Yesterday I had a number of conversations with people working in the scholarly publishing sphere about what happens when AI chatbots pollute our information environment and then start feeding on this pollution.
As it so often, the case, we didn’t have to wait long to get some hint of the kind of mess we could be looking at.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/22/23651564/google-microsoft-bard-bing-chatbots-misinformation
Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow
Microsoft’s AI chatbot Bing incorrectly reported the demise of Google’s AI chatbot Bard. It’s an early warning sign that this technology is fueling a massive game of misinformation telephone.
My fear is that we’ve created an information ecosystem that is uniquely susceptible to the perversions of these AI tools. Fifty years ago, had they existed, they would’ve been mere curiosities because we lacked the information infrastructure for their output to swamp more trusted forms of information. Even twenty years ago there would have been substantially less opportunity for them to have cause harm.
Carl T. Bergstrom
Madhu Venkadesan