AI is creating fake XY, and that is problems, problems, problems everywhere…
During the last decades, IT guys and scientists have always dreamed about using AI for good things. But now AI has become so much better at creating fake things than good things :-(
You also needed an original to make the fake with Photoshop, with AI you don’t need that so there are no receipts, so to speak, to pull to prove that it’s fake.
It kind of takes the wind out of the sails, though. Everyone freaked out when Photoshop became a thing because it made doctoring images easier than doing it by hand. If Photoshop didn’t break the world, I have a hard time believing that “easier Photoshop” will either.
The new thing is the scope in which fake content is being created. In a very near future most internet content will be fake, including history. That is not something that has happened before in history.
The current AI situation is completely unprecedented in history.
That depends on the culture and the method of distribution, many cultures that practice oral history did have widespread interest and access to it and an understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of the world to some degree, though the way they understood or related to it might differ from culture to culture (some cultures tie their history to places, or names, or events, or people or seasons, etc). As another example, the Romans are well known for their prolific historiography and many of their surviving texts are still referenced to this day. Look up Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, who were just as well known and respected as historians at the time as they are now. While written works such as the Encyclopedia Natural History (written by Pliny the Elder and believed to be the first encyclopedia) would often be released to the public to be copied and spread, they would also often recite written works orally so illiteracy wasn’t as much of a barrier as you’d think. Oral history is a lot more important in providing a record of a culture’s history as well as making that history accessible to others than a lot of people think. It was important in ancient Greece as well, and is a huge part of many other cultures around the world including many indigenous ones. It’s also not as inaccurate or unreliable as some people might think, as there were many methods these cultures used and still use to preserve the accuracy of their oral history as it was passed down from generation to generation.
Now in terms of awareness, obviously there was propaganda and rewritten history going on back then just as there is now, but it’s not as if none of the citizens would have been aware of that. One of the papers I wrote for a class about the importance of comparing primary sources featured 3 different accounts of what Athens was like and the views people there held at a certain point in history from 3 different people of varying social and financial status, and there was absolutely awareness of that sort of dissonance between what their government claimed and what the reality was even among the more common folk. So I would say they did certainly have a significant understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of human history.
AI is creating fake XY, and that is problems, problems, problems everywhere…
During the last decades, IT guys and scientists have always dreamed about using AI for good things. But now AI has become so much better at creating fake things than good things :-(
People created fake photoshop images long before AI…
Yes but it took a lot of work and the person doing it had spent a long time training. AI has made it very fast and very accessible.
You also needed an original to make the fake with Photoshop, with AI you don’t need that so there are no receipts, so to speak, to pull to prove that it’s fake.
It kind of takes the wind out of the sails, though. Everyone freaked out when Photoshop became a thing because it made doctoring images easier than doing it by hand. If Photoshop didn’t break the world, I have a hard time believing that “easier Photoshop” will either.
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The new thing is the scope in which fake content is being created. In a very near future most internet content will be fake, including history. That is not something that has happened before in history.
The current AI situation is completely unprecedented in history.
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As someone with an academic background in history, historical record keeping both written and oral existed long before the printing press.
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That depends on the culture and the method of distribution, many cultures that practice oral history did have widespread interest and access to it and an understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of the world to some degree, though the way they understood or related to it might differ from culture to culture (some cultures tie their history to places, or names, or events, or people or seasons, etc). As another example, the Romans are well known for their prolific historiography and many of their surviving texts are still referenced to this day. Look up Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, who were just as well known and respected as historians at the time as they are now. While written works such as the Encyclopedia Natural History (written by Pliny the Elder and believed to be the first encyclopedia) would often be released to the public to be copied and spread, they would also often recite written works orally so illiteracy wasn’t as much of a barrier as you’d think. Oral history is a lot more important in providing a record of a culture’s history as well as making that history accessible to others than a lot of people think. It was important in ancient Greece as well, and is a huge part of many other cultures around the world including many indigenous ones. It’s also not as inaccurate or unreliable as some people might think, as there were many methods these cultures used and still use to preserve the accuracy of their oral history as it was passed down from generation to generation.
Now in terms of awareness, obviously there was propaganda and rewritten history going on back then just as there is now, but it’s not as if none of the citizens would have been aware of that. One of the papers I wrote for a class about the importance of comparing primary sources featured 3 different accounts of what Athens was like and the views people there held at a certain point in history from 3 different people of varying social and financial status, and there was absolutely awareness of that sort of dissonance between what their government claimed and what the reality was even among the more common folk. So I would say they did certainly have a significant understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of human history.
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I mean, maybe it has happened before in history, but someone changed it via AI and we just don’t know…