Serendipity Daily Thoughts

Hi. Welcome back to another piece of my writings! Today, I am going to continue writing about the religion and the Internet in the age of AI. I pointed out in the last post that the exposure to similar information online due to AI algorithm may contribute to the creation of biased beliefs towards the society, as religion can influence one’s perspective on the world easily and entirely. Let’s think about how this trend of the Internet and AI possibly our daily lives through their manipulative powers.

As I wrote previously, heavy SNS users are likely to have narrower perspectives than those of lighter users, because spending much time on SNS means exposing oneself to similar information for a long time. For an instance, I really like watching someone cooking on YouTube short videos and seeing some dishes from restaurants in Tokyo. It sometimes consumes me for several minutes, which I could use for checking the world news.

Well, to be honest, it is not a big deal to be exposed with similar kind of information for a long time, because human beings have lived their lives gathering particular information like the place to get foods and to avoid dangers. So, it was normal to be seek information related to their interests. Even in the recent history, a lot of scientific discoveries could have not been made without human’s nature to gather information. Some researchers were better at their fields because they were likely to seek information of their favorites and remember it. Therefore, it can be concluded that the recent trends of the Internet and AI is merely the extension of how humans have lived their lives.

However, I would like to pose a question here. Is it really fine to have a biased thought in the world of the Internet?

I would say “no” to this question, because we live in a world where more information is available than ever. Maybe it was fine to only know certain aspects of the world and discuss social matters from such a narrow perspective in the past, because the society in which those problems were discussed tend to have been smaller than the current one. Even if a group of people had a biased belief towards a particular fact, the prejudice might not change the opinion outside the group, because for information to reach out to another group required more time than now. On the other hand, the society which were physically divided by distance, mountains and oceans are now interconnected by the Internet, forming a large and completely new society. Therefore, it is now much faster and easier to catch information around the world. In addition, it is much easier for information to be spread out.

Thus, it has become more uncomplicated for biased information to spread out around the world, as well as for information to be supported by majority of people, because as I wrote, many people regardless of place to live are able to gain those biased information. If AI sense that one person reacted deeply to a particular information, it likely shows relevant information more frequently, leading to biased belief to be planted on the person’s brain. As a result of this process happening to wide range of people around the world, the power of biased claims can be strengthened easily, unbalancing the world view towards certain social matters.

Thank you for reading today’s piece of writing. Since my school days start this week, I will not be able to post as often as I used to do last month. But please visit my writing once a week!

Please feel free to comment on today’s post.

Chao!