The Artificial Friend of the Ultimate Liars
My friends are excited. One after the next… they share with me the glorious potential of A-I. One dear friend created a beautiful article which connected this week’s Torah portion with current political realities on the ground. He did so with his best new friend… which now has a nom-de-plume, by which “it” is addressed. It took about one hour of discussion with his A-I buddy to refine the presentation, which indeed was interesting. I could not help but wonder if that same hour could not have resulted in an even better product with the creativity of my friend on his own, but I was told that was not a reasonable expectation.
The lure of A-I is enormous. Friends have shared with me the medical information they acquired from their new best friend -Chat GPT. I risked asking it which airlines would take me nonstop to my next destination and was delighted to save so much time rather than searching for the same information online. There are clearly some very real benefits even for someone as digitally illiterate as me, myself and I. Not long ago I asked it where Syria’s new leader, Al-Julani, was located at that moment in time. It responded that it was beyond its mandate to reveal the current location of a specific individual. Apparently even A-I has a few basic rules of behavior.
Two days ago, another friend (30 years my junior) explained in great detail, the wonders that A-I was capable of doing for him and his business. It was indeed astounding and essentially eliminated the need for 80% of his paid staff, with their human errors and low productivity. Impressive, but more than mildly concerning in regard to the future of employment for actual human beings.
A seminar which I attended to open up the world of A-I for journalists was helpful in understanding how to use the exceptional tool. What looms in the crevices of my non-tech functioning brain…is the inevitable potential for the deliberate use for A-I for the purposes of deception.
In my March 21, 2023 article, titled : “Artificial Intelligence Will Destroy The Future Of The World As We Know It !” – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/artificial-intelligence-will-destroy-the-future-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/ …..I referred to the inevitable videos which will be created and distributed, of elected officials, speaking words they never actually uttered, in their own voices, and concluded that our ever-decreasing ability to know truth from fiction will plummet even further. In a world totally devoid of an actual source of “truth”, how are human beings to function rationally? This dilemma began with the accessibility of the internet and its ability to spread propaganda and intentional-lies in a millisecond. There were those who took great pleasure in correcting my articles, by going to sites such as “Snopes” to determine whether or not a claim was valid. That never appealed to me, simply because I had no reason to believe that whomever was behind “Snopes” was without an agenda of their own. We certainly discovered quite quickly that even Wikipedia was rife with bias. The only trust which remains is in real people… speaking in real time, in person. We could no longer trust videos of them, or recordings, or articles even attributed to them. How many of us have forwarded an inspiring article to a friend, credited to a personality we admired…only to discover that individual had never written the article. That was the beginning of our education… but only a taste of what was to come. We are bombarded daily with creative videos of talking babies, cats and dogs… in every language…lips matching the words…coming from those unable to emote at all. Therein lies the humor… the absurdity… and ultimately, the danger.
If I wish to have one of my articles published in a famous publication, I need only submit my text to A-I and ask to re-write it in the style of…the New Yorker…the New York Times… The Wall Street Journal, or any other publication in existence. I would never do that… but there are thousands of authors and journalists who would.
Fast-forward to that which upset me enough to waken me in the middle of the night and to prompt the writing of this commentary. Admittedly, one should not listen- after midnight, to a video recording delivered from one’s mortal enemy at the United Nations. Mea Culpa. Having listened to the Palestinian “Ambassador” delivering a speech which held not one sentence of truth in it, the muscles in my body became so taut that I knew I had to protect myself from the vitriol. It was a classic presentation where the speaker was presenting the Hamas/ Palestinian view of Israel’s immorality. The twisting of every fact… time and time again… was finally intolerable. Blaming Israel for mass murders, when it was the mass murderers of Hamas who perpetrated October 7th on the Israeli people… Blaming Israel for starving the people of Gaza…when it is Hamas which steals their food from them. The platitudes regarding the “value of every human life” emanating from those who actually are starving our innocent hostages in their tunnels! The accusations against Israel for indiscriminate killing of Gazan children when it is Hamas (and Hezbollah as well…) which uses them as human shields and sends them into minefields to be sure their own fighters can walk safely through them. A child blown to smithereens in the pursuit of the glory of Allah…appears to be a small price to pay for those liars accusing Israel of endless atrocities. None of this is new. My readers understand that this is the status-quo even though our enemies and the politically clueless -believe the accusations.
What then, did I find so additionally disturbing about the endless diatribe presented at the United Nations, offered as a prelude to the Palestinian Authority’s desire to proclaim that they themselves are intent on creating a State of their own? Was it the absurdity of their intent? Was it their proven inability to rule anything or anyone which has been proven by the violence and enormity of terror cells discovered in their areas of Judea and Samaria…Ramallah… Bethlehem…et al ? Was it the fact that there is actually no land on offer for this mythical state? Or that no one has elected the Palestinian Authority to represent them in this matter since 2006? Or that the officials of the P.A. have taken hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid, used it to reward their suicide bombers’ families and the murderers of our people in terror attacks? No… all of that had become public knowledge and should have been sufficient to deny them their seat at the United Nations long ago.
It was the speech itself. Every sentence was crafted in a way which would register comfortably in the western mind. Not one error of emphasis, no incorrect choice of a word, as might be expected if an Arab politician was speaking publicly in a language not his own. I felt as if I had been struck with a powerful blow, when it became clear that this speech must have been written by A-I. It sounded as though it could have been spoken by our own Prime Minister, if he were the head of the Palestinian Authority. In other words… the product sounded as though it was the result of information fed into A-I, which was then asked to be written in the “style” of the Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Obviously, the content was the exact opposite of whatever Bibi Netanyahu would have ever uttered.
I am tempted to name my new artificial intelligence “best friend”… “Ali”. After all, A.I. is purported to be our “ally” in the digital age. Now united for the foreseeable future- Ali and I, working together- united in a common purpose – can now deceive anyone, anywhere…with the sophistication and unique style of our sworn enemies. Little wonder that my sleep was interrupted with nightmares, stress, and the need to express these thoughts with those of you, who are actually prepared to reflect upon them.
