Fakes, deep fakes, disinformation, lies and rumours pollute the internet, the legacy media and conversations. Some of these are not new, but their power is growing. Now we have a new contender, so-called artificial intelligence, interfering in our human experience, and the technutters proudly claim it will get a million times worse within a decade or two. We are degrading an essence of our humanity. Can we have any conception of what that might do to us?
I have grandchildren, and they are a joy. They delight with their liveliness, their driving curiosity, their enthusiasm, their creativity with language. Sadly all children as they grow have to learn to deal with the larger world that, for a long time, has involved deception, lies, and power over others. Most of us, as we grow, retain some of our childhood purity. We stay mostly with the truth, though self-delusion is common enough. We believe that truth is essential, even as we know it is often displaced by omissions and lies.
Even so, a great deal of harm has resulted in a “civilised” world, that for centuries has had its information distorted by media, and for millennia has been misled by self-interested rulers. For all our claims to value truth over lies, a measure of faith is required to maintain that the truth will always out.
The balance of truth versus lies is now shifting. The lies are gaining more power. They are likely to gain so much power we may struggle even to know what truth is. This is not just about politics. It is about the essence of who we are, the essence of what makes us human. We are social. We communicate. We share and accumulate knowledge. We are still intimately connected with the natural living world.
We are a highly social species. The evidence is clear and strong every time we speak. If we were hermit creatures like orangutans, we would have little need for language. Even other highly social mammals like chimpanzees and dolphins don’t have our kind of language, though they have large behavioural repertoires, including calls and exclamations, that support their social groupings.
The kind of complex language we humans have says we are even more social than others. We can share a lot more of what we feel and think. We do so even though we........