The End of Truth?

The history of our race,
and each individual’s experience,
are sown thick with evidence
that a truth is not hard to kill
and that a lie told well is immortal.
—Mark Twain

A few weeks back, there was a story on NPR about a University of Pennsylvania business professor, Ethan Mollick, who—“for $11 dollars and 8 minutes”—had created a video of “himself” giving a lecture.  All it had taken, he explained, was an uploaded photo, a 60 second recording of his voice talking about random things, and a request to ChatGPT to generate a script in the style of his writing.  The latest AI technologies then did the rest, producing a believable video of Mollick giving a brief lecture on innovation in entrepreneurship—his area of expertise.

I’ve seen the video (it’s available on Linked-In), and it is scary how realistically it resembles the “real” Mollick.  I was unnerved enough when a deceased Peter Cushing “acted” in the Star Wars movie, Rogue One, in 2016.  But at least Lucas Studios has billions of dollars and enough computing server power to run the Pentagon.  Here was a college professor only seven years later effectively doing the same thing for the price of an elaborate Starbucks® order. 

And as the NPR story itself said, “that’s only the start.”

“Himself.” “Real.” I keep putting these words in quotes because what the story about Mollick has led me to start wondering is whether we are entering a world where truth itself no longer exists.  Where not only does the use of AI technologies confront us with the threats of propaganda and bad actors influencing elections…with the dangers of misinformation campaigns killing the unvaccinated…with the increased risks of identity theft and someone else controlling your house through the Internet of Everything…. I’m left wondering: has the advancement of AI technologies brought us to the end of “truth?”

Don’t get me wrong.  Empirical reality is not going anywhere, no matter how inconvenient its truths might be, and all the ignorance and confirmation bias in the world is not going to prevent a virus from killing, a car from crashing, hurricanes from flooding, or atmospheric carbon dioxide from warming.  There is no amount of misinformation, disinformation, or outright lying and denial that can prevent the actual world from holding us individually and collectively accountable for our actions and choices.  Climate change is real; environmental degradation is real; epidemic gun violence is real; systemic injustice is real….  There IS truth.

However, the reality of truth and our capacity to discern it are not the same thing (indeed, the entire field of epistemology exists for this very reason), and it is AI’s impact on our discernment of truth that has me concerned.  We are already a society endangered by ignorance and anti-intellectualism (as well as the rabid individualism that informs them both), and yet now, anyone at all has the power to co-opt any message and/or messenger for themselves and present it to the world as being true.  I, for example, am a respected and trusted member of my profession, and all it would take is a picture of me, a copy of my writing, and a recording of my voice—all of which there are ample supplies of on the internet—to have someone create a video unbeknownst to me for their disinformation website with the tag-line “national hall of fame science teacher explains how evolution is a hoax.”  Even scarier, a disgruntled student with access to same could now upload a video of me to social media spouting all manner and kinds of hate speech, and suddenly, I’m battling for my livelihood.

And to paraphrase the NPR piece yet again, that’s just the beginning.  Any and all manner of falsehoods will be able to be credibly presented as truths, and while those with the proper technology can identify deepfakes for now, I am not confident that this will always be so.  Moreover, we know from brain research that initial exposure to an idea, along with confirmation bias, tends to form neural pathways that are hard to dissuade and reconfigure—making misconceptions about anything difficult, if not impossible, to correct. Just ask any science teacher about the challenges of correcting naive ideas about the natural world! Therefore, even when it will be possible to identify and establish the actual truth, the fake “truth” will most likely have already done its damage.

Worse still is the fact that the number of individuals educated enough to possess the necessary expertise to navigate this post-“truth” world has been steadily declining for nearly a decade.  In some states, as little as 42% of their high-school graduates are now going on to any manner of higher education, and both college and trade-school enrollments have dropped significantly in the past few years.  Not only does this threaten to have negative economic impact; it threatens the production and discernment of truths about the actual world, with its actual consequences for our lives.  Because while I am in complete agreement with social scientist, Mike Rose, that all forms of intelligence have equal value, all intelligence still needs to be trained to its fullest capacity:  the wisdom to discern the real.  And that’s not happening right now at the same pace the world is producing foley and fools.

I want to conclude with a rather extensive quote from Martin Seligman, Director of the Penn Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania: 

About five hundred thousand years ago, the cranial capacity of our hominid ancestors’ skulls doubled in size from 600 cubic centimeters to its present 1,200 cubic centimeters.  The fashionable explanation for all this extra brain is to enable us to make tools and weapons; you have to be really smart to deal instrumentally with the physical world.  [However,] the British theoretical psychologist Nick Humphrey has presented an alternative:  the big brain is a social problem solver, not a physical problem solver….

These are extremely complicated problems—problems that computers, which can design weapons and tools in a trice, cannot solve.  But humans can and do solve social problems, every hour of the day.  The massive pre-frontal cortex that we have is continually using its billions of connections to simulate social possibilities and then to choose the optimal course of action.  So the big brain is a relationship simulation machine, and it has been selected by evolution for exactly the function of designing and carrying out harmonious but effective human relationships (p. 22).

I share this quote for two reasons.  First, given how many animals biologists have now identified with tool-making skills and as tool users, I think Seligman (and Humphrey) are on to something about our pre-frontal cortex; we are unique among the social species.  Second, the tool-making part of our brain may have finally invented a technology that defeats the very purpose for which evolution selected our brain’s relationship part—which is highly problematic for a social species since any good therapist will tell you: truth and truth-telling are critical to effective harmonious rapport.     

It is, indeed, a brave new world.

References

Binkley, C. (March 12, 2023) Skipping Out on College.  The Baltimore Sun. https://digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?&edid=3a4b417c-e3e5-45cf-861b-151b42b0d0d3.

Bond, S. (March 23, 2023) It Takes a Few Dollars and 8 Minutes to Create a Deepfake.  And That’s Only the Start. NPR Morning Edition.  https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165146797/it-takes-a-few-dollars-and-8-minutes-to-create-a-deepfake-and-thats-only-the-sta.

Marcus, J.  (April 8, 2023) Community Colleges Seeing Enrollment Sink: Spurning of Schools Doesn’t Bode Well for National Economy.  The Baltimore Sun.  https://digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?edid=9360d6a0-896f-4496-a6a2-977d2c396cf8.

Seligman, M. (2011) Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being.  New York: Simon & Schuster.