Chapter 1: What is the information apocalypse and how does it affect us?
Information apocalypse now. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carino. Our information ecosystem has not been great for a while, but generative AI has definitely kicked things up a notch.
Whether it's fake images of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, AI-generated videos of ICE interactions, or a viral hoax posted on Reddit alleging exploitation at a food delivery app, it's getting harder to verify what is real on the internet.
The idea of an information apocalypse, or infocalypse, is something Aviv Ovadia has been warning about for a decade now, well before AI came on the scene. He's the CEO and founder of the AI and Democracy Foundation.
I was worried about the inability to trust everything we can see and hear. And in particular, the inability to, even if you see something that's real, not being able to trust and know that that is actually real. And we've seen pretty much every aspect of that that we worried about from scams affecting pretty much everyone, especially the elderly.
to propaganda, to just making it really costly to navigate the information environment for everyone.
Right now, where do you see AI causing the biggest problems in our information ecosystem? If you can give me some recent examples.
The challenges around AI in our information environment run the gamut. You know, we have the, yes, propaganda and sort of persuasive fakes and the costs around verifying things that are real.
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Chapter 2: How is AI contributing to the challenges in our information ecosystem?
You have financial fraud. So it's affecting both individuals and then our institutions and slowing them down. You have non-consensual imagery. You have people trying to use generative AI to fill in faces of people who are masked. And then those people, that's done incorrectly because the AI doesn't actually have enough information. And then that leads to people being attacked.
You have just a broader slopification of the information environment. And then you have maybe even targeted attempts that are so much more effective than they might've been before because of sort of AI feedback loops to just get at our strongest emotions and drive people apart.
And all of that is sort of the negative side, but we can also use AI on the positive side to find common ground and create democratic institutions that are robust to the challenges that we're facing.
We'll be right back. You're listening to Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carino. We're back with Aviv Ovadia, CEO and founder of the AI and Democracy Foundation.
So often when I come across some kind of AI-generated, you know, image or video that I do realize eventually, you know, is AI, often by looking into the comments first, you know, it's like every time I see something, I just look immediately at the comments to see if someone has suggested, oh, this is AI.
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Chapter 3: What recent examples illustrate the impact of AI on misinformation?
But it's just... It's just pollution. It's irritating just as a user of these things. And then there's this additional layer of, like, how do we as a society and institutions of journalism verify what is real anymore? What kinds of tax does that create?
It really is something that makes everyone's life harder if we don't have the tools to navigate it. And I mean, one way to think about this is the cost of creating problematic content is just so much lower. And the cost of verifying has not gotten lower. It's gotten higher. And we don't have those tools as individuals, as journalists. And this is a solvable problem in some ways.
We have standards now where there are a few phones that allow you to, when you take a picture, it creates these credentials that verify, just like you can verify a website is a real website, let you verify that that is really taken by that camera.
And then in ensuring that that actually translates into what you see on the platforms, because only a few platforms, LinkedIn is one of them, has actually implemented this standard.
One of the tools that we have that it seems like people may be using more of is just general skepticism. And I could see how that could turn into a kind of nihilism about everything you see, just not believing anything.
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Chapter 4: What are the societal implications of AI-generated content?
I mean, that causes its own problems, right?
Yeah, I mean, I've talked about this as a kind of like reality apathy. And you can't have effective institutions, you know, effective commerce if people just don't trust anything. Like it leads to conflict that is entirely avoidable. And so we need to be building new institutions that can navigate this world.
I mean, what does it look like to restructure the way in which we work and we govern in the age of AI? That I think is the question of our time.
So what do we need? What needs to happen to kind of save our information ecosystem or to recreate some sort of shared reality?
Yeah, so I think it does come down to actually using the standards that have been developed in the time that we've had. When we knew this was happening, it requires creating dedicated tools that help support people to verify information. It requires having our democratic institutions potentially work even a little bit differently than they do right now.
And one of the things that we're more focused on at the AI Democracy Foundation is really thinking about that. How do we govern effectively?
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Chapter 5: How can we verify information in the age of AI?
Are there new ways of doing democracy that are robust to the kinds of challenges that AI throws at us?
Yeah, I mean, if ever there were a time when, you know, relying on institutions was important, it seems like, you know, this creates those conditions. And yet we are in this world where institutions maybe feel weaker than ever.
I mean, they're weak, but there is a lot of potential. Like, if we're able to harness... even just a fraction of these AI capabilities to support those institutions. The same AI that sort of can flood the zone of garbage that we're seeing can also actually help.
And it just sort of depends on where we prioritize our energy and how we can ensure that we build this technology for us instead of the technology being done to us.
Are you optimistic or pessimistic about that?
I say I'm optimistic whenever I see that there is a path toward a good future. It may not be like the highest probability path, but there is still a path toward that. And I think we just have to go and do it.
That was Aviv Ovadia, CEO and founder of the AI and Democracy Foundation. Nicholas Guillaume produced this episode. I'm Megan McCarty Carino, and that's Marketplace Tech.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential solutions for rebuilding trust in our information systems?
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