I find myself suspecting that chatbots getting really good at talking people into believing whatever their operators want people to believe is going to start a lot more conspiracy theories than it ends.
People want to only believe what they want because they hate being wrong … and they never believe or want to believe that their side, their group, their community no matter what it is can ever be wrong.
I’m not immune to it myself and I constantly have to remind myself that I can easily fall into that same mentality.
Most of us are never taught to be self-critical or to properly question the world or the people around us.
… I hope so anyway, because the obvious alternative of the chatbots remaining under the control of an elite few while everyone falls into the habit of believing whatever they say seems substantially worse.
I guess the optimistic view would be to hope that a crowd of very persuasive bots participating in all kinds of media, presenting opinions that are just as misguided as the average human but much more charismatic and convincing, will all argue for different conflicting things leading to a golden age full of people who’ve learned that it’s necessary to think critically about whatever they see on the screen.
The interaction between society and technology continues to be borderline impossible to predict. I hope less true factually beliefs are still harder to defend, at least.
I find myself suspecting that chatbots getting really good at talking people into believing whatever their operators want people to believe is going to start a lot more conspiracy theories than it ends.
People want to be lied to.
People want to only believe what they want because they hate being wrong … and they never believe or want to believe that their side, their group, their community no matter what it is can ever be wrong.
I’m not immune to it myself and I constantly have to remind myself that I can easily fall into that same mentality.
Most of us are never taught to be self-critical or to properly question the world or the people around us.
… I hope so anyway, because the obvious alternative of the chatbots remaining under the control of an elite few while everyone falls into the habit of believing whatever they say seems substantially worse.
I guess the optimistic view would be to hope that a crowd of very persuasive bots participating in all kinds of media, presenting opinions that are just as misguided as the average human but much more charismatic and convincing, will all argue for different conflicting things leading to a golden age full of people who’ve learned that it’s necessary to think critically about whatever they see on the screen.
The interaction between society and technology continues to be borderline impossible to predict. I hope less true factually beliefs are still harder to defend, at least.