I recently read that phrase, confidently ignorant, and it stuck in my mind. It fits in with attitudes toward social media and artificial intelligence. How often do you or your kids do a search on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or whatever your favorite search engine is, and never click beyond the first page? Chances are that’s what you do, because that’s what 75 percent of searchers do.
So . . . if you wanted to direct people to believe a certain way, you (“you” being Google or Bing or another search engine) would put that information on the first page of the search returns and preferably near the top. Generally, people will check the returns, possibly click on two or three, and go away convinced they have found the truth in the matter on that first page—confidently ignorant! I encourage you to go back and read my blog post on the Search Engine Manipulation Effect.
Media Research Center found in the 2022 pre-election period “Google buried Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites. Ten of 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites (83%) appeared far lower (or did not appear at all) on page one of Google’s organic search results compared to their Senate Democratic Party opponents’ campaign websites.”
A common statement is, “Let’s just leave it to the experts.” Parents often feel they have justification in believing there is truth on the Internet and in textbooks. It’s easier in a life filled with mounting demands on their time. But not all that long ago who would have thought there would be pornography and guides to homosexual relations in a school’s library and curriculum? Society and sources of information have changed.
In almost all areas of learning in public schools today, teachers’ associations, school boards, and all too often, teachers in public/government schools want you to believe that you know nothing about the subjects being taught, so sit down and shut up. But a glance at the test scores confirms what the Business Insider said in 2018: the United States ranked 38th in math scores and 24th in science. How capable are the teachers of teaching reading, math, and science?
Nevertheless, someone decided in the “Countries with the Best Educational Systems – 2021 Best Countries Report” that the United States is in first place in education in the world. The top four rankings are 1. The United States, 2. The United Kingdom, 3. Germany, 4. Canada. Is the teaching in our schools truly that great and our kids really dumb, or are they not being taught reading, math, history, etc. and that first place ranking needs some looking into?
Here is an excerpt from the magazine Whistleblower, in an article by Denis Prager:
Given the opposing positions one encounters on almost every issue, how is one supposed to figure out which position is right, and which one may not only be wrong, but a lie?
In addition to obvious suggestions—such as finding individuals and institutions
whom you trust, studying both sides of issues, learning as much as possible and using common sense—I offered what may be the single most important indicator of who is more likely to be lying.
It is not a perfect indicator of who is telling the truth—there is no perfect indicator— but it comes close.
With rare exceptions, the party that calls for censorship is lying. People who tell the truth can deal with dissent and different opinions. In fact, truth-tellers welcome debate.
So if your kid’s teacher won’t permit a discussion of whether climate change is an imminent threat to humanity or not, or whether an LBGTQ+ lifestyle is immoral (we do still have moral values in the United States, don’t we?), then perhaps it is fair to consider whether the material being taught in that classroom is the truth or a bunch of lies. The Bible calls it “discernment.”
Let’s take a brief look at the climate change alarmists’ cry that if we don’t end the use of fossil fuels our world will end in eight or ten or twelve years. We were given the gift of testing their premise. During the COVID-19 pandemic cars were parked, airplanes landed, ships docked—and the aerosols from the burning of fossil fuels were significantly reduced. The air became cleaner. Well, I guess the alarmists were right, huh? No. The fact that those aerosols were not in our atmosphere blocking the sun caused our world temperature to rise!
I have to wonder if God didn’t give us fossil fuels to produce emissions to block some of the heat of the sun as the world grew more populated. Okay, that’s a bit facetious, but I wouldn’t put it past him.
Now let’s visit AI for just a moment. I just read an article in Scientific American that acknowledges AI will fairly often come back with a completely wrong answer. Here is a small excerpt (links have been omitted):
When I asked ChatGPT to name the editor in chief of Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German-language sister publication of Scientific American, the answer was, “I
have the latest information until 2021, and at that time Dr. Florian Freistetter was the editor-in-chief of Spektrum der Wissenschaft. However, it is possible that the information has changed since then.” This highlights one of the biggest drawbacks of current language-generating artificial intelligence programs: they “hallucinate.” While Spektrum der Wissenschaft features a lot of work by Freistetter, he was never a staff member—let alone editor in chief—of Spektrum der Wissenschaft. That’s why it is important to work on so-called explainable AI (XAI) models that can justify their answers—and thus become more transparent. (Emphasis mine.)
At least with Google and Bing you can choose which references provided to rely on. AI makes that choice for you, and unless you are familiar with the subject matter, you probably won’t know if you have truth or something far from the truth. This is presently an inherent problem with AI that is being worked on. The article will tell you about AtMan which may be a solution. Errors can also be programed into AI by those who do not want you to have either correct information or all/both sides of the answer to your questions.
I strongly urge you to read the article for this primary reason. You may not understand a lot of what is being said, but keep in mind that the way it describes how AI has to look at an image and decide if it is a dog or a cat or a bird is amazing. Then consider how we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God (Psalm 139:14); how marvelous are our minds. Praise God. He has given mankind the ability to develop computers and artificial intelligence, so use them, but always with discernment.