Is Anything Real Anymore?

'A MATTER OF LAUGH OR DEATH' -- Who can you trust these days?

You are going to find this hard to believe, but despite what we’ve all been taught, it turns out you cannot trust everything you see on the internet.

Yeah, I know! Who saw that coming?! For the past 30 years we’ve had it pounded into our heads that there are only three certainties in life: 1) Death, 2) Taxes, and 3) Everything on the internet is true.

A new study has found there actually are a few things online that are not trustworthy. (However, that Nigerian prince is totally legit. Feel free to send him your bank account info, and soon he’ll be sure to fill it with untold riches.) Furthermore, many people have become skeptical of content on the internet. My goodness, what a cynical culture we live in.

In a survey conducted earlier this year by Talker Research, 2,000 American adults were asked a series of questions regarding their online activity. The respondents believe only 41% of online content is accurate, factual, and created by human beings. The big change in recent years is the proliferation of AI-generated images and text. The survey participants thought approximately half of social media posts were generated by AI, and about one-third of all news articles were not composed by real people.

An overwhelming 82% of the respondents want businesses to be required by law to disclose when they use AI in marketing, customer service, or content creation.

Interestingly, these same folks who don’t like AI content did very poorly when asked in the survey to identify AI-generated text. Only 30% of survey participants correctly picked out which sample business reviews were written by AI versus humans. And two of the sample texts that were in fact written by actual people ended up at the very top of the “This definitely is AI” list.

Where I work, we occasionally use AI to write the text for newsletters and promotional fliers. I personally don’t use AI for two reasons: first, I have an over-inflated opinion of how well I write, and second, I have no clue how to use AI. I leave that to our resident digital genius (which is a fancy way of saying he’s a typical 24-year-old).

To make sure our customers and clients don’t think we’re using AI, I suggested to our resident digital genius to purposely misspell a couple of words in the newsletters, just to provide a little human touch. Unfortunately, most of our business partners are engineers and contractors, which means they don’t even notice our purposeful spelling blunders since their spelling skills are, well … let’s just say that even though many of them scored close to 800 on the math portion of the SAT exam, they’d probably struggle trying to comprehend The Cat In the Hat. (Oops, did I say that with my out loud voice?)

Anyway, the bottom line is: AI is here to stay. There’s no going back. And it’s a waste of time trying to get politicians to pass legislation that will force companies to reveal when AI is being used. This is because most public statements offered by congresspersons are composed by AI. Also, depending on which websites you believe, up to 40% of all politicians nowadays are robots. (You’re not fooling anyone, Chris Murphy, or should I say, X37RP-Series 2.)

So, the best thing to do is assume every single thing you view and read online is fake (especially this essay). There’s really nothing to worry about. The tech giants creating all this AI software have our best interests at heart, right?

In conclusion, I would like to offer one helpful suggestion: If a big dude in a leather jacket and sunglasses says to you in a monotone German accent, “I’ll be back,” please believe him and get out of there in a hurry.

(The humor column “A Matter of Laugh or Death” appeared weekly for 24 years in the Republican-American newspaper, Waterbury, CT.)

Check out my collection of faith essays, The Gospel According to Morty, available for ebook download on Amazon Kindle. Only $4.99! What a bargain!