Have you been fooled by AI yet?
Earlier today my friend sent me a clip of Alan Watts, and said it was one of his favorite by him. If you don’t know who Aan Watts is, he’s one of the main figures in the exportation of Asian philosophies to the rest of the world (Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism), and simplifying some of the ideas for unfamiliar audiences.
He and J. D. Krishnamurti were a big influence on me in my late teens and early twenties and helped me find my own faith and undersranding of the world outside of organized religion.
Both of them speak about life in a way that doesn’t conflict with religion but doesn’t require it either, its more about self reflection and ones relationship with their life and mind than anything else but its too abstract to fit into academic fields other than philosophy, so they are called both philosohers and spiritual teachers, depending who you ask.
I haven’t listened to Watts in years, and I was a little hesitants because rhe video was 20 minutes and I’ve heard so much Watts, its impossible that I would hear somethinf completely new or life changing by now.
As I listened I was glad i did because so much of it was relevant to things I’ve been thinking about recently. It was a great lecture but I felt there were a few things that didn’t resonate about it but nothing that sounded completely un-Watts.
As I got to the end I hear one line and one line alone that stuck out like a sore thumb. It sounded oike a youtube influencer more than Alan Watts:
“So there you have it, five things you should never share with anyone”.
That’s influencer speak.
I asked something my friend “Are you sure that’s really Alan Watts”? The idea hadn’t even crossed his mind that it could be AI generated. We both know that is possible these days but we fet strongly that we were listening to Alan Watts because it sounded so much like Alan Watts.
“It’s him.”
“How do you know?”
“I have a good ear”
WHAT!?!
This is where I tend to be more skeptical than the average person.
Admittedly , even if it was fake it was a pretty decent lecture, I don’t feel like I completey wasted my time.
I started to think of how easy it would be to create a nearly true- to-life Alan Watts lecture.
1 Feed GPT or Grok a Watts lecture and ask it to “rewrite as a list with a catchy title”.
2 Get some other AI (not sure which is popular) to read it in Alan Watts voice
3 upload it with a catchy thumbnail and tags
Literally anyone with the will under the age of 65 could do that.
We’ve watched hundreds of videos like this over the years, so apparently neither of us bothered to read the title, only the thumbnail, but the title had it right there :
“Alan Watts Influenced”
It was his voice, perfect as far as I could tell (I have a good ear too 😝). It had his face in the thumbnail and his name in the title. It sounded like what he might say. So we didn’t even bother to read the long wordy title to the end.
In the end I think the reason I was fooled was the socal proof. He sent it to me as if it was really Alan Watts so I didn’t question. When I search things myself I am always more careful, but if a friend acts as if something is a bird, Im going to assume its a bird and not a fake bird, until I have a reason to doubt it.
In a 20 minute video there was only one line that had me doubting.
I’m still a little shocked at how easily fooled I was, and I am the skeptical type. I don’t rely on “I have a good ear”, i mean i think I do, but that’s not enough for my skepticism to disappear when ai start questioning.
This is such a strange world we are living in and I don’t think any of us have an answer for how to navigate it.
I don’t think things like this should he illegal, its kind of cool to hear AI rewrite Alan Watts but remain faithful about it, but I don’t think people should be profiting off others work or passing AI off as not AI.
For now they can try and label AI content but its wuickly reaching the point where there will be no way to detect the information.
For now the best things you can do are
1 Read the title carefully
2 listen for uncharacteristic statements
3 Do a google search
4 Look at the date.
The number one most reliable thing is the date. If it’s from 15 years ago, there is no chance it’s AI generated. But what happens when the majority of content comes from after 2020? That metric will no longer matter. What happens when the AI is indistinguishable in every aspect? What happens when theres so much unreliable information that GPT and Google can’t tell you if it’s something the person actually said.
In the end, we can only trust our own senses and our heart. Unlike my friend I don’t rely on my heart to trll me if it’s really Alan Watts or not, I use it to tell me if the information is worrh my attention and useful. Wherher or not its Alan Watts will become more and more of a mystery, I guess similar to the words of famous figures before video footage.
Here is the video btw, check the comments, no one mentions AI…
Edit: soon after found myself watching another video that was even more convincing but this time i was paying closer attention. Completely different topic, but if you listen carefully you realize this video uses a lot of sentence patterns which are not natural in every day speech and sound AI generated, though its a little subtle:
The only real troubling thing to me is how no one in the comments seems to suspect its AI, those comments may be deleted by the uploader or maybe everyone is already THAT fooled by AI
Posted Using INLEO
Well don't blame your friend. We are transitioning into a new world where system is able to simulate human interaction. Let me try to phrase it better humans are getting more comfortable accepting that computers are displaying real emotions and are understanding what we feel.
Imagine a world where you don't feel void left by someone because you already have that relationship with AI bot. 😕 Depressing ain't it. I mean what the hell, I am talking about a void left by a real person and some computer code is just filling in for it. Everything will be perfect and you will start missing the small imperfections that annoyed you once.
Friends with whom you share thoughts and argue will be gone. Family with who you rely on having your back. A companion with whom you can share life. All will be gone and one is left with a code that is there just to validate the thoughts.
Happy AI-pocalypse. 😕
BTW eleven labs is awesome with its text to voice feature, that gives voice to many introverts
Oh no Nuk, have you been spending a little too much time with a simulated version of your family?
Personally I need to be vigilante when Monolithsoft, Square Enix and copycats start pumping out new AI generated RPG games every week which package esoteric wisdom into an unlimited amount of addictive tasks to complete and AI lets your turn the game from cheesy anime into psychedelic and apocalyptic in order to fit your own personal aesthetic making it even more addictive.
I need to get a lot more done before I am invited to hedonistic paradise.
Sometimes I feel everything is pointless and nothing matters in the long run.
But maybe that's the point. enjoying little moments.
As for the AI-generated content. I think I am getting a little tired of all the crap that is floating around. People are no longer putting in effort for anything. We are turning into mindless drones..
Imagine not being able to enjoy a song because the moment you start liking it, tons of mixes, edits, remixes, reverbs, and slowed versions will flood in. And you end up listening to some of it, only to regret it.
I think this is either the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. Soon we will not be able to be sure that what seemingly happens right in front of us is real, if we ever could i guess...
I’m not much of a pessimist any more simply because I don’t have the energy to be and because I believe life reflects to us what’s in our hearts, so I know there is good that can come of this.
I think it’s probably that more people will be forced to question things more and appreciate their senses and real connections more which have been neglected for 10-20 years
I think there is a good chance of that happening. I'm more of a maybe ist. I have no idea which way the winds will blow. I'm constantly surprised by both the gullibility of the masses and the capacity for individual kindness by (most) people. So I try not to expect the best or the worst but be aware of the possibility of both. Either way it's a pretty interesting game. Wish I was better at it though =)
For a man that was so happy to share his ideas, thoughts, and the way spirituality connects us, that definitely isn't something he'd say haha
Right? Hahahaha but I was hardly interested in the title and I’m so used to clickbait now that I’m a little numb and forget how unnatural it is.
He also spoke in not so subtle riddles sometimes though and made strong statements that on the surface contradicted each other so it didn’t raise any immediate red flags
There are a bunch of videos like these on TikTok. I've seen not only Alan Watts but also Carl Jung, Bertrand Russell and no doubt many others whom I've been unable to pick out. I'm not concerned about this, I think this will train attentive people to be more attentive, because distracted people have been fooled by misinformation long before AI was a thing anyway.
I'm seeing in this phenomenon the increased necessity for people to have authentic interactions with others and with the world. Remember when I told you a couple of years ago that the boundary of reality would become blurred? We're here.
As you know I’m learning to just trust in life and focus on my own energy and what I can do, but if I were to worry about our anything, it’d be how inattentive people end up being manipulated to serve certain purposes through these kinds of things.
But I’m not longer a worrying man so I know I don’t need to get tied up in it. And as you said, this will level up some people’s attentiveness and encourage us to rely less on information we can’t verify ourselves, as well as stuff that is irrelevant to us.
It was just a really surprising realization that I had been so easily fooled at first (I wasn’t 100% engaged with it, but still). I had thought we were a year or two away from this. Now I know it’s here already.
I think I have watched one of those video on a ride a few days ago, didn't think about it or the possibility that it could be AI, we will really have to be careful in the future with information, the truth will be hidden by noise, finding the source and doing an analysis ourselves is even more crucial now.
I wasn’t thinking about it either cause I had heard enough from just a few months ago that weren’t as convincing 😱
The future is looking very interesting if nothing else 😝
I don't know if I've been fooled yet (entirely possible because if I was it was that convincing I didn't notice at all) and I really hate that I'm just regarding everything with low level suspicion now. I had a dentist appointment recently and they have a tv on the ceiling and they were playing Youtube videos of some underwater stuff and as at least I had some distraction of the boredom of waiting for the cleaning to be done as I stared intently at each scene wondering if some of it was AI (some looked like it might be at least 3d) or real instead of just being able to enjoy cool underwater scenes.
I was rather internally cranky about that XD