Artificial Intelligence: Where Sci-Fi Meets Deepfakes and the ‘cognitohazard’ Boom

It seems like we stepped into a science fiction novel without realizing it. It’s a world invaded by hyperrealistic deepfakes, videos that captivate us, not just visually but emotionally, and buzzwords like ‘cognitohazards’. So buckle up, buttercup! We’re about to dive into the matrix. And yes, that may be the only pop culture reference you’ll understand as we uncover the AI-powered iceberg shaped like author Neal Stephenson’s renowned novel ‘Snow Crash’.

Key Points in this Episode of “Real Life Morphs Into Sci-Fi”

• ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson isn’t only wildly popular, it’s like Startup Bible 101. This 1992 novel was the cool kid that used ‘avatar’ for the first time to mean a virtual representation of a person, and it introduced the term “metaverse”. Mark Zuckerberg made this his Facebook executives’ bedtime story a good decade before turning his company towards turning fiction into reality.
• Fact-checking group Logically informs us that deepfakes are powerful psychological tools. Retaining a robust sense of skepticism isn’t as simple as slapping a ‘THIS IS A DEEPFAKE’ sign on a video. By the time the viewer’s eyes have registered the warning, you have already been sucked into its alternate reality. According to Henry Parker, head of government affairs at Logically, even if people are informed that a video is a deepfake before they watch it, they tend to treat it as a factual account. So, the struggle is real, people! The key challenge lies in minimizing the circulation of such content.

Final Thoughts

We’ve sure downloaded a lot from this digital dojo! So the AI world isn’t just robots doing our dishes or semi-creepy voice assistants. It’s evolving into a mash-up of smart technology and brain-tweaking media. Sounds like that sci-fi universe is closer than we thought! So keep your wits about you or we might find ourselves living in a deepfake video that, ironically, feels too real. Stay technologically skeptical, my friends!