{"id":8857,"date":"2024-06-09T01:35:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T00:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/2024\/06\/09\/why-we-trust-ai-despite-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect\/"},"modified":"2024-06-09T01:43:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T00:43:39","slug":"why-we-trust-ai-despite-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/2024\/06\/09\/why-we-trust-ai-despite-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Trust AI Despite the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who among us didn’t shake their head or belly with laughter when they read about the obviously incorrect answers or saw the pictures of Asian or black Wehrmacht soldiers<\/a> that generative AIs returned as a result?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How stupid can such an AI be?<\/em>many thought. But in the same breath, there is a curious reaction: the very same people – i.e. all of us – who had just smiled at the AI nonsense are happy to take the results of ChatGPT or Gemini at face value without doing much research. These answers must be right, it sounds so great, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does this paradox, which should be obvious to us, come about? This paradox even has a name, albeit a non-scientific one: it is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The popular author Michael Crichton named this effect after his physicist friend Murray Gell-Mann<\/a>, who had noticed how newspaper readers, for example, after studying an erroneous article on a subject in which they themselves are very knowledgeable, just shake their heads and find the reporting on it distorted, erroneous and lacking in understanding. However, if they then turn the page and read an article on another topic in which they themselves have little knowledge, they trust the information in this article almost without reservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the words of Michael Crichton, who first introduced this effect in a speech in 2002, it is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well.
In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward \u2014 reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus<\/strong>, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all<\/strong><\/em>. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With AI we do not turn the page, the amnesia occurs with the next prompt. And it is somehow understandable. It’s really tedious and time-consuming to scrutinize every statement made by the AI, investigate every detail and remain suspicious. What’s more, AI tends to give its answers with great authority. What she says just sounds so good and is delivered with such confidence that it doesn’t even occur to you to remain skeptical. And it happens to the best of us: journalists, lawyers and bloggers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who among us didn’t shake their head or belly with laughter when they read about the obviously incorrect answers or saw the pictures of Asian or black Wehrmacht soldiers that generative AIs returned as a result? How stupid can such … Continue reading Why We Trust AI Despite the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8770504,"featured_media":8854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[694240470,694240486,694240634],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"category-behavioral-science","9":"category-naturliche-intelligenz-en","11":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/technophilosoph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/DALL%C2%B7E-2024-06-08-17.27.34-An-illustration-depicting-the-Gell-Mann-Amnesia-Effect.-In-the-foreground-there-is-a-person-reading-a-newspaper-with-a-confused-expression.-Surroundi.png?fit=2000%2C1143&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72hdn-2iR","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8770504"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8857"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8860,"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857\/revisions\/8860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technophilosoph.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}