[ryanjshaw]

I’m spending way too much time on the RealOrAI subreddits these days. I think it scares me because I get so many wrong, so I keep watching more, hoping to improve my detection skills. I may have to accept that this is just the new reality - never quite knowing the truth.

[raincole]

Those subreddits label content wrong all the time. Some of top commentors are trolling (I've seen one cooking video where the most voted comment is "AI, the sauce stops when it hits the plate"... as thick sauce should do.)

You're training yourself with a very unreliable source of truth.

[input_sh]

> Those subreddits label content wrong all the time.

Intentionally if I might add. Reddit users aren't particularly interested in providing feedback that will inevitably be used to make AI tools more convincing in the future, nobody's really moderating those subs, and that makes them the perfect target for poisoning via shitposting in the comments.

[immibis]

Also, most Reddit users are AI.

[ryanjshaw]

> You're training yourself with a very unreliable source of truth.

I don’t just look at the bot decision or accept every consensus blindly. I read the arguments.

If I watch a video and think it’s real and the comments point to the source, which has a description saying they use AI, how is that unreliable?

Alternatively, I watch a video and think it’s AI but a commenter points to a source like YT where the video was posted 5 years ago, or multiple similar videos/news articles about the weird subject of the video, how is that unreliable?

[butlike]

I don't understand. In the grandparent comment you say you have a problem spending too much time on those subreddits and watching too many of those videos, but then you push back here.

Personally, I don't think that behavior is very healthy, and the other parent comment suggested an easy "get out of jail free" way of not thinking about it anymore while also limiting anxiety: they're unreliable subreddits. I'd say take that advice and move on.

[iwontberude]

Which themselves are arguments from bots.

[bentcorner]

This itself could be a bot argument casting doubt on reddit. It's an endless cycle.

If bots reference real sources it's still a valid argument.

[lukan]

"I may have to accept that this is just the new reality - never quite knowing the truth."

Some people, quite some time ago, also came to that conclusion. (And they did not even had AI to blame)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing

[padjo]

I’m really hoping that we’re about to see an explosion in critical thinking and skepticism as a response to generative AI.

Any day now… right?

[ryanjshaw]

I show my young daughter this stuff and try to role model healthy skepticism. Critical thinking YT like Corridor Crew’s paranormal UFO/bigfoot/ghosts/etc series is great too. Peer pressure might be the deciding factor in what she ultimately chooses to believe, though.

[notarobot123]

I think the broader response and re-evaluation is going to take a lot longer. Children of today are growing up in an obviously hostile information environment whereas older folk are trying to re-calibrate in an environment that's changing faster than they are.

If the next generation can weather the slop storm, they may have a chance to re-establish new forms of authentic communication, though probably on a completely different scale and in different forms to the Web and current social media platforms.

[butlike]

Haha, AGI happens because some future generation just 'forgets' that it was all bullshit slop before

[efnx]

One can hope!

[lukan]

Yeah, one can. But then I see people just accepting the weak google search AI summary as plain facts and my hope fades away.

[lesam]

Before photography, we knew something was truthful because someone trustworthy vouched for it.

Now that photos and videos can be faked, we'll have to go back to the older system.

[KPGv2]

Yeah this is what I always expected to happen. Cryptographic signing of source material so you can verify who the initial claimant is, and base credibility on the identity of that person.

[ekianjo]

It was always easy to fake photos too. Just organize the scene, or selectively frame what you want. There is no such thing as any piece of media you can trust.

[bandrami]

The construction workers having lunch on the girder in that famous photo were in fact about four feet above a safety platform; it's a masterpiece of framing and cropping. (Ironically the photographer was standing on a girder out over a hundred stories of nothing).

[wiz21c]

Although I do use the dead internet, I didn't see much of "fake news" like that...

[expedition32]

Ah yes the good old days of witch trials and pogroms.

I am no big fan of AI but misinformation is a tale as old as time.

[djeastm]

My favorite theory about those subreddits is that it's the AI companies getting free labeling from (supposed) authentic humans so they can figure out how to best tweak their models to fool more and more people.

[bradgessler]

What if AI is running RealOrAI to trick us into never quite knowing the truth?