Oops, it’s deadline morning, so I need to hurry up and write a column to send in to the Enterprise. I’ve just poured myself a nice hot cup of coffee and set my buttered toast on the plate, and they are to my left as my computer is open on my right.
I’ll try not to get crumbs into the keyboard as I type.
Now, what shall I write about …?
Ummm [a quick glance around for inspiration] … toast.
For my toast, I thank Alan MacMasters. The Scottish scientist (1865-1927) invented the first electric bread toaster, which the Crompton, Stephen J. Cook & Company named the Eclipse. He was educated at The University of Edinburgh and died in Versailles, France. Source: Wikipedia, “Alan MacMasters, Inventor”.
But wait. That Wikipedia article, which was online from 2012 to 2022, was not true at all. It was a hoax done by the real Alan’s friends in college, in 2012.
However, people used that article as a source for all sorts of matters on toasters. It took on a life of its own, and people would be forgiven if they thought Alan MacMasters had invented the toaster.
The Mirror’s article “Made in the UK: The life-changing everyday innovations which put British genius on the map” (Sept. 1, 2012) still has a section on Alan MacMasters and the toaster. (I’m surprised that they have not corrected that already, because the hoax made big news in 2022 after it was revealed.) So do several other online articles and blogs.
He was credited as the toaster’s investor on or by: more than a dozen books on inventions, a chef on the BBC’s TV show “Great British Menu,” the Scottish government’s Brand Scotland website, and even at a Scottish elementary school, which dedicated a full day’s worth of activities to him.
I have seen Wikipedia articles that were obviously fake, such as when I once looked up a nation and the article was about recipes for cooking and eating children. That was before the days I knew to take a screenshot for proof or future reference; 2 days later, when I went back to it to show a friend, it was gone and replaced with the legitimate entry.
But that’s baby steps compared to the real trickery that’s going on now: Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Fake photos and fake videos are being made and passed around all the time now with AI. They look real, but they aren’t. Often there are clues that the picture or video is fake, but still, as I’ve seen, most people readily fall for it.
And as AI gets better and better, fewer and fewer of those mistakes will be made, and it will be much harder to tell the difference.
People’s vulnerability to AI is obvious on Facebook and other social media accounts.
The latest example of that going around now is these sweet, romantic photo series of couples: A young couple in 1960 standing in a cauliflower patch holding up a head of cauliflower or sitting on motorcycle, looking like carefree hippies; the same couple middle-aged in 1990 and more “casual Friday” attired, in the same cabbage patch holding a slightly different head of cauliflower, or on the same motorcycle but on a different street; and the couple now, grey-haired and wrinkled but still good-looking, you guessed it, holding a head of cauliflower or sitting on that same motorcycle, but with a different street in the background.
People think it’s real and their comments congratulate the couple.
Eventually some, certainly not all, Facebook users will recognize that the trope of the same couple young and old is fake, but they’ll still fall for the next fake posts. A video of a puppy with a butterfly on its nose is making the rounds – 100% fake, but people don’t seem to realize.
A picture is no longer worth a thousand words.
A picture nowadays ain’t worth a hill o’ beans.
I have been subjected to a one-sided major news network and was utterly astonished at how much subjective, unsubstantiated opinion was on there – and utterly sickened to realize that the person or people who were in the room with me watching it could not understand the difference in fact and opinion.
Who can you trust?
You can best trust local journalists and local journalism. They are trained how to research and confirm and verify. More importantly, they are part of this community. You can get to know their character. Their work follows them around everywhere, and their fellow townspeople hold them accountable.
Yet people believe just any ole’ thing they find online. The real maker of something a person takes seriously is probably some troll in Russia trying to throw the US political balance or some scammer with 85 phones lines up on a racks on a wall, going from one to the other to the other working those fake accounts.
Most people don’t know the difference. Shoot, a whole lot of them seem not to care. They soak in this online half-real, half-fake fairytale world and think (and tell everyone) that they are “doing research.”
We have entered a frightening world of pretend.
