The Lost Of Trust on Internet

2025-10-23

I remember when I was a teenager in Argentina, reading something like, "in the future, people will have access to the answer to any question that have an answer". I think It was Bill Gates who said that, but I was unable to find online any reference, so maybe I am the author.

In any case, in the 90's, we believed that the access to the sum of human knowledge will be universal, and perople will be able to learn watever they want.

Fast forward to 2025, I found myself saying something like "I saw it in internet, but I dont remember where, so it may not be true". Last time it happened was in the house of a friend, he was makingc cofee int the kitchen, I live in europe and most of the houses have electric stoves, and I read somewhere, that in certain country, where gas stoves were used, the cost of health for cooking indoors was very high, since it created a big number of pulmonar health problems and that, the place where humans were most exposed to CO2 emisions weren their homes.

He asked me "how do you know was true?"and since I didn't remember where I read it, I meant, the source, I answered with that since I didn't remembered where I read it, it may be fake.

We reached a point where not only text can be fake, but also images and videos. The era of the A.I. created trust issues on the content of our main source of information.

I celebrate that peole looks with suspicious eyes information from a random blog or twitter account or video, but we started doubthing in science and trusty sources of information. How many people is agains vaccines? How many people thinks that the earth is flat, the moonlanding was faked and the climate crysis is a hoax?

Political propaganda and conspiracy theories exists from pre interent times. But today there is no reliable proof that can settle an argument. Twitter account? Maybe fake or hacked. Image or video? maybe A.I Generated. Anything can be faked with ease.

I remember when I was living in Argentina, I tried to be a well informed citizen, in order to make well informed votes. So, in order to achieve a good level of information in the political and economical state of the country, I used to read 3 newspapers every Sunday.

And at some point I desisted. The time, effort and resources that one man needs to put in order to understand reality it was just too much.

In the overwhelming, never ending barrage of information our minds needs to handle, now we have A.I. generated video, which is a big problem. Maybe Stephen Hopkins doing a half pipe in wheel chair is clearly fake, but an israely soldier giving food to people in Gasa, not so much.

A.I. is already changing the way we see the world. And is not clear if its for good.