Over the past decade trust in the media has declined. I think this has moved beyond postmodern scepticism, so I’ve written a bit about how technology influences culture and reminded you all that we’re getting fucked by AI.
I believe the gap between media’s representation of truth and reality itself has increased. Or, at the very least, the public perceive the objectivity of media to have decreased, which has equal implications here. Thanks to social media, we have recently seen the rise of post-irony, where it is impossible to discern if a creator of media is being sincere or ironic in their production. Take political commentary for example, if you see a video on Instagram promoting an extremist position, can you confidently state whether the creator of that video sincerely holds those beliefs or if you are viewing a satirical meme?
Generative AI could be seen as anti-true. In a sense AI functions symbolically, as the latent space of machine learning is based on conventions of human communication (as observed in large datasets), but I believe AI is more so characterised by its lack of any direct representation of reality. Antithetical to objective media which directly represents reality, AI represents an entirely digital schema of signs. AI represents the unreal. Again spread on social media, generative AI is making it increasingly difficult to discern how much we, as an audience, can trust media.
The mass of AI generated media has been speculated to increase the publics value for media centred on the human experience. You could predict a resurgence in humanism (particularly in the arts) however this may be offset by the rise of iconographic and abstract explorations of technology as religious symbolism. We see this in movements such as Divine Machinery which resonant, in part, with an individual or societal AI psychosis, and speak to the experience of worshipping the machine.
I highly doubt that a growing distrust in the media is a good thing, but now I believe we are facing a bigger question regarding our relationship with media. Do you want to worship the machine or worship humanity?
