Referencing a particularly vile form of cheese, this assertion is also quite fitting for Artificial Intelligence. It is “The triumph of technology over conscience.”
Ultimately, I think AI will drive the rigorously curious among us back to Libraries.
Whitewashing history is as important now as it has ever been. With an assist from AI, internet searches can become as vacuous as my Fourth Grade History book. In Fourth Grade, I learned that the captains of industry and American politicians were such virtuous souls that we could never reach similar lofty heights of moral attainment due to misdemeanors we’d already committed from First to Third Grade.
Of course, history isn’t the only subject where AI can vandalize information. Given our model of civilization where voracious wealth is given license over all things; we can fairly presume the usual suspects are up to no good in hyperdrive.
I have a mental picture (of a warped logical structure) – a Bot-Crawler, cleaning up and white washing online sources of information. In another mental picture – a Bot-Robber consumes human sourced articles, books, and comments then impersonates another human by digesting, morphing, and spreading waste. Oh wait. That’s already happening. Gee, I wonder what AI could do to with the bits and snippets of my modest contribution to DK? Bad as my writing is, AI driven waste could easily process my text devoid of all context. It might help inspire consumers of such rot to give up on knowledge altogether.
Just know, your written word may be a snack or a full course meal for what is essentially the erasure of human intelligence – such as it is.
When the internet is made utterly unreliable, perhaps we’ll still have libraries – in Blue States, that is.