Chapter 5: How ChatGPT Can Disrupt Politics
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When the internet became accessible to everyone in the early 2000s, common thought held that the internet would make it impossible for tyrants to restrict information, and so people would be liberated by the internet’s power. That could not be farther from the truth. Despite the fact that the internet democratized knowledge and talents, allowing individuals all over the globe to learn skills that formerly required a degree, user data mining allows for widespread monitoring. Furthermore, the democratization of AI makes things much more fascinating.
Attention and time are widely recognized as the most precious currencies in the virtual world. On social media, everyone is competing for the attention of users. To develop attention-grabbing content, which is traditionally hard, you need a plan, time, and expertise. The popularization of generative AI, which allows users to make photos, films, and text with just a few phrases of direction, enables anybody, regardless of technical competence, to produce high-quality content. GPT-4 is expected to replace the popular GPT-3 AI model in 2023. GPT-4 is predicted to pass the Turing test (the theoretical limitation for an AI to imitate human intelligence). Contrary to popular internet opinion, the GPT model will not replace developers or active content producers; it will, however, augment the production process. The highest impact of GPT-3 and 4 will be bringing in a new wave of content creators with little or no expertise in the public eye.
The traditional kind of censorship is the banning of a book that has the potential to influence the political system. The newest and more efficient method of censoring is to hire 100 different writers to publish 100 separate books on the same issue, creating a colorful palette of viewpoints ranging from conspiracies to half-truths, making it almost impossible for readers to distinguish facts from fiction. By removing the obstacles to content creation, the amount of material will increase dramatically beginning in 2023. Disinformation will proliferate, further eroding people’s already weakened faith in governments, corporations, and reputable sources.
We expect that the information will become more vulnerable to micro-personalized preferences. When there are too many sources of information and entertainment, more than anybody can grasp, the natural tendency is to trust the ones to which the user can relate the most. Nonverbal language, personal stories, word choice, tone, visuals, colors, and overall user experience all determine relatability. As a result, we anticipate that social media will split into ideological and eventually microideological niches, producing bubbles that will reject any outside perspectives or facts, resulting in political partisanship.
