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A ChatGPT prompt is shown on a device near a public school in Brooklyn, New York, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. New York City school officials started blocking this week the impressive but controversial writing tool that can generate paragraphs of human-like text. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

As a civilization, weve done a collectively poor job recognizing technology that is transformational. In hindsight, we shake our heads and wonder how we could have possibly overlooked the dawn of a new epoch. This being Silicon Valley, there will be another one coming along in six months.

The guy who dreamed up the wheel was probably dismissed as a nut. History is full of real whack jobs with names like Da Vinci, Newton and Copernicus. One such whack job, Douglas Engelebart, was the father of trivial things such as the mouse and the teleconference. He was Silicon Valleys own prophet without honor. He tried once to explain to me why we keep underestimating technologies that are truly revolutionary. It was as if were in a car, flying down a dark, twisty road. It keeps speeding up, he said, but the headlights arent reaching any further.

Today, were flying down a road thats going to take us to terrifying and beautiful places. Artificial intelligence isnt going to reshape tomorrow. Its disrupting the social order right now, faster than anyone, even its developers, can believe. AI has already weaponized the news and made us question everything we see or hear from the media. Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. Today the fake news isthe real news. We didnt used to have an entire branch of journalism devoted to separating the truth from the fabrications, but we do now.

At our own peril we fail to see that AI has the potential to make us redefine the very concepts of truth and reality. A few years ago, doctored photos were the province of those talented few who were preternaturally good at using Adobe Photoshop. I believe that were rapidly approaching the point where we have difficulty distinguishing reality from some sophomoric prank. The ability to fabricate truly heinous images that destroy peoples lives is now in the hands of anyone with access to a computer or a cell phone.

Its not a joke when that blurred reality kills somebody. If that hasnt happened already, its coming very soon. The judicial system is built on separating the true from the false. At this juncture all we have are questions about something very few people understand.

What will be considered admissible evidence when every single photo or video can be called into question? What definition of reasonable doubt will apply? What are the consequences when a criminal act is committed by a machine of its own volition? The person who becomes a forensic expert witness on AIs digital images will be thought to have the wisdom of Solomon and the power to decide what is real. Laws are based on our collective values, and the legal world is piteously behind on setting boundaries for AI, which does not have any ethics of its own. For the time being, it exists outside the law.

As always, pornography is one of the earliest fields to embrace new technology. Right now, somebody is creating a video that victimizes the president. Or the Pope. Or the 14-year-old girl across the street. Once any single image goes online, it becomes a million images that can never be erased. They will be floating around the internet like some kind of space debris.

The world-weary king got it right: There is nothing new under the sun. It was centuries ago that a new technology ushered in death on an incomprehensible scale. Beyond anyones control, it transformed every nation on the planet. Centuries of human ethics and laws have yet to rein in the power of a gun.

Today there is a nascent technology with the potential to change our reality, for better or worse. Can you see it?

David Plotnikoff began writing about digital culture in 1994.

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Opinion: AI will take us to terrifying and beautiful places. Are we ready? - Silicon Valley