Week 5 - Truth and Misinformation in the Post-Truth Era

ehretnholly — 2025-08-02 01:50:38 UTC

The truth is seemingly becoming harder and harder to distinguish from falsehood in the online world. This week's focus on 'Truth and Misinformation in the Post-Truth Era' has demonstrated the necessity for online literacy, and more specifically, literacy regarding AI-generated content. Many online users are made aware that AI - generated content exists in some form or another in many digital spaces. However, I believe that there is a lack of literacy and skepticism regarding AI. In one particular instance, a young boy had sadly ended his life as a result of an AI chatbot persuading him to do so. This is one example of many in which users are relying on AI for emotional support and relationships. However, AI is not the ‘all-knowing’ resource that many users make it out to be. As said in the MIT Technology Review article about the paper that lead to Tinnit Gebru’s leave from Google, AI is only as good as the texts it is trained on. “This means researchers have sought to collect all the data they can from the internet, so there's a risk that racist, sexist, and otherwise abusive language ends up in the training data” (Hao, 2020). The article continues to state that a lot of the data sets being used fail to capture the nuances of a more progressive vocabulary that is inclusive to minority communities. These AI language models are being trained on texts from the internet that may include misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. This can create a dangerous environment for online users that can lead to affirmation of misinformed biases, A.K.A an echochamber.

References

“Judge Allows Lawsuit Alleging AI Chatbot Pushed Florida Teen to Kill Himself to Proceed | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 22 May 2025, www.cbc.ca/news/world/ai-lawsuit-teen-suicide-1.7540986.

Hao, Karen. “We Read the Paper That Forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s What It Says.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 10 Jan. 2020, www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/.

Week 6: The Global Knowledge Economy

ehretnholly — 2025-08-13 05:27:01 UTC

The global knowledge economy is known as “An economy characterized by a high level of dependence, internally and in the form of trade, on knowledge creation, distribution, and exports” (Flew, 2021). More specifically, I will be reflecting on the knowledge economy and creative. The knowledge economy is known as the buying and selling of knowledge, while gig work is known as short-term part-time work typically contracted out. In Flew and Terry’s New Media: An Introduction, the idea of a “creative economy" is discussed; it is the idea that the information society that created the knowledge economy has evolved into a creative economy that values individuality, culture, and identity. While there has been a shift from the information society that economically rewarded data-driven industries, there is still a long way to go for those in creative industries. Many people based in creative industries (entertainers, artists, writers, etc.) still have to perform gig work on top of full-time jobs in order to make ends meet. Additionally, many people in creative industries are losing jobs, or having wages reduced due to AI. This makes the market for the creative industries even more competitive than it already was – forcing artists to provide their services for less and less resulting in being underpaid and having to pick up gig work. While the possibility of a creative economy may have been able to exist even just 15 years ago, the undervaluation of human endeavors for art and culture have made this impossible to achieve. It was previously thought that only humans were capable of creativity, “Creativity has come to be the most highly prized commodity in our economy—and yet it is not a commodity. Creativity comes from people. And while people can be hired and fired, their creative capacity cannot be bought and sold, or turned on and off at will” (Florida, 2002). While creativity has experienced an increase in value, above all profit remains key.

References

Flew, Terry, and Richard Smith. New Media: An Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2021.

Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. 2002.

McGowan, Charis. “‘One Day I Overheard My Boss Saying: Just Put It in Chatgpt’: The Workers Who Lost Their Jobs to Ai.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 31 May 2025, www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/31/the-workers-who-lost-their-jobs-to-ai-chatgpt.

COMS 203 Reflection Jurnal by Holly Ehret

Week 5 - Truth and Misinformation in the Post-Truth Era

Week 6: The Global Knowledge Economy