Ironies of the world upside down: Information saturation has made us less and worse informed

Photo by Franco Monsalvo

One of the greatest irones of our times is that the more information became readily available both in access and volume, the less and worse informed we have become.

Media saturation has made us less and worse informed.

The 24/7 news channels with their need to fill in 24 hours of news turned into endless opinion panels filled by pundits and so called experts. They moved from news and analysis to infotainment and endless, vacuous arguing back and forth.

Social media then exacerbated that with the rise of citizen journalists, influencers and conspiracy nuts. When everyone had a platfom we did get a window into some coummunities and stories that the media had generally overlooked or silenced but those interesting voices got drowned out and the sharp rise in misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories caused a fracture in our communities.

Governments also failed to pass legislation to regulate the media in any meaningful way. News media and social media need regulation, with the impact they can have in our communities, they can't be left to regulate themselves when they serve large corporations and wealthy billionaires with an agenda.

We can see the results of that failure.

And now, the dangers are being multiplied with AI, which is so keen to help and provide answers that it often conflates information from different sources to provide an answer that is incorrent. Or, quite simply, invents an answer from the deep bowels of algorithm.  

AI is not neutral, it's not objective, it has plenty of biases. We have seen AI being racist. AI leaning to right wing populism and even fascism. AI telling a student to kill themselves. AI providing all sorts of incorrect information and misinformation. 

Considering AI's over enthusiasm to be so helfpul that it fabricates answers, the way AI is used by people, which in my opinion reduces people's critical analysis capacity (an increasing number of studies and academics support this) in favour of passive automatisation, and AI's capacity to create increasingly convincing images, video and audio, that look increasingly real; we can see where the dangers lie.

With tech companies forcing AI into every product. With governments seemingly paralysed, if not fully embracing AI like in the UK. With a total lack of regulation and a mad race to profit from a wild, unregulated market, the dangers are far too high. 

I'd love to think that there's a good path forward. But aside from paying for anti tracking and VPN software. Moving from the big companies (and yes, I realise the irony that this blog is on Blogger, owned by Google - I may have to move elsewhere) to email and cloud companies whose core business is protecting the clients privacy and security. And actively learning about the dangers of the new media environment in order to shift gears and strategies as issues surface. I can't really, see how things will get better.

On my part, I couldn't be happier that aside from YouTube where he follows several accounts to learn about storytelling and filmmaking, my young son seems not to be interested in any social media nor AI. 

I suppose the time will come, but in the meantime, I can teach him how to be safe online, how to evaluate sources critically and how not to fall into the misinformation and disinformation storm.