Identity digital dirt by shifting where your news gets cleaned

01 Jan 2023

In the digital age, the proliferation of generative AI has posed unique challenges to the integrity of information. News publishers have observed the growing disquiet concerning the authenticity and reliability of digital content. I believe there is an urgent need for education and civic engagement to mitigate these challenges. Here, I propose a method not just to slow down the spread of misinformation but to enhance our understanding through a sophisticated integration of AI, providing crucial background context and identifying the “ground truths” in digital media.

DISCLAIMER: Most of this rough draft was written by GPT-4 given my ideas. As such, the content is incomplete and factually ungrounded. Please check back in 2 weeks for the full version now that I have free time.

The Nature of Truth and Its Implications

The concept of a ‘ground truth’ in information is a philosophical quandary that has persisted throughout human history. Recently, during a two-hour debate rooted in practical computer science, we explored whether absolute truths exist outside of mathematical and logical structures. This debate was not merely academic; it explored the existential need for a shared set of axiomatic truths that underpin our understanding and communication.

Philosopher Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems, which highlight the limitations of any sufficiently complex axiom system, suggest that certain truths will always remain unprovable within the system. This philosophical insight mirrors the challenges we face in the digital landscape, where the complexity of information often outstrips our capacity for verification.

Engineering Perspective on Fallibilism

From an engineering standpoint, acknowledging the fallibility of our beliefs is crucial. Every piece of information we accept as true is, in fact, a hypothesis yet to be disproven—much like the constructed reality experienced by Truman in “The Truman Show.” Our understanding of the world is inherently probabilistic, shaped by the information that survives our scrutiny.

Pragmatism in Information Verification

Pragmatism, a philosophical tradition that assesses the truth of beliefs by their practical effects and benefits, offers a valuable framework for dealing with digital information. It suggests that truths are not absolute but are instead tools for coping with reality. This approach is particularly useful when navigating the vast, often contradictory information landscapes created by AI.

Augmenting News with AI: The ‘Perspective’ Browser Extension

To address the challenges posed by AI-generated content, I advocate for the development of ‘Perspective’, a browser extension designed to augment the news with historical context, deeper analysis, and critical questions. The intent of Perspective is not merely to inform but to enhance the reader’s engagement with the content, encouraging a more nuanced understanding of news.

Features of Perspective:

• Historical Context: By integrating AI that pulls in historical data related to current events, Perspective helps users see news within a broader historical framework, highlighting patterns and precedents.
• Deeper Analysis: Using natural language processing, the extension can analyze the text for logical consistency, rhetorical devices, and empirical accuracy, providing an automated fact-checking service.
• Critical Questions: To foster critical thinking, Perspective poses thought-provoking questions that challenge the reader’s assumptions and biases, encouraging a deeper engagement with the content.
• Empirical Accuracy Check: Given the potential for AI-generated misinformation, implementing a ‘model police’ feature could assess the reliability of information based on its adherence to verified data and logical coherence.

The development of tools like Perspective represents a paradigm shift in how we interact with digital information. By using AI not just as a generator of content but as a critical tool for assessing and understanding that content, we can transform the landscape of digital media from a wild frontier of information to a structured, insightful resource.

Looking ahead, how might we further develop AI to not only detect biases and inaccuracies but also to predict future misinformation trends based on emerging narratives? Could AI eventually guide us not just in how we interpret data but in foreseeing the evolution of information integrity challenges themselves? This forward-thinking approach could be crucial in preemptively countering the spread of digital misinformation in our increasingly interconnected world.