Artificial Intelligence and Fake News

A new expression that I have picked up on is fake news. In many cases, it is an accurate description of how some media outlets will omit important details or even lie outright in order to persuade people. Unfortunately, it also is growing in the secular science industry. Now we have to contend with fake news and artificial intelligence.

Fake news is a problem in the secular science industry, and artificial intelligence can make things far worse. The morality and worldview of programmers is very important.
Pixabay / Garik Barseghyan
AI can be used to generate fake news as well as to determine which news is false. This can be both good and bad, depending on who is doing the programming. The results have been a bit unnerving because they are difficult to discern from actual news reports, complete with references. 

Any kind of computer or AI depends on the programming it receives, which reflects the biases and worldviews of the programmers (see "Artificial Intelligence and Evolving Morality" and "Artificial Psychotic Intelligence"). Imagine if some sidewinders promote new pharmaceutical products that are not actually cleared for the market.

Also, biased programmers can arbitrarily decide that anything that supports biblical creation science or even Intelligent Design is fake news and should be herded off the nearest cliff, all based on personal preferences tainting the programming. Meanwhile, they could promote fake deep time and evolution news upon the unsuspecting public — and scientists. Social(ist) media are hunting down and removing things that they determine are fake news, so they would be thrilled to have their work computerized.



Science is supposed to be self-checking, but secular science has a mighty big reproducibility crisis, and secular peer review has serious problems as well. The standards of morality behind these things as well as AI fake news applications are missing integrity and morality. What do you expect when secularists believe that morality comes from evolution and reject our Creator, the true source of morality? This could be a big problem.
Without this essential ingredient, long taken for granted, science could collapse.

Imagine a world where science journals could not be trusted. In this imaginary world, at least half of all journal articles have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI), but are fake. The algorithms have gotten so good in this imaginary world, nobody can tell the difference—not editors, not peer reviewers, not even other AI algorithms. And as another consequence, suppose that reporters are fooled, and write up these fake research findings as fact. Is this dystopian vision possible?

We hear a lot about fake news in politics. Each election season, journalists worry about disinformation campaigns by the Russians using social media to stir up partisan attitudes based on bogus claims. Is science immune from the Big Lie? New Scientist looked into the very real problem that AI can generate fake science.
To continue reading, click on "How Science Could Destroy Itself".