Get Ready for the History Wars 2.0
In a recent post, Will ChatGPT help, hinder or destroy our Minds? we discussed the new technology of AI via ChatGBT and how that might, or might not, be an overall good thing.
In this post we provide evidence that AI will be revolutionary in the age of social media, where the “image” can be all. Society has now well and truely entered an age where a “picture is worth a thousand words.” And not only that, anyone hoping to make a well paid career out of the grahic arts, illustration and even cartoons had better think again about their chosen career: AI has just made all of us ‘graphic artists’ now as the follow figures will illustrate.
Example 1 - Indoctrinating the Next Generation
It is our prediction that AI will be used to create a mass of imagery that will further facilitate the indoctrination of Australian students in false-narratives such as how Australia was ‘taken by the British’ using ‘violent warfare.’
Using a few commands containing terms such as “aboriginal warriors” , “fighting British soldiers in red coats”, etc., the following image was produced in literally seconds. (Figure 1)
Australian students will soon be inundated with these false images, “euphemistically” called “truth-telling about our history”, which will be used to reinforce the new and false narrative that Aboriginal land was stolen in a violent frontier war.
Figure 1 - Concocted AI image used to promote the Frontier War narrative
Example 2 - The Systematic Violence of pre-colonial Aboriginal Societies
However, just like Gutenberg’s printing press would ultimately be responsible for producing good books as well as bad - from the Bible, Charles Dicken’s novels, Shakespeare’s plays to Gray’s Anatomy, despite also printing Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto - so too will AI be invaluable in producing truthful images of our history.
The following examples really bring home one negative aspect of pre-colonial (and modern?) Aboriginal culture and society - systemic violence (Figures 2,3 & 4).
Figure 2 - Prompted by specific commands AI produced this image for the regular killing of an Aboriginal man by other Aborigines.
Figure 3 - Creeping up on an Aboriginal camp to massacre Aborigines by other Aborigines, according to AI
Figure 4 - How AI sees an Aboriginal man walking away after hitting his Aboriginal wife with a club
Our society is entering a new - very dark or full of positive potential, or both - place with AI imagery that is so good it will be hard for any of us to separate truth from fiction. Welcome to 1984 in a Brave New World.
Hat-tip to Robert for the images
