I’ve written a fair bit over the last few weeks about the developments in AI, its potential impact on jobs and the response required by leaders. Today, however, I want to discuss the real threat of AI to destroy trust across the broad spectrum of society, and more importantly, how can you build trust when the truth itself becomes so hard to verify.
With the release of ChatGPT we are already starting to ask questions about who wrote the work we are presented with. Education institutions are already flustered about ChatGPT’s ability to write students assessments, and so they should be. Everyday there are more and more people coming out with suggestions on how to ask better questions of ChatGPT to get a higher quality response. All of this and it has only been out for about 3 months. Just wait until we will have an even more advanced system with intent access.
Who Wrote What? Why Authorship Is the First Casualty of AI
Even before AI, the question of who wrote what already threatened trust. Plagiarism and ghost-writing show that the impact of words has always depended on who is really standing behind them, and what happens once someone refuses to take responsibility for their own work.
Of course ChatGPT is not the only one of the AI systems out there that can write responses to various questions, and to be realistic about what is going on, the question about who wrote what has always existed. Plagiarism has always been the scourge of academic assessments. Students, teachers and professors get caught using someone else’s work and trying to pass it off as their own. For students, they are made to redo their assessment. But for a professor or doctor who gets caught plagiarising, and fails to take responsibility, it is the end of their career. All of their past and present work gets scrutinised and there will always be a question of what else they plagiarised.
Another issue of who wrote what comes under ghost-writers. A ghost-writer is paid by someone to write a book that they can then claim as their own work. This is quite common with the rise of eBooks. There are many sites that have eBooks, and more, for sale that people can claim as their own work and then sell it online. A more famous example is that of George Lucas and the Star Wars novelisation. It is widely known that Alan Dean Foster wrote the novelisation of Star Wars for George Lucas to be able to put his name to it. (Yes I am old school. I still call the 1977 movie Star Wars without any subtitle).
While unlike plagiarism ghost-writing is acceptable by the wider community, when a person is found to be using a ghost-writer, they do lose some trust as people wonder how credible the “author” really is. However in these circumstances of plagiarism and ghost-writing the distrust created was local. That is, only the person who did the wrong thing became untrustworthy. AI can now not only affect the trust of the individual that uses the technology, but the individual can now create media that can destroy the trust of other people on a far grander scale.
From Deep Fakes to Outright Lies, How Far Can AI-Generated Content Go?
AI-generated content has moved well past harmless face-swap videos into deep fakes that can influence elections, damage reputations, and put words, faces and voices onto people who never said or did any of it.
Moving on from written work, the potential for AI to destroy trust in society grows exceptionally. Most people are already aware of deep fake videos. In most cases with a deep fake video it has simply been someone swapping faces from one actor for another and they are normally harmless. As long as the actors can take a joke, it can be fun to see a deep fake video of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Rambo or Sylvester Stallone as the Terminator.
I know that it has not all been fun and games. There have been political videos created to cause disruption in elections. There have also been deep fake videos of innocent people where their faces have been put onto a porn actress and it has been released to the internet.
However, while none of these are nice and people have been prosecuted, for most people in the world, they don’t have the knowledge or time to create a deep fake video. So the amount of actual deep fake videos that go out online are quite low, but that is about to change.
- Picture generation AI systems that create a realistic image from a simple typed command
- AI video creation software already being tested by the general public
- AI voice generation that can recreate any voice, unrecognisable by the average person, in seconds
Then just recently, I have been playing around with AI voice generation. These AI programs can take any voice and in a matter of seconds, yes seconds, recreate it to be unrecognisable by the average person. In the last Star Wars TV show Obi-Wan, James Earl Jones was credited for doing the voice of Darth Vader, as he has done since the 70’s. However, Jones didn’t do the voice, it was AI. The AI system was trained to recreate his voice, and if I had not been told, I would never have picked it.
Now, what does all this mean? We will soon have written text, audio recordings, pictures and videos all out on the internet that most of us will not be able to discern from the real thing. So the question is, who and what do we trust? How will we tell what is the real thing and what is AI created?
How Is Trust Already Being Abused, and What Does Weak Leadership Look Like?
Weak leadership hides behind AI-generated content to attack, discredit or manipulate rather than take responsibility for its own words and actions. Trust is already being abused, and it is only going to get easier to abuse.
We already know that weak people and groups use the internet as their weapon of choice to attack and discredit people that dare use facts to prove their ideology flawed. What will happen when they get their hands on audio, picture and video creation software? What will these cowardly anonymous people do in order to destroy the reputation of people or companies that don’t conform to their way of thinking?
How will AI be used and abused in the political arena? We are very well aware of the disgusting and dirty tricks they all play to smear the reputation of their opponents. How will they use this technology when running a campaign for an election?
How will individuals use it to create their own movie? Get a script written by ChatGPT based on a book that has not been made. Then use the video and voice generation software to create the video. You could have Tom Hanks and Charlie Chaplin team up for a comedy. Or worse, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev team up for a science fiction western. More seriously, you could undermine Hollywood by producing a movie of the same book they have purchased the rights to, by creating a movie for far less than they are and having it out far quicker than they can.
- Fake videos used to “prove” a husband or wife cheated on their partner, to help win a court case
- Fake videos of people claiming they were assaulted by someone else, in order to sue
- Narcissistic sociopaths using fake footage to stir up trouble and play the victim for attention
- Fake videos of police assault, and the list goes on
What Does This Mean for Leadership in AI and Society at Large?
Leadership in AI now means protecting honest communication, because a society that can no longer trust its media cannot function as a society at all. This then becomes a real problem because, for a society to work we need trust.
Now, none of this may come to pass, and what I have written here may be my wild imagination. However, what it all comes down to is the dissolution of trust in nearly everything we will read, see and hear. Unfortunately it is this simple, if you don’t know which piece of information is incorrect, then you can’t trust any of it. Even if you don’t care about AI or never use it, you will be affected by the distrust it will create. Because as fake AI produced media ramps up, and it will, we, the average people, will not be able to know what information is correct and what is AI created.
This then becomes a real problem because, for a society to work we need trust. Every society in its basic format is just an expanded trust relationship, and part of that trust is built on honest communication. To be able to operate in the world we currently live in, we have to have a general trust that people will do the right thing and treat each other with respect and reasonable care. However, if we can no longer trust one part of society, the media in all of its forms, we don’t have a relationship, and if that is the case then we cannot operate as a society.
| Trust threat | Old world (plagiarism, ghost-writing) | AI world (deep fakes, synthetic media) |
|---|---|---|
| Who is affected | Mostly the individual who did the wrong thing | Anyone whose face, voice or words can be copied |
| Scale of damage | Local, contained to one reputation | Society-wide, media in all its forms |
| Skill needed to cause harm | High, required real writing or research skill | Low, a simple typed command can generate fake media |
So What Do We Do? How Can You Build Trust in an AI-Driven World?
How Do You Become an Influential Leader When AI Blurs the Truth?
You become an influential leader by being the same person online and in person, and by taking responsibility for what you say and share, because that consistency is what AI cannot fake. Thankfully while all of these things are yet to really come to pass, I know that there are people out there who are smarter than I am, and hopefully they will be able to figure out all of these issues.
But I can say one thing. AI may be good online but that is where it stops. If you want to know you are getting the genuine article you can always see the person live.
- Show up in person wherever you can, it is still the fastest way to build trust
- Communicate honestly, even when the easy answer would sound better
- Take responsibility for what you create, publish or share, AI-generated or not
- Verify before you amplify, especially anything that seems designed to provoke you
Mind you, we haven’t even discussed robotics yet.
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