Recently, an image of Pope Francis wearing a voluminous white jacket, a celebrity-style voluminous white coat, in the style of some celebrity at a Hollywood event, and although it seems like just another meme generated by Artificial Intelligence; it made me think about the nebulous path we are entering on the internet, where the discernment of what is true and what is false is more and more distant from the eyes, and close to the heart, but by looking, the heart is contaminated anyway; as the CD’s article title said: “The Pope Francis Puffer Photo Was Real in Our Hearts”. How, then, use a device where the videos, images, and people you talk to by chat or voice message may have de generated AI and are progressively more indiscernible from people who exist?
Suppose today, massively, everyone is bombarded by videos – on news sites and chat apps – of an alien invasion somewhere in the world, of a nuclear bomb attack, of people attack, of people making miraculous signs. How can I believe what I am seeing? Today, it is absolutely indiscernible. But then,we should stop using devices and the internet? It is only possible today if you would instead become a pariah or stylite monk.
The other alternative to solve the problem without giving up modern scientific benefits would be to digitally adhere to something like your government ID, so users and the content they create and publish online can be traced back to real people, from this universal worldwide digital identity; which, of course, can only be created globally by some new world organization that will bring this remarkable, long-awaited solution when everyone is clamoring for some institution that tells them what is and what is not real.
So I ask myself: which would be worse? To give the government total control over who I am and what I do on the internet, or become a pariah who cannot have a bank account because the banking institutions consider as AI those who do not have the digital identity mark. I don’t know the answer. I only know that we are in a time that demands, more and more, that we discover who we are and what we want as individuals before this generation imposes a path and an identity on us.