Back in May of 2022, Chuck Woodbury wrote an article in RVTravel.com that opened my eyes to our latest threat to TRUTH. He bought their first Artificial Intelligence software for use on his blog. He named it Johnny Robot.

I am linking it here so you can read the article for yourself. https://www.rvtravel.com/meet-newest-writer-robot-wont-1051/ His opinion of this software echoes mine.

In Woodbury’s usual approach to help his readers understand the current issue, he includes an article written 96% by Johnny Robot. Know that the knowledge he is passing on to you may seem comical but should be treated with the upmost respect.

With the use of this new technology, content creators all over the world are already spinning out articles full of half-truths or outright lies. Any person with the ability to type can create information that usually takes hours to prepare, now take minutes. With no way for this new content creator to detect errors in judgement, who knows what tale it spins.

It is becoming more difficult to sift through the data to find the truth – about anything. Our country is falling behind in alerting us to this new threat. Europe is way ahead of us exposing this new technology to the world. The World Economic Forum reported (2022 Annual Report), “In the past decade, social media have become one of the main sources of news for people around the world. Yet, it comes with the danger of exposure to intentionally false information. The extensive spread of fake news has recently become a centerpiece of controversy following the highly debated elections of President Donald Trump and the Brexit vote. It is alleged that the outcome of these votes resulted from the public opinion manipulation by a massive injection of fake news, possibly sponsored by hostile foreign governments, constituting perhaps one of the most serious and unprecedented threats to the modern democracies.”

Europe’s approach to handling this issue is the creation of “GoodNews.” Instead of following the traditional approach of analyzing the news content, GoodNews analyzes the news-spreading patterns in social networks. It is referred to as an algorithmic core based on a novel class of geometric deep learning. Also known as “fake news” detection based on real data from social media. As we all know, bad news travels faster than good news. “Especially when swarms of bots deployed by malicious elements make fake stories go viral.”

From what I can decipher from all this, using critical thinking as an everyday function is basically our only hope. Unless a grading system appears that is generated out of software like GoodNews, maybe using an A, B, C or *, ** legend, we are in big trouble weeding out misinformation.  

Solving the problem of identifying misinformation is the big news out of Europe. It is changing the school curriculum at an early age to include Critical Thinking. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. Over the last 50 years, critical thinking has dropped off the average school curriculum. Those of us in the earlier generation, before the Boomers, certainly have noticed this. How long it takes this country to catch on is the big question.

Security.org has a good article by Aliza Vidgerman, Industry Analyst, on just how many people rely on social media for information. https://www.security.org/digital-security/misinformation-disinformation-survey/