The Trump of the 2020's in a CNN interview (adapted from interviews of the current Trump. All facts noted are for today):
Trump: NATO
was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country.
We’re not a rich country. We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money.
Interviewer:
[Picks up cell phone/supercomputer] Siri, how does the US's wealth per capita
rank? Siri: The United States ranks
number two in the world in per capita net financial assets. Number one is
Switzerland, but this is a country with less than 10 million in population.
Source: The OECD. Interviewer: Mr.
Trump, how can you say then that the US is no longer a rich country?
…
Trump: That’s
[South Korea] a wealthy country. They make the ships, they make the
televisions, they make the air conditioning. They make tremendous amounts of
products.... I think that we are not in the position that we used to be. I
think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country. And we’re a poor country
now. We’re a debtor nation.
Interviewer:
[turns to his cell phone] Siri, how does the US compare to South Korea in
wealth and GDP per capita? Siri: The
United States has 5.74 times the per capita net financial assets of South
Korea. It has 2.03 times the GDP per capita. Sources: The OECD and The World Bank. Interviewer: How can you say, then, Mr.
Trump, that the US is a poor country and South Korea is a wealthy one?
…
I've
said before journalists should work in pairs in interviews, debates, etc., with
an interviewer and a data person with a computer. The interviewer asks
questions, and the data person, hopefully someone very expert, checks any
facts and information in real time, and if there's a discrepancy he immediately
brings this up in the interview. The reply can be, this is expensive and cumbersome,
(although ridiculously worth it to society). But as Siri and Watson advance,
this will be no excuse at all. How much do journalists, and the organizations
they work for, really care about doing their jobs?
The 2030's
Trump
In the 2030's, AI may advance to the point where
people will commonly have very good, as I will call them, veracity apps, installed on their
computing devices. So, when the 2030's Trump is interviewed, or in a debate,
and he says something like, "South Korea is a rich country. We're a poor
country now.", you will see red bars on your screen indicating the level
of untruth, and scrolling across the bottom of the screen will be a comparison
of the net worth's and GDP's per capita of both countries, and the sources of
those figures.
Moreover, with a stream, as opposed to an old fashioned airwaves TV presentation, you can pause it anytime. So you can click to read, or hear, or view, the explanation for why the veracity AI just gave the politician four red bars. And then you can click, or say, continue, when you're done, and keep going with the interview. At the end, if you'd like, you can read, hear, view, a fact and source filled report from the veracity AI on all of its claimed untruths in that event.
And the journalist doing the questioning may be wearing glasses, or contact lenses, with a projected, or "heads up", view of information coming from the veracity app, so he can follow-up question on any untruths or misleading right away, in real time, and get a response.
If you follow my blog, you'll see that I have been
studying AI extensively, reading a great number of books and articles, some very
technical, from a wide variety of sources. I would say from this study that in
the 2030's there is a very substantial chance that veracity AI's will be quite
good, and quite common. Just look at how good Watson and Siri are already, and
how fast they're improving.
When in real time people see the lies, or misleading, of politicians in questioning, interviews, debates, their TV commercials, anywhere, with exact contradicting
facts and figures from standard respected sources, this will revolutionize
politics. The kinds and amounts of propaganda we see today will be considered from a past
dark age. It will be an amazing leap forward.
And there will be, surely, a variety of these
veracity AI programs from a number of respected sources, like the google of the
day, the Apple of the day, etc., with reputations worth many billions of dollars to
protect, for accuracy, objectivity, competence, and trustworthiness. And there
will also be open source versions. And meta versions, where the meta veracity AI
checks a number of respected veracity AI's and gives a composite of them, and
notes if any of those veracity AI's give a very different answer, as a check
for one of the veracity AI's becoming biased or compromised.
And these veracity AI's will not be just for
politics. Many, if not the great majority of people, won't choose a dentist, or
doctor, or mechanic, or plumber unless his equipment is compatible with their
veracity AI, sending all of the information from the equipment's readings; the
dental x-rays, the blood test results, the video images from the plumber's
endoscope, and so on, to your veracity AI service in the cloud.
If the dentist says you need major dental work
that it looks like you clearly don't, the red bars will go up. If he says you
need all of your silver fillings replaced because of a mercury risk, the
red bars will go up, and your veracity AI will show you top scientific
sources explaining how this is unscientific and well proven to be untrue, and
how this is often used as a way for dentists to profit from extensive unnecessary
work. And so on. And when the dentist gives the price estimate for his work,
the veracity AI can tell you how this compares to the average price for such
work in your area, and give a whole distribution, or histogram, if you'd like.
This could make scams in general far more
difficult, perhaps only very possible with the most tribal, and otherwise
non-analytical.
Veracity AIs can absolutely revolutionize markets
and society, and make the worlds markets far more efficient, and its societies much
smarter, richer, and better. But there's no reason to wait. Journalism easily can, and absolutely should, do so much more today.
