Principal warns of sliding standards of truth

Friday 27 October 2023

The Principal of the Ladies’ College has called for all of us to question what is true in the age of artificial intelligence and conspiracy theories, suggesting the world needs to continually hold “information and ourselves to higher standards”.

Daniele Harford-Fox, pictured above, says in a letter published in Express today that “the game has changed significantly” in the past decade with new information technologies and sliding standards threatening society.

“There has been a rise of big players buying up papers or creating non-news news sources, such as GB News, to push strong political agendas. Politicians have jumped onto the bandwagon of popularism to suggest all opinions are equally valid, and, Uncle Roger may well now have his own YouTube account or podcast with two million followers, all of whom assume that his ‘theory’ is of the same value as scientific ‘theory’,” she said. 

“It is going to be increasingly difficult to know what to rely on."

Pictured: Debate is being hampered by slipping global standards on facts vs fiction, argues Ms Harford-Fox.

A way to combat this is through educating the young and impressionable, she said, with her own school already encouraging students to recognise their inherent biases and apply scrutiny to information.

This includes a clear understanding of the scientific method to separate truth from noise, and making it clear what is a stake if opinion trumps fact globally. But those obligations are on everyone and not just young people, Ms Harford-Fox said.

“We have to ask ourselves, what is the difference between information published by the BBC and information published by online forums?

“We have to understand the difference between Aunt Poppy’s theory on how vaccines work and a scientific theory that has gone through the standardised process of being empirically tested, replicated, exposed to peer review and then published."

While pictures and video are often reliable information sources now, AI manipulation, which can misrepresent and superimpose people into fake places saying untrue statements, will only cause further confusion.

This could affect elections and even war, she said.

“AI can now create a realistic photograph based on an instruction. We have already seen the fake Kier Starmer video and are now operating in a world in which AI can comfortably create a video using someone’s voice and face to recreate whatever scenario we might want. We are seeing this with deep-fake pornography where unconnected women’s faces are realistically superimposed on actors’ bodies in a way that is violating and demeaning.

“But think about the potential in a wider sphere…Think about the impact of a grainy video, leaked to key people, of Putin in a war office ordering the launch of a nuclear attack."

You can read her letter in full HERE.

Pictured (top): Daniele Harford-Fox.

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