I wanted to open a discussion and note the importance of adding good information to the Internet in the age of AI.
In the course of discussing science and religion with Google Gemini search, I noticed that Biologos was pulled up frequently as a source. This demonstrates the positive value of what has already been done by the contributors to this website. We should keep in mind that since people often listen to and trust what AI says, and what AI says is influenced by what we write, so it is now more important than ever to generate information that points people to the truth.
While many people may not read old forum post’s, AI does, and it will share their content with random questioners when the context of a conversation matches the topic.
To me that suggests the possibility of a circular feedback loop. I guess fact checking is the friction which can keep this from blowing things up. He he… non-linear chaos theory and the butterfly effect which can turn minor speculations into great storms.
I watch the little self-dialogue thing it does sometimes.
When I do ask for sources, it always reminds me that it cannot just go look at the web. OTOH the amount of material it has access to from its “training” is immense; it can cite our local city regulations and codes and knows the proper legal forms for building ermits and stuff!
AI needs to be influenced by some ethics and quality control. I needed to locate a particular reference on paleontology and entered the title in a Google search. It popped up an offer to cheat on my geometry homework. Besides the lack of relevance to my search and the negative impression given by offering to the professor how to cheat, the example of how Google could solve your most difficult homework problems for you was finding the third angle of a right triangle. If you can’t subtract 54 from 90 on your own, you need better help than AI.
I’m not studying geometry. I entered a search for the title of an article about paleontology and got that. Last time I had homework involving triangle angles (as opposed to grading or teaching such) was about 1990.