The confident insanity of generative AI

 

A bit over 31 years ago, in October 1993, I was hiking the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I came across an injured park ranger, and helped him get back to his truck. However, because it was so long ago, I couldn’t remember the exact trail head he was parked at. It could have been Newfound Gap, or it could have been the Clingmans Dome (now Kuwohi) parking lot. So I did what most people my age do when looking for information, and I Googled it.

As is its wont these days, the AI pushed to the top of the page, and confidently proclaimed this disaster epic:

On October 30, 1993, a search and Rescue operation took place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park after a Cessna 421 aircraft carrying five people went missing. The missing plane had transmitted an emergency locator ping, prompting the search. A helicopter assisting the search crashed about a quarter mile from the top of Clingmans Dome on the Tennessee side. The helicopter’s rotors were ripped off during the crash, according to one witness. The search effort also involved part maintenance personnel assisting with traffic and cleanup. Ultimately, the Cessna 421 was found, and a later investigation attributed the crash to a fuel system malfunction.

 

This is a confidently told, gripping tale of a day in my actual life. The only problem is that it has nothing to do with my actual lived experience in that place on that day. It is gaslighting in the purest form.

October 30, 1993 was a quiet, cloudy day on and around Clingmans Dome. There was ice early and late, and the main range was in the clouds the whole time. As a result, there were no aircraft of any description operating. There were a few hardy tourists on the lookout tower, and an injured ranger, but that’s all.

 Disaster-free Clingmans Dome on October 30, 1993

And this is why AI is so insidious. There were only a handful of people in that place on that day. The vast majority of humanity has no idea that the AI is spinning fantasies to replace ordinary life with exciting tales of death and adventure. My entire generation has grown up thinking of the Internet as a place to find information, and the speed at which is has transformed into a digital hookah dispensing hallucinated nightmare scenarios from the ordinary days of our lives.

Of course, this AI description is far more alluring than “It was cold and cloudy all day.” In the battle for attention and advertising, it makes complete sense for the search page to return the most exciting tale it could concoct. But those of us who are old-fashioned enough to actually want reality need to retrain ourselves to not trust the modern internet.

FYI, an actual list of reported incidents in the Great Smoky National Park can be found here.