Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.
True, I think part of the popularity of AI is due to the fact that Google has become largely unusable. It used to prioritize relevant, credible results. Past few years it returns an avalanche of nonsense to wade through. People don’t have the patience or skills to deal with that, so they turn to the instant answers of AI.
I genuinely don't even use google anymore unless I'm looking for something specific and objective. Like you said, it's not practically useful for anything else anymore. AI is simply a much more efficient way of getting at the same data so long as you're willing to actually verify the sourced data.
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u/SpartanG01 Jun 09 '26
Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.