The Fragility of Single Source Facts

There are key social movements in American history which play a role in defining American identity. The Civil Rights Movement and labor movements in America collectively redefined America by championing the principles of equality, justice, and workers' rights, thus reshaping the nation's understanding of democracy and the pursuit of social and economic justice in order to more accurately pursue the ideals penned out in the Declaration of Independence. These movements are some of America's greatest moments. But they are only effective while they oppose some greater minority evil (upper class, racism). If the movements are opposed to a majority "normal" citizens (working class, etc) they are defined as the evil ones (KKK, Jan 6). So the defining factor of success for these imperative drivers of democracy is the amount of support they get from their fellow citizens (nothing is going to change if everyone hates what they're doing).

I posit that while in today's political landscape, movements such as these are critical, and are in more danger than ever.

Movements gain traction and support by the common people by common people knowing about them. The civil rights movement advanced their ideals by staging peaceful demonstrations, attracting the attention of the press, and through that a large enough audience to enact real change in the highest levels of government.

But methods of communication have changed significantly since the days of strictly print journalism. According the the Pew Research Center, 50% of adults in the US get news from social media ('often' or 'regularly'). It's already established how susceptible social media is to mis and dis information, and how its spread is often accelerated through social media algorithms. It's now easier than ever before for a few people or companies to absolutely control the flow of information.

This can be used to change opinion and momentum against the movements that would displace those few people or companies from power. Hard right conservatives can push ads and talking points that push a certain narrative. Companies can push that they're not damaging to the public. Politicians can pay groups to discourage or disrupt stories which cover a scandal.

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, the use of generative AI to find information has exploded. The search engine market has embraced it, with integrations of LLMs in every almost major search engine. Search engines specifically use LLMs in order to provide quick answers to common questions.

As the public adopts methods such as LLMs which provide comprehensive answers for largely any question a user would ask online the chance that internet users get their information from an array of sources diminishes. Instead of searching for an answer among various websites, people will use an LLM to get an answer. This introduces a single point of failure. Users (often without thinking) put all of their faith into the maker of the LLM, without consulting other sources.

This effect is compounded by the fact that in the AI race, new AI technologies are rushed out as fast as possible as competitors try to make a name for themselves as the most advanced AI company. Also, there are only a few companies which are able to compete with another, which forces users to choose between just a few LLMs, compounding the effect further.

Welcome to the age of single source facts.

Imagine this scenario. A popular AI company "ConvoLLM" trains and manages enterprise-grade LLMs. As they're spending thousands of hours training their model a hacker breaks into their system and inputs training data which alters the facts of history, making their home country seem more persecuted and erase it's war crimes. Or, a large company pays ConvoLLM to make their products seem better and appear before their competitors. This is difficult to detect without actually asking the questions which would get those answers and recognizing that they are false.

Disinformation is a part of the internet, and as internet users adapt to using a single source of information for getting facts, our information sources will be more susceptible to disinformation as a collection of sources are melded into one. It is ultimately up to all of us to recognize the untameability of the internet and recognize that everything on it is a source to be vetted, not automatically trusted information.