💩In the beginning was the word, and the word was bullshit. And Lo! the gods of GenAI then went on to create botshit. And so it came to pass, what was once exclusively analog with a steaming palette of organic funk, (dank soil for politicians and car salesmen) has now become available to everyone — fully digital, automated and replicable on a platform near you.
Have you heard of botshit? It’s obviously a new term for our times. I picked up on it from an article in the Guardian this January. Apparently, it’s a by product of GenAI’s tendency to hallucinate meaning that it creates plausible but untrue statements, which as you can imagine, in the political arena, can quickly become toxic.
The old truth that a lie has circled the globe twice before the truth ties its shoelaces now happens at 3.8 GHz or faster thanks to the wonder of modern computing.
Not only does this weaponize propaganda and misinformation at speed and scale in the hands of bad actors, but it also creates the get-out-of-jail card of plausible deniability from those same bad actors — a bit like the old chestnut of telling the teacher that your dog ate your homework (the real consequence now being that politicians are free to spread the most egregious lies and get away with it). For bad actors, like the Russians fighting their proxy wars, botshit is a dream come true, a smoke-free weapon to destabilize populations around the globe.
If you extrapolate further, you could quite quickly paint a scenario in our dystopian future where we truly end up living in an AI-generated botshit reality where no true thing is discernible in the information sphere. It’s already happening though. Unfortunately. And in a critical election year for so many countries in Europe, not discounting the US battleground, where an already polarized public can be tipped this way and that with appropriate nudges (read, lies), we no longer have a functioning democracy.
Whatever your political beliefs, short of living in a complete information lockdown, you will be infected and possibly swayed by bogus newsfeeds that suit someone else’s narrative. When Steve Bannon famously said that he was ready to ‘flood the zone with shit’, he can now rejoice that his vision is that much closer to being achieved with the press of a button.
Of course, this has already happened using conventional media — the casual sleight of hand that has been used to blame immigration on all society’s’ ills, to demonize the welfare benefit cheats while the rich siphon off their cash to tax havens etc etc. Why does populism work? Because it appeals to our most basic instincts.
It’s rather ironic, is it not, that one of the most enduring architectural feats of the Roman Empire, the Colosseum still stands in Rome — that monument to bread and circuses for the masses. Distraction from reality is a proven antidote for restive populations, whether it’s gladiators and mock battles or Netflix and chill.
As the article in the Guardian points out, the rise of GenAI has already started to fundamentally change many professions.
Who after all would not welcome the remarkable savings arising from a set of machines that produce text and imagery tirelessly at their command, capable of eating away at our consciousness with brand messages.
Think about an earworm composed of somebody dragging their fingers down a chalkboard on maximum volume and a loop — it’s coming.
Just recently there was a story from the BBC where one of their reporters, Zoe Kleinman was defamed by a chatbot called Grok on the X platform in which it described her as ‘one of the worst spreaders of disinformation’ on that platform. If you read the story from the link, you will find that this is not an isolated case either and given the proclivity for Gen AI to hallucinate and to lie, this will only continue until somebody figures out a way to rein it in.
The interesting point about this case is that libel laws and indeed those covering defamation were created at a time when the media did not include loose technology cannons — in truth there is no way yet to stop this in legal terms until the goal posts are moved and one can prosecute a machine for doing something that may cost you your reputation and potentially your life.
There are certain parallels with the postmaster scandal in the UK where a faulty software platform used by these stalwart servants of the public was reporting errors in accounting that led to huge reputational damage to the wrongfully accused and in four cases, suicide.
It’s one thing to give a nasty by product of technology a cute name like botshit, but the reality, which is now dawning, has the potential to corrode the fabric of our society at the deepest levels. We are all being lulled into a false sense of security by our technology overlords who are fast taking the place of politicians in their power and influence.
The Doomsday clock is no longer analog, it’s digital.
Next time you look at the screen, don’t forget to wipe.
