Defence force top brass shares fears about AI causing ‘truth decay’::Australia’s defence force chief General Angus Campbell has warned artificial intelligence might harm democracies through “truth decay,” as people are unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
The thing is, truth decay has been going on for a while now. 2016 was of course the year of “alternative facts,” but even before then anyone with sufficient money and/or clout could redefine truth to some degree.
What we’re going to see with ChatGPT and deepfakes is really just a democratization of truth decay: what was once the province of only a few will now be open to us all.
COVID was also a big one. From memory almost all of the misinformation originated from something like 12 people.