When the Generals talk

You might have been confused last week when breakfast radio reported Australia’s top soldier, General Angus Houston, was warning that the greatest existential threat facing the country is “truth decay”.

It was early morning and images of dentists abandoning their BMWs and Mercs and racing to the battlements rushed through my own brain fog as I walked the dog through Sydney’s smoke haze.

Then the takeaway coffee hit and I realised it’s only just spring and most dentists are still on holiday in Europe.

While my aversion to drills remains firmly intact, General Houston was talking about Artificial Intelligence and how it’s bringing a new level of fakery to the imagery and messages that we consume through digital channels.

The key quote for those not glued to the radio news was: “This tech future may accelerate truth decay, greatly challenging the quality of what we call public ‘common sense’, seriously damaging public confidence in elected officials and undermining the trust that binds us.”

Without getting too post-modernist, one person’s truth has always been someone else’s virtual reality. Bending the truth didn’t start with AI. The technology has been with us for a few years. It is getting better.

The General was describing a new, more sophisticated way of spreading misinformation that’s driven by nation states and is more potent because it has the ability to reach large numbers of people in a very short space of time.

Closer to home, dealing with an online booking agency for a change to a ticket for a pending overseas trip had me asking if I was talking with a human or a bot. (The answer was a robotic version of the former but it was hard to tell.)

Our regulators have a lot of catching up to do regarding what rules and regulations they put in place to moderate the use of AI. The Ethics Principles for AI that the New South Wales Government has put in place by its departments is a great start.

Image Credit: RAAF