AI fuels fake news

AI fuels fake news | Daily Tribune

A recent post saying that US President Donald Trump supports the arrested ex-President Rodrigo Duterte went viral on the internet. Later, it was discovered to be fake news, perhaps a product of Duterte’s troll army at work.

Previously, an AI-generated Trump talking about Filipinos also went viral and was later discovered to be fake news. AI can fake Trump speaking in a way no one would notice it is fake. This is the power of AI that can spread misinformation on a massive scale worldwide in a matter of minutes. This is its bad side.

The good side is an animated version of the face of Jesus extracted from a photo of the original Shroud of Turin. The effect is so awesome, touching and inspiring the hearts of Christians, viewing a replica of Jesus in animated form.

AI is both good and evil. The $64,000 question is — does the evil AI can far outweigh the good? In truth, we cannot answer this question until a later stage, or never at all, because the AI storm is just beginning to brew. And key events could evolve rapidly. Just like the good and evil in nuclear energy which can kill millions instantly yet yield dramatic discoveries in all scientific fields.

AI brings harmony and confusion all at once on a worldwide scale. AI’s power is awesome, that is why it is so tempting to embrace it. It is perhaps an unstoppable force infecting the planet that can spread as a global electronic epidemic. AI is a litmus test of the good and evil Mankind can do, what it can build and destroy.

The most damaging aspect of AI is a fake news storm, which is starting to brew. It has the capacity to misinform to topple regimes and destroy the image of charismatic leaders. It has the capacity to produce more sophisticated, more intelligent missiles and drones. It has the capacity to heighten espionage, like China is doing now, collecting any and all information about the Philippines for a future war it is preparing for. (read https://tribune.net.ph/2025/01/27/chinese-spying-alarms-afp).

Already, a lot of people are being swept up in the AI storm which 1) can bring big windfalls; 2) has such awesome power to both inform and misinform; 3) is spreading rapidly even in its present infancy stage. AI has the capacity to blind people to use its power for evil, selfish motives. AI also has the capacity to fuel new scientific discoveries.

The power of AI to misinform is so awesome, it has the capability to sabotage the internet world on a massive scale. China has an internet protocol to prevent its people from receiving outside information that is damaging to the image and interests of its government. This government-led cyber information control is prevalent in China on a nationwide scale. We can label it “cyber totalitarianism.”

But it is also happening in the US in a somewhat more subtle form. The sale in the past of millions of private users’ data cannot be reversed. It can now be sold and resold by the new owners. The temptation to sell private users’ data on a massive global scale cannot be undone. It yielded an unprecedented windfall, a temptation that could not be refused even by the big tech giants. Greed is the name of the game.

The question is — can people design a system to correct and contain AI’s power to fool us. The experts normally say “yes and no,” yes to a certain extent, which means that a completely fool-proof system is out of the question.

Somewhere, sometime, a cyber genius will hack into fool-proof systems, and another cyber genius will catch the hacker. That is how the cyber world spins — good and evil cyber experts at war.