Artificial Intelligence Part 6: The Demise of Truth
Note: This is the sixth in a series of blog posts where I share some personal musings regarding artificial intelligence as it relates to faith and the arts. I encourage you to visit the entire series in order. Please check out Part 1: The Issue of Virtuosity or Part 2: The Issue of Authenticity or Part 3: The Issue of Originality or Part 4: The Issue of Originality Continued or Part 5: The Issue of Mediocrity.
Moon Shadows
In 1969, one of the most amazing achievements of humanity took place. And I’m not talking about the Mets winning the World Series. Mankind landed on the moon.
In total, twelve humans have walked on the moon, in six trips spanning 1969 to 1972. Every aspect of these voyages was observed, monitored, documented, and recorded, and evidence of this amazing trek was brought back to be analyzed and preserved. The entire world watched these events, including a hostile Soviet Union who desperately wanted to discredit the Americans. But history (as well as science, technology, mathematics, and other disciplines) was written, and the triumph of this achievement went largely unquestioned and undisputed for decades.
Until social media came along. Misinformation is now a leisure activity. Aliens, Bigfoot, politics, Hollywood gossip, flat earthers, even who built the pyramids—Everything has been thrown into question. And in this case, it gave the very small minority of unscientific moon landing deniers a large (and misinformed) voice. Seemingly, truth and fiction have now become quite blurred. The result is consequential and alarming: One in ten Americans believe the moon landed was faked. And the younger they are, the greater the percentage. Here’s a video featuring astronaut Charlie Duke which polls various people regarding their belief in the moon landings.
Artificial intelligence isn’t to blame for this. Conspiracy theories and deniers of all kinds have been around for a long, long time. The difference now is that AI has developed to the point that things can be faked very convincingly by ordinary people. We’ve all seen the results. Social media is inundated now with fake AI content—counterfeit disaster videos, nonsensical memes, modeling videos, deep fakes in compromising situations. Gorillas behind glass. Bridges collapsing. Kittens playing ukuleles. Impossible rescue videos. Trump dancing memes. And lots of fake astronauts walking on moon sound stages. All realistic, but all completely fake. This artificially created content is now being pumped out 24/7 into the webosphere, in order to compete for our attention…and our clicks.
I see three very human reactions to all of this. People sometimes end up believing things that are not true. People sometimes don’t believe in things that are true. And a third response: People become apathetic, dismissive, mistrusting, cynical, and even fearful, of everything that they’re shown and told. To some extent, people stop believing that anything can be true. And I think it’s the latter response that’s where we all may be headed.
We already live in a postmodern world, where “truth” is relative and everyone is said to have “their own truth.” And that has its own attendant consequences. But it is a short stretch to live in a world where truth is rendered illusory, a fanciful notion that simply doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, I think AI is going to take us there.
Truth or Consequences
So how does this apply to faith and the arts? I contend that it is the role of the artist to reveal truth. Through the lens of our personal journey and the depths of our humanity, through the gifts of creativity and the honing of our artistic disciplines, we write and compose and paint and sculpt in order to reveal this thing called truth. As Pablo Picasso famously asserted, “Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
But in a world where truth is suspect, discounted, and denied, there will simply be no need to distinguish between honest art created by real humans and art generated by artificial intelligence.
Imagine a world where all movies are completely AI-generated CGI—from the scenes and the soundtrack to the actors and the screenwriters. It stands to reason, as the studios will save the costs of hiring movie actors, directors, screenwriters, lighting directors, camera operators, location scouts, etc. Imagine a world where much of the music streamed and played is AI-generated, and popular music artists are AI-generated profiles. Streaming services will save the costs of royalties, production, and marketing by creating fake artists who effortlessly release AI-generated hits. Imagine publishers bypassing the writers using AI to author their books—both fiction and non-fiction—based on the data-harvesting they are doing with millions of books around the world. For they don’t need to contract with book writers anymore; they only need hire prompt-writers, and save the cost of royalties. And on and on and on.
With so many creatives out of work, we may eventually surrender to the AI machine and lose our place at the table. But I contend that, now more than ever, the world needs artists who tell the truth.
The Calling
The creative drive within us is what expresses our humanity. This is how God intended it to be. We are made in his image (Genesis 1:26), intended to join in God’s created order (Genesis 2:19-20), endowed with His inborn aesthetic (Romans 1:20), and He delights in the creative works of His children (1 John 3:1-3) especially in great and beautiful artistic expressions of worship (Exodus 36-39, 1 Chronicles 25). And in our creative expressions of humanity, we express Truth with a capital T. That is part of our God-given calling as artists of faith, and to differing degrees, with all Christ followers.
I fear that this calling will be circumvented by the AI culture we are creating. I fear that artists of faith—and artists in general—will lose our voice. I fear that truth, the kind that is artistic and creative and humanly-expressed, will blur into the white noise of a truth-less media.
For when we create a culture where truth is considered a myth—the only truth will be what AI tells us is true.
To quote the theologian, Jerry Seinfeld, “We’re smart enough to invent AI, dumb enough to need it, and so stupid we can’t figure out if we did the right thing.”
