INFORMATION TRAJECTORY

2024-07-01

Humans invented Wikipedia, which made accessing information highly-convenient,
at the risk of questions about its authenticity (I'm well aware that in many
subject areas Wikipedia routinely outranks many other sources for accuracy.
But the point remains, because you've no idea what the bias of randomuser123
is; even if you check the sources they cite, you don't know what sources they
omitted to include. I love Wikipedia, but I can't deny its weaknesses.).

Then humans invented GPTs, which made accessing information even
more-convenient (Sure, ChatGPT and friends aren't always more-convenient. But
if you need to summarise information from several sources, you might find them
a more-suitable tool than those which came before. Why do I feel the need to
add so many footnotes to what should have been a throwaway comment?) at the
expense of introducing hallucinations that can be even harder to verify and
check.

Is humanity's long-term plan to invent something that spews complete nonsense
that's simultaneously impossible to conclusively deny? (Actually, now I think
about it, I'm confident that I can name some politicians who are ahead of the
machines, for now.)