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AI won\u2019t just reshape work and markets, Joseph Stiglitz says it will quietly rot the information those systems depend on. As large language models (LLMs) scrape our sarcastic Reddit comments and loud marginal voices on extremist forums, the Nobel laureate warns of a world where everything looks more data\u2011driven, yet the underlying data is increasingly, well, \u201cgarbage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of AI, I think there are a couple of other deeper problems,\u201d the economist told Fortune. \u201cWe have not only a problem in the labor market \u2026 but there\u2019s another side of what I would call information externalities,\u201d which Stiglitz describes simply as garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).<\/p>\n
The risk isn\u2019t just lost jobs; it\u2019s a broken feedback loop between truth and the systems we use to interpret reality\u2014from prediction markets to financial models to political debate. In essence, AI is only as smart as the input it receives, and when it continues to scrape less-than-accurate information, the output becomes just as distorted as the information it absorbed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his view, today\u2019s models are built on a faulty bargain: They voraciously scrape journalism, research, and online chatter while undermining the very institutions that produce high\u2011quality knowledge in the first place. The result, he fears, is a world where people are driven by the online rhetoric they see perpetuated by AI\u2014think of the market downturn prompted by a Citrini Research paper publicizing \u201cghost GDP\u201d or Matt Shumer\u2019s viral AI doomsday essay\u2014and not one based in actual reality.<\/p>\n
AI is \u2018stealing information\u2019 from the sources it needs<\/p>\n
Stiglitz would like to thank you for reading this article, even if his starting point is blunt. \u201cAI is basically stealing information from legacy media,\u201d he said, \u201cand that means the legacy media doesn\u2019t have the resources or incentives to produce information.\u201d To be sure, some AI companies do pay for certain journalism. OpenAI, for example, has a content deal with Wall Street Journal owner News Corp.<\/p>\n
Still, Stiglitz said, AI has neither the interest nor capacity to produce new quality information. \u201cAnd the result of all this is that there is a real risk of a deterioration of the overall information ecosystem.\u201d <\/p>\n
If the best sources of information are slowly defunded while the cheapest forms\u2014like comment threads, partisan memes, and low\u2011effort content\u2014proliferate, the training data tilts toward whatever is most abundant and least expensive, meaning chatbots will overwhelmingly regurgitate what they take from forums online.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the first way AI\u2019s hunger for what\u2019s online can backfire: by cannibalizing the business models that sustain serious work and shifting the mix of what exists to be scraped in the first place.<\/p>\n
Garbage in, garbage out, at an industrial scale<\/p>\n
Stiglitz, who references the information ecosystem in his 2024 book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, referred back to the GIGO clich\u00e9. \u201cIf you are processing and disseminating garbage, all you get at the end is garbage\u2014garbage in, garbage out, GIGO.\u201d<\/p>\n
The phrase might be old, but Stiglitz says it\u2019s still fairly relevant. AI systems are superb at processing whatever we give them, but they are not nearly as skilled at distinguishing knowledge from noise. \u201cThere is a real risk that in spite of the potential for the new technologies to improve the information ecosystem in critical areas \u2026 we actually may wind up in a worse situation,\u201d he said. The more junk goes in\u2014unverified claims, conspiracies, Astroturf campaigns, low\u2011quality commentary\u2014the more polished junk comes out.<\/p>\n
He worries that users will mistake that polish for truth. \u201cThey\u2019ll think that they\u2019ve gotten highly processed information without realizing fully the extent to which all that they\u2019ve been doing is reprocessing garbage,\u201d he said. \u201cAI processing garbage isn\u2019t a substitute for a single good research paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
When anti\u2011vaxxers outweigh scientists<\/p>\n
Nowhere is that risk clearer than in the far-off corners of the internet where extreme viewpoints are often the loudest. Think of your stereotypical community message board on a certain topic. Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, users are more than welcome to voice their opinions on the latest political decision or cultural happening. As a result, these corners are areas where misinformation is more prolific\u2014and the science that debunks that misinformation receives little mention, if at all. Vaccines are a perfect case study, Stiglitz says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnti\u2011vaxxers are much more active on the internet than people who say that vaccines work,\u201d he said. Scientists run trials, publish a few dense papers, and move on. Conspiracy theorists flood forums and social platforms every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there may be many more articles on the anti- side than the one critical article that says, \u2018Here\u2019s the test of the vaccine, and it works \u2026 Here\u2019s the efficacy,\u2019\u201d Stiglitz explained. \u201cDo the AIs today have the ability to say that one article is all we need? They don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
For models trained on raw frequency and engagement, the loudest voices win. AI\u2019s hunger for more information can warp reality by pushing the passionate minority over the careful majority, especially in domains where the public good depends on trust in slow, methodical science.<\/p>\n
Prediction markets based on the lack of information<\/p>\n
In a 1980 paper with Sanford Grossman, Stiglitz argued that there\u2019s a paradox at the heart of efficient markets: If prices fully reflect all available information, then no one has an incentive to pay to collect that information, so the very information that makes markets \u201cefficient\u201d disappears.<\/p>\n
He says AI and modern prediction markets are replaying that story at a larger scale. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting you mentioned Grossman\u2011Stiglitz,\u201d he told Fortune, \u201cbecause I wrote a paper with one of my graduate students, Max Ventura, extending the Grossman\u2011Stiglitz to AI, and the result I described before about how we can worsen the information ecosystem was actually a reference to that extension.\u201d<\/p>\n
When \u201cyou don\u2019t force AI companies who are scraping the data from Fortune and from every other producer of media\u201d to pay for what they take, \u201cthey don\u2019t get the returns, and so the incentives to do the basic quality research that leads to a good information ecosystem is attenuated.\u201d Prediction markets and trading algorithms then lean on the outputs of those models, further decoupling their bets from any underlying investment in truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has undermined the incentives for producing high-quality information, increasing the ability to produce low-quality information, and therefore there\u2019s more garbage going in, and therefore more garbage coming out,\u201d he said. A system meant to aggregate knowledge ends up amplifying whatever is cheapest and most plentiful instead.<\/p>\n
AI as prop, not oracle<\/p>\n
Despite all this, Stiglitz doesn\u2019t think the answer is to ban or ignore AI. He uses it himself, and he\u2019s trying to teach his students how to do the same\u2014without confusing a slick answer for a solid argument.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to teach them to use AI as a research tool,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, you know, we\u2019re not walking away from AI. I use AI as part of my research. So it is an amazing research tool, but it\u2019s not a substitute for thinking, and it\u2019s not a substitute for analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can help you find sources, develop ideas,\u201d he added. \u201cBut in the end, you have to do the hard work.\u201d For him, the outputs of a model are \u201creally props for me to start thinking about things maybe slightly differently,\u201d not verdicts to be accepted unchanged.<\/p>\n
Still, he believes there must be some intervention on a governmental level to prevent the deterioration of information from worsening. \u201cIn the absence of government regulation,\u201d he warned, \u201cthere is at least a significant risk that we will wind up with a worse information ecosystem in a number of areas of concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Joseph #Stiglitz #warns #AIs #hunger #internet #comments #degrade #information #ecosystem<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AI won\u2019t just reshape work and markets, Joseph Stiglitz says it will quietly rot the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[1349,972,1537,1538,1540,1535,1539,1536,975,1534,314,372],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}