In the current Scientific American, the computer scientist Giacomo Miceli warns: “We’re about to face a crisis of trust, and we’re utterly unprepared for it.” Rapid progress in artificial intelligence machine-learning ensures that realistic deepfaked images, videos and speech are “too easy to create.” Language-generating AIs already “quickly and inexpensively churn out reams of text.” In combination, these “technologies have the capacity to inundate us with disinformation.”
Many within the artificial-intelligence technosphere voice similar concerns. In a recent open letter, a thousand-plus computer technologists and academics warned that advanced AI systems are now capable of flooding information channels with falsehoods. They insist that more time is required for reflection on the social consequences of recent breakthroughs in their field and recommend that all AI labs enact an at least six-month halt in “the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”
Bonds of trust undergird most of the beliefs that guide our actions and shape our expectations. Consider the extent to which each of us, when making significant decisions, relies on advice from friends, relatives, neighbors, business associates, media outlets, credentialed professionals and community leaders.
Trust has been under assault for decades. Ministers of mistrust understand the extent to which targeted audiences are predisposed to accept information as true if the source seems authentic and if the information confirms preexisting beliefs. They understand that mendacious, emotively charged and contradictory information is rapidly transmitted to large audiences via social media. Today’s political propagandists systematically hollow out the descriptive meaning of terms and convert them into emotive triggers.
Propagandists armed with deepfakes will prove even more subversive. Deepfakes can more effectively establish “alternative facts” than any other forms of propaganda.
Imagine the extent to which AI generated images, speech and texts will further undermine any shared sense of reality and unity of purpose. Imagine the extent to which democratic institutions will be further imperiled by deepfakes that stoke ethno-racial and religious fears and animosities. Imagine deepfaked top-secret documents flooding social media. Imagine the impact of robocalls featuring deepfaked voices of identifiable politicians and other public figures — or of deepfaked open-mic comments or interviews.
Influential and credible media commentators and newspapers once provided the context within which an informed public could engage in responsible debates. The fourth pillar of democracy — the free and independent media — is now under sustained assault. The thoroughgoing commercialization of propaganda outlets has vastly diminished trust in all media sources. AI-generated illusions spread via social media echo chambers will further diminish media credibility and undermine any sense of a shared reality.
When fragile bonds of trust are shattered, the illusion of independence trumps the actuality of our social interdependence. Mutual respect grounded in the reciprocity of civic rights and duties gives way to narrow prejudices and class interests. Partisanship supplants commitment to a common national purpose. Social cohesion gives way to division and polarization.
Our descent into mistrust can be countered solely by the form of public education currently under assault by regressive politicians. More than ever before, the development of critical thinking skills and the imparting of criteria for assessing the reliability of sources must be primary educational objectives. The public must be alerted to the fallacies such as cherry-picking, bothsidesism, false equivalency and whataboutism most frequently employed by the masters of mistrust—to the fallacies that will be amplified by deepfakery.
Mutual respect, tolerance for differences, individual accountability, communal responsibility and consensus building are too little promoted as central to responsible citizenship. Education that fosters democratic ideals and civic virtues is crucial. Within our pluralistic society, democracy cannot flourish unless informed citizens are inspired by the better angels of their nature — by their abilities to reflect, embrace common ideals, sympathize, empathize, creatively imagine and act compassionately.
If we the people do not assert our sovereignty and command the respect of our elected representatives — if we fail to support accessible educational programs worthy of a free people — if we do not reject the merchants of mistrust at the polls — then there can be but one outcome: We the people will have no democratic sovereignty to assert.
Peter Bamert
Peter Bamert, PhD, is an astrophysicist by training. After a period engaged in active research in that field, he entered the financial sector. He currently heads up the risk management department of a multinational Swiss insurance group, Helvetia Versicherungen. The opinions expressed in this commentary are entirely his own, not those of Helvetia. He is a Swiss citizen and resides in Wil, Switzerland.
Andrew G. Bjelland
Andrew G. Bjelland, PhD, is professor emeritus, Philosophy Department, Seattle University, where he held the Pigott-McCone Chair in Humanities. He resides in Salt Lake City.
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