This cluster of technologies presage a 'post-reality politics', whereby rabbit holes and echo chambers not only allow but reward individuals and communities to curate their own realities. This poses special problems for liberal democracies as many of our political and social institutions are reliant on agreement around social facts. If those social facts become fractionated through the creation of mutually contradictory epistemic communities, basic political agreement is reduced and democracy itself may be at risk. Some political actors have publicly endorsed a strategy of 'flooding the zone with shit'; deliberately overwhelming people with so much crap that they can no longer separate information from disinformation. AI is the perfect force multiplier for this strategy. This paper sets out the problem of AI and post-reality politics in the context of 'flooding the political zone with shit', argues why this is specially problematic for liberal democratic people, and gestures towards ethical and political challenges with responding to this.
Speaker: Adam Henschke (Twente University)
