Trust. The Glue That Holds Society Together.

This article on Open Canada raises an important point:

Too often, AI literacy is framed as a technical or productivity skill. The assumption is that Canadians need to learn how to use AI. Yet in an era of deepfakes, synthetic media, algorithmically generated misinformation, and AI-generated content, the more pressing challenge may be learning how to question it. If Canada is serious about AI literacy, it should build its approach on the foundations of media literacy and critical thinking.

It’s an excellent point; but I think it raises a broader question “What the FUCK are we doing here?”

The problem with AI Literacy, and the related issue Media Literacy, is the required energy expenditure to engage in it. It also is the antithesis of what society needs to function. Societies succeed when they establish a reliable baseline of trust.

It is impossible to live in a world of “Trust nothing, verify everything.” We need to be able to trust each other. Think of the thousands of interactions we engage in; through technology and in person. The unseen interactions we depend on to keep infrastructure and services running. We implicitly trust every one of those interactions. We have faith they are based on honesty, best effort and overall good intent.

It’s fair to say that 100% of the information we take in every day, 100% of the systems that allow us to function are based on a concept of trust in our fellow human beings. We don’t verify that the hospital is open, we trust that it is. We trust that the system is working, private and public.

Deliberate misinformation campaigns have already destabilized society. We’re living that now. They attack all aspects of the systems that we rely on and primarily erode trust in each other and the governments we setup over us. Misinformation has been weaponized to tear society apart. We’re witnessing what happens when our fragile trust in one another is willfully broken.

And how we use AI is accelerating that destruction. We’re leaving behind a world built on trust, and are rapidly building a world based on hope. Not an optimistic hope. A hope that “nothing fucks me over today.” A world of hoping that our cynicism won’t catch us out.

Because none of us has the energy or the time to verify everything, we’re caught in the worst of binary choices:

Trust nothing, which means never believing in anything.

Trust anything, which means falsely believing in everything.

Pick your poison. The destruction of trust will doom us all.

Trust me.