Our sense of truth is under pressure: fake news, echo chambers and hallucinating language models are undermining well-founded, fact-based explanations. Yet this development is no accident. A look back at history shows that every new media technology has always transformed how truth emerges and what is deemed to be true – from language and writing, through the printing press and the internet, to artificial intelligence. AI no longer recognises facts or causal relationships, but calculates answers solely on the basis of statistical probabilities. This leads to errors and hallucinations – and yet its results are often more accurate than human explanations, for example in medicine, science or forecasting.
Mads Pankow’s ‘Media History of Truth’ situates us in a phase of transition – from a rule- and argument-based order to a society in which models, forecasts and correlations are beginning to determine our thinking and actions. Can we imagine a world without explainable truth, without formalised morality, without laws and rules? The machines can.
“Artificial intelligence shows that one can be right without knowing why. This is not a technical curiosity, but a challenge to our world view. When probabilities become more reliable than reasons and facts, a society that has hitherto sought to explain, justify and substantiate the truth begins to change. This shift cannot be prevented, but it can be shaped.”
Non-fiction
Mads Pankow, born in 1985, is a journalist who explores the social implications of digital technologies and artificial intelligence. He works at the intersection of media history, philosophy of technology and contemporary analysis, and from this perspective contributes to public debates on artificial intelligence, media transformation and social order. Pankow founded the magazine Die Epilog and hosts the podcast Mensch, Maschine!
