So, today it happened to me. I saw a Facebook ‘friend”s post, which was making a political point, based on a photo. I got the point, although I suspected her motivation was a bit odd (all that stuff about what’s feminism, what’s racism and how the heck did I get lost somewhere between the two).

Then an exchange started in the comments about the background to the photo (where was it taken?) and the oddity of the image – and then someone did an image search and pronounced it to be an AI composition.

I digested that, then looked at my current opinion of the individuals in the photo, and found my opinion had changed. The fact that I know the photo was a fake cannot wipe away the suspicion it ignited. I have my opinion on hold re those individuals, and if I hear anything negative about them, I will probably be more likely to believe it.

Text

When it comes to text, it’s quite hard not to use AI, because it’s now the first thing that comes up in any internet search. There was a time when, if you ‘Googled’ something, you’d find links to real people’s work, people who were writing about, and talking about, what you just searched for.

Then the search engines (the big ones – most of them) became debased by overt advertising (labelled as sponsored links) and covert influencing — where companies have ‘had a word’ with those running the algorithms, wanting this buried or that promoted. Soon, all you got from any search whatsoever was corporate ‘social media’ platforms insisting that if you signed up to their site, you’d be able to find the person/topic you were searching for. Now, it’s a growing list of ‘AI overviews’.

If you think those ‘overviews’ are proper answers to your questions, consider this…

… what is an AI ‘overview’? It’s an amalgam of what most people have been saying on a topic recently, sometimes tweaked by ‘Brenda’ — the name that’s become a label for those working for the likes of Musk and other AI billiogeeks. People whose job it is to fiddle with what AI bots are saying if/when they start going down roads that Musk and Co don’t like.

Images

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

No, I didn’t list the source of that quote. I scrolled past the AI overviews, and looked at a couple of blogs — humans making guesses — probably Confucius, maybe not, popularised by this or that advertising expert… It doesn’t matter, but I like reading words by humans.

Of course it is possible to scroll past all the AI links, and look for something written by a human being – although even if we do that, we must remember there will be things that do not appear, because someone’s paid someone to make sure they don’t so we mustn’t lose our ability to enquire more widely but — what do you do about seeing fake images?

Why is the #FreePalestine movement unstoppable now? Some of us have been campaigning to end the illegal occupation by the apartheid regime for years, but the world joined in when Palestinian journalists and determined citizens made the best use they could of the technology they had to make sure the world saw what Israel was doing in Gaza.

People often say ‘you can’t unsee it’. They don’t often say ‘you can’t unread it’. In fact, I’m sure I’m not the only one who often has to go back and re-read things I thought I’d learned, because the words faded from memory. No-one needs to go back and look again at the appalling scenes that reached us from Gaza – images go deep, and stay put.

And I am not for one moment saying they were not real. There were far too many, from a huge variety of sources. AI was too new, and not nearly up-to-speed on faking news and anyway, if they were not real, the UK would not have had spy flights in the sky over Gaza when Israel was seeking intel on journalists, and Israel would not have been working so hard to find and kill Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

That’s what I mean by going further, enquiring more widely – above all, (memo to self!) doing the thinking. But now, we have to do our critical thinking holding onto our awareness that we’ve probably been influenced along the way with a mass of what I call Bannonisms, but I’m beginning to think of re-naming it Israelisms. As Steve Bannon said, the way to deal with the media is “first, flood the zone with shit.” In other words, it doesn’t matter if people don’t believe all your nonsense you just need to fill their ears and eyes with nonsense until they can no longer find their way to the truth.

In short, let’s all resolve to be aware that we’re being piled on by AI, Bannon-crap, Israelisms and any number of other sources of — well yes, shit. And then go seek out humans, and somehow cling onto our ability to listen, look, and be ready to believe them.

When dealing with AI, believe nothing — go find better sources. When dealing with humans, just as editing comes after creative writing, let critical thinking come after real listening.

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