]Source: La Presse March 24th 2024 Marc Thibodeau
https://www.lapresse.ca/contexte/intell ... u-reel.php
Google translation
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Poseidon represents 'deep learning' like what best describes Artificial Intelligence.
With the combination Poseidon/Neptune at the Aries Point, let's have a look of what journalist Marc Thibodeau from LaPresse has to say when asking the question
'What is left of truth?"
"Photographer Marc Montplaisir has been passionate about ambrotypes for years, photos produced with a complex photographic process dating from the 19th century that he sometimes uses to make unique portraits of well-known personalities."
It was therefore with enthusiasm that he discovered at the end of 2022 a series of alleged portraits of Londoners who had escaped his attention.
“I was confused for 10 minutes before realizing that it was done with
Midjourney,” underlines the professional, referring to a popular artificial intelligence program that allows you to generate photos from written instructions.
This image, generated by artificial intelligence, is part of a series of alleged portraits of Londoners released in 2022.
“I was half amazed, half terrified,” notes Mr. Montplaisir, who himself subsequently experimented with the program to make his own “artificial” ambrotypes.
Mr. Montplaisir, who does advertising photography, also practiced generating polished images with artificial intelligence, notably a flamboyant young couple of travelers emerging from a plane.
See both pictures below.
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Results again comparable to those he could obtain by carrying out a real photography session, much more expensive, with models and the required support staff.
Advertising agencies are divided on the advisability of using the technology, says Mr. Montplaisir, who finds it “very anxiety-inducing” to see that artificial intelligence could deprive him of part of his livelihood.
The neophyte will have even more difficulty seeing clearly in the predicted deluge of images of all kinds, which risks having significant consequences on the way in which people obtain information and construct their vision of the world.
Serge Cabana, lecturer in communications at the University of Sherbrooke, notes that "in the future no one will be able to look at a photo without wondering if it is real or fabricated."
The same dynamic is also likely to apply to audio recordings and even videos as the technology becomes more refined, a process that is already well advanced.
It is an important collective landmark that is being lost. And when we lose our collective bearings, we also lose our ability to talk to each other.
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A long erosion
Questions relating to “post-truth” or “the erosion of truth” – a term put forward in particular by the RAND Corporation in a long study published in 2018 – are not new.
The organization was then alarmed by a shift in political and civic discourse favoring “personal opinion and attitudes” rather than the analysis of “facts and data”.
In a work published in 2019 entitled The Death of Truth , author Michiko Kakutani, former literary critic for the New York Times , recounted comments in this vein by the former president of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, who disputed the idea that crime was declining in the country despite clear statistics on the subject.
“As a political candidate, I prefer to base myself on what people feel and I will let you deal with the theoreticians,” declared the Republican politician to underline his contempt for numbers.
Ms. Kakutani identified in her work postmodernism as one of the important original causes of this evolution.
By asserting that knowledge was "filtered through the prism of class, race, gender, and other variables," proponents of this approach rejected the possibility of an objective reality by substituting the idea of subjectivity.
“Postmodernity took 50 years to penetrate the collective consciousness,” notes Serge Cabana, who sees its effect in the loss of authority of traditionally central institutions such as the media and universities.
“Today, everyone has the right to their opinion. The opinion of a person in the street who talks about cosmology is almost as important as that of Hubert Reeves,” he quips.
Social networks, which facilitate the dissemination of information or opinions by anyone with access to the Internet, have played an “accelerating” role in the process.
Platforms like Facebook,
The production of traditional media, weakened by changes in the advertising market, is struggling to reach a significant fraction of Internet users who claim to find their information online on sites of uncertain origin.
Scientists are not immune to this crisis of confidence either.
Criticism of public health researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic for their changing recommendations shows that many people do not understand how scientific knowledge is established and advances, notes Lilian Negura, professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences from the University of Ottawa.
“Science is not a religion,” notes the researcher, who is alarmed to note that people are less and less socially placed in the face of different opinions.
"The state of confusion in which many citizens find themselves grappling with a sea of information difficult to validate represents a golden opportunity for populist leaders who promise to pose as defenders of “the people” in the face of real or imagined threats. ".
“In times of uncertainty, a large proportion of citizens will find refuge in authority, in “law and order” and look for the “strong man” capable of reassuring them. Populism serves as a refuge from the complexity of the world,” writes Serge Cabana, lecturer in communications at the University of Sherbrooke.
Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism , noted that the ideal subject for an authoritarian regime "is not the convinced Nazi nor the convinced communist", but people for whom the difference between "fact and fiction" and "true and false " does not exist anymore.
Lilian Negura, from the University of Ottawa, recalls that access to the Internet initially brought great hopes in this area since it was thought that a sort of golden age would result from unlimited access to the information.
The elimination of the filter exercised in particular by the traditional media, framed by ethical rules, has favored an “infodemic” threatening democracy, notes the researcher, who sees populist leaders as “opportunists” capable, voluntarily or instinctively, “of 'instrumentalize reality'.
These are people who know how to manipulate public opinion.
“They are very confident in themselves,” emphasizes Lilian Negura, “and project this feeling of confidence in a way that is reassuring,” including for people who are likely to bear the brunt of their future decisions.
“If you look for logic in this process, you’re not going to find it,” the professor warns.
Social networks, which can make it possible to modulate the message sent to users according to their own characteristics, facilitate the exploitation of feelings of distress and anger aroused in particular by confusion or economic marginalization.
In a work entitled The Engineers of Chaos , author Giuliano da Empoli notes that a party or a skilled leader can succeed in getting elected by bringing together people of very varying profiles.
“In the new world, politics therefore becomes centrifugal. It is no longer a question of uniting voters around the lowest common denominator, but on the contrary of inflaming the passions of as many small groups as possible and then adding them up – even without their knowledge,” he writes.
"Adherence to a conspiracy theory, encouraged or not by a populist leader, often becomes an unconscious refuge from the upheavals of current events."
“It’s been around forever. But the problem has been amplified with the Internet and we can clearly see that it now has a dramatic impact on society,” underlines Lilian Negura, from the University of Ottawa.
As their trust in traditional institutions erodes, many people feel overwhelmed by the flow of information and the complexity of events and are searching for “coherence.”
Many find answers to their questions in “simplistic scenarios” which have the merit of being more easily accessible, for example, than in-depth scientific explanations, notes Mr. Negura.
Adherence to these theories often allows the individuals concerned to develop their self-esteem and gives them the impression of "knowing the truth" in concert with a select group of privileged individuals.
Contradictory narratives, even when based on facts, are dismissed as manipulative attempts to cover up the allegedly discovered conspiracy.
Mr. Negura points out that conspiracy theories often point the finger at a particular group to make them a scapegoat.
Adherents to the theory look for a culprit in otherness. It could be the elite or minorities like Jews, Muslims or racial minorities.
Conspiracy thinking is also often a buoy for people who have the impression of being the losers of economic and technological changes.
They trust “nothing and no one” and tend, says Mr. Negura, to rely on the recommendations of their loved ones to guide their choices, who are not necessarily better equipped to detect truth from falsehood.
"A climate scientist told essayist Michiko Kakutani a few years ago that questioning science was like “turning off the headlights” of your car while driving at night."
“We drive fast and people don't want to know what's coming,” he said.
Reversing the situation, by restoring primacy to reason rather than emotion and feeling in social debates, represents a difficult task, but not impossible in the eyes of the researchers interviewed by La Presse .
Pierre Trudel, professor of law at the University of Montreal, maintains that achieving this objective requires an overhaul of the way social networks operate.
The giants of Silicon Valley, who encourage polarization by reinforcing users' beliefs, even if it means feeding them videos with conspiratorial content, have "no interest", he says, in reviewing their ways since they thus maximize their income.
It is necessary, argues Mr. Trudel, to establish a form of external regulation making it possible in particular to ensure that the algorithms used do not have excessively negative effects for society.
The idea, he continues, is not to unduly restrict freedom of expression, but to avoid abuses, such as those of Cambridge Analytica.
The firm used the data of hundreds of thousands of users to send personalized messages designed to elicit an emotional response that could work in Donald Trump's favor during the 2016 US presidential campaign.
Serge Cabana, from the University of Sherbrooke, emphasizes that it is important to recreate the “dialogue spaces” that existed in society before social networks established themselves as a preferred communication tool.
“When I was young, my father went to adversarial meetings during the election campaign to listen to what the candidates had to say and ask questions. It’s a practice that has been lost,” observes the author.
Mr. Cabana is also alarmed that minority groups seeking equality may seek to restrict the scope of possible discussions by demanding censorship of works or expressions.
Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, emphasizes the importance of promoting civility, an essential tool in his eyes to enable constructive exchanges.
Today, political beliefs are so intertwined with identity that it becomes difficult to conceive of an exchange with someone of opposing beliefs.
The problem is more pronounced in the United States, who cites questions of gender identity or the war in Gaza as examples of major areas of friction.
“I advocate an approach of compassionate skepticism . You have to know how to be skeptical and ask questions while remaining open to the possibility of believing something else,” he explains.
Professor Lilian Negura notes that we also need, more generally, to look at economic insecurity and inequalities since they play an important role in the rise of conspiracy thinking.
“The middle class is the guarantor of social stability. If it becomes poorer, it becomes a significant source of polarization,” underlines the researcher.
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The problem might be amplified
when Saturn hits Neptune at the Aries Point. In itself, Saturn/Neptune is the combination for 'illness'. Tied to Poseidon, we get a formula for 'mental illness'. What is true or false or what is left of truth.
And PO=AR = SA/NE = UR/PL Here we can expect changes and transformations which start suddenly. Surprising, unexpected turnaround or development.
