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What can Faraday teach us about human responses to AI?


Professor Simone Natale argues that AI resides also, and especially, in the perception of human users. This talk presents materials from his new monograph, Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test. This talk is from two years ago and doesn't seem to have attracted the attention it deserves, but serves well today.

Natale begins with an analogy, and a warning from history:

In the middle of the 19th century, a new religious movement called spiritualism began to attract attention. Spiritualists believed that they could communicate with the spirits of the dead, and they would hold seances where they would try to contact the deceased.

One of the leading scientific figures of the time, Michael Faraday, was skeptical of spiritualism. He decided to investigate the matter by conducting experiments and observing seances.

Faraday's investigation led him to conclude that the phenomena at seances were not caused by spirits, but by the participants themselves. He found that people were more likely to experience paranormal phenomena when they were in a suggestible state, such as when they were tired or in a dark room.

Faraday's findings helped to debunk spiritualism, but they also raised questions about the nature of perception and reality. If people can be so easily deceived by their own minds, what else might they be mistaken about?

Faraday's work suggests that we should be careful about what we believe, and that we should always be open to the possibility that we may be wrong.

Natale goes on to talk about talking about the importance of media literacy and how it can help us to understand and critically evaluate the information that we consume.

Whilst on the one hand, AI can be used to create powerful tools that can improve our lives in many ways. On the other hand, AI can also be used to manipulate and deceive us.

Natale argues that it is important to be aware of the potential risks of AI and to use it responsibly. They also suggest that we need to develop new ways of thinking about and interacting with AI in order to maximize its benefits and minimize its risks.

Natale makes a convincing argument that media literacy is essential in the age of AI. AI is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it is important to be able to critically evaluate the information that we consume, whether it is generated by humans or machines.

Natale also raises some important concerns about the potential risks of AI. They point out that AI can be used to manipulate and deceive us, and that we need to be aware of these risks in order to use AI responsibly. Unfortunately 'Media Studies' is often derided as a 'Mickey Mouse' subject, yet its ability to develop critical thinking as regards the media we consume is going to be more significant now than its ever been. It may only prove a mitigation against the intentional, and inherent, deceptions of AI generated media, but without such mitigations the influences of felonious intents will go unchecked.


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