sequence. Our brain, fully immersed in primal emotions of joy, amusement, intrigue, or attraction receive an ice plunge-like shock into the harsh realities of disgust, distrust, rage. This rapid pendulum swing of emotions breaks down our reasoning. No longer are we being fed “harmless” entertainment but the machinations of a polarization engine that elongates our latitude of acceptance.
There is a balm in an unlikely place for us. The Ignatian order of spiritually encourages an unattached-ness in decision-making processes where emotions and biases create tension. This “Ignatian Indifference” has equal merit in the realm of our judgement of media. Step back. As we scroll, our limbic system fires on all cylinders from the dopamine rush each video triggers. When the twist comes, and we feel our fight or flight (most commonly “fight” will be activated as it increases engagement and TOS- time on screen) responses activate, we can choose to be indifferent. Begin an examination with analytical and undisturbed thoughts. Don’t jump straight to an emotional response, even if it’s only unspoken.
(Of course, this is far easier said than done.None of us are emotionally regulated and spiritually wise enough to be on these platforms yet we choose to engage them regardless.)
When indifference is found, we must begin an investigation. Every news article, piece of media, and social post is affixed within a unique ecology. Hyperlinks abound in our content in a literal and metaphorical sense. You can’t read an op-ed on record-breaking summer heat without asking a certain set of questions. Who is writing this? Why are they writing it? Which of my emotions, if any, are being tampered with by the writer? Is this event/idea/news even possible given what I know about the affair? Who sent me this and how reliable/gullible are they?
Very quickly our analysis leads to telling answers about the veracity of content we stumble upon. The student in each of us taps into a learned behavior to check sources, a skill we rapidly developed just this past century. The deconstruction of today’s activist finds new fodder if they are willing to pause for context. The tools we need are available but latent in this realm of our lives. Contextualization could save us all from jumping to the island of conclusions where so many get washed away.
This may be the year truth can’t be found in a picture, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be found at all. When a Roman governor asked the itinerant Nazarene, “what is truth?” he desired no answer, for to a chronic worshipper of sensual impulses, the question didn’t matter. Does it matter to you?
