Future of Truth : Ramesh Shrestha

Semantically speaking and in philosophy truth is defined as something that corresponds with facts and reality, rooted in accuracy and authenticity. It is the opposite of a lie. Truth means ‘what it is and what it is not’, as defined by Aristotle. Our society operates based on the idea of truth, trust and belief. Children are taught from very early on to be truthful, not to lie as part of moral education. Importance of truth cannot be overstated as in the court of law where people are expected to give sworn testimony under the oath, ‘truth nothing but the truth’. In modern society where everything is dynamic, truth also seems to be gaining dynamism where truth come in many shades under the influence of people’s opinion, politics, economy, media and sometimes just for the sake of convenience. Truth is supposed to be fact; can facts be so fluid or diluted?

Truth is a binary character, true or false, there is nothing in between. With the spread of the internet which gave access to a variety of social media people are inundated with peoples’ views on anything and everything. People’s idea of truth is being coloured by the perceptions and beliefs people derive from social media. Meanwhile the print media is shrinking, gradually replaced by on-line news mostly with paid subscription. Besides, the mainstream media that shares news globally is owned by just about ten media magnets with total control over editorials which decides what goes on in the news and views which most often are one sided. People in our rat race society simply do not have enough time to question and analyse the authenticity of the news they read. There are many alternate facts presented in the media by people influenced by individual bias and misperceptions pushing truth to oblivion. When the same views are repeated in several outlets as news many times perceptions and views become the truth.

Illusions of truth

Visual media has contributed substantially in educating people, especially children and young people through documentaries on a wide range of subjects such as history, nature, culture, astronomy and soon. David Attenborough is one of the naturalists and historians who devoted his life to promoting education through his documentaries. Seeing is believing.

Contrary to the above many movies and TV programmes produced based on ‘real story’ are distorting the reality where the ‘real’ content is no more than five percent or so while the rest is purely for entertainment based on the imaginations of the producers. When such productions are on history, individuals and events it reinterprets truths based on the views of the producers. Take for example numerous publications and movies on the Vietnam war, almost all of which are written and produced based on western perspective, supposedly against communism. Do people really know the context in which the Vietnam war was fought? What about the Vietnamese perspective? There are perhaps no more than ten publications translated in English for an international audience. Take for example ‘Sorrows of War’ by Ninh Bao. It is the story of a Vietnamese soldier whose job was to collect corpses and body parts in villages for proper burial, following the bombing of villages. ‘Last night I dreamed of Peace’, a biography based on the diary of a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed in a bombing raid in a village in Danang in December 1968. There are many inconvenient truths which people shy away from.

Looming danger

The media has tremendous power in making positive contributions in educating children and youth. There are many positive contributions of media such as free reading materials, visuals, games and tutorials. People are exposed to social media 24/7 globally including at home, at world place and in educational institutes. But this media also has the capability of changing behaviour of unsuspecting young minds through its addictive games and entertaining contents. It is likely impacting the critical thinking capacity of children and youth alike. The addictive entertaining programmes are presented in such a way that there are no ways to distinguish between facts and opinions. People’s viewpoints and opinions are presented as facts and truth. It pollutes the minds of unsuspecting children who grow up with someone else’s perceptions as truth.

The spread of Artificial Intelligence has contributed to increase efficiency across the board. Its application could lead to more discoveries in medicine and other scientific applications. AI in science and technology such as nanotechnology and biotechnology has improved surgery and treatments. But its application in cognitive science virtually falls on the borderline of ethics and illegality. There is ongoing research in tapping the human mind and ‘download our thoughts’ which could be uploaded in a virtual space which could then be modified and reloaded to the person’s cognition. Once reloaded it will modify cognitive behaviour of people. It does seem like a SiFi movie. Other than preventing human cloning all research in nanotechnology and biotechnology have been permitted by ethics boards of parent institutes. What and how will truth be defined then?

The ChatGPT has the ability to read and understand the contents of millions of pages of text in seconds, produce visuals with any given command, copy anyone’s picture, mimic human voice and produce complete audio and video messages with anyone’s syntax. Repeated exposure of such manufactured reality will permanently damage the meaning of truth thus distorting normative value of human nature. Humanism is based on our understanding of truth and empathy where truth represents the reality and empathy is a function of feeling based on understanding. But the manipulation of truth such as by the ChatGPT is endangering humanism. It is as if AI is a bridge between reality and fiction and we are subconsciously walking in this bridge to an unknown future.

Protecting truth

No country has banned the internet. There is just a difference in availability of the internet due to the cost or due to limited availability of the network. There is limited censorship by blocking certain IP addresses due to undesirable contents. By and large the internet has enjoyed a near total freedom of publication. But the risk posed by AI is far more reaching than what are being published in the internet. China is among the first to roll out a binding regulation on AI in August 2023 which requires the developers of AI to disclose how algorithms are built and the data sets used to train AI. The developers are required to prove ‘truth, accuracy and objectivity’ of the training data set used to synthetically generate images and videos and how it will be applied without violating intellectual property rights and harming individuals.

EU parliament passed a legally binding AI act in March 2024 requiring AI developers and AI deployers to adhere to certain restrictions regarding privacy and data protection. The USA, the birth place of AI has not yet released comprehensive regulatory guidelines on AI. However, the proposed legislation at the federal and state level, the developers are expected to consider safety and security and be a responsible innovator while ‘protecting privacy and civil liberty’. The idea is not to constrain innovation. India with a huge software development industry will be an important contributor on global AI regulation. However, India has not yet given any thought on AI regulatory framework. Its approach has simply been pro-innovation with ethical concerns.

AI is already in use by many software programmes. Given the economics of AI, can AI be actually regulated while honouring freedom, innovation & press? Would it be like herding cats? 

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