THE FUTURE OF TRUTH

In this lively account, entrepreneur, filmmaker, and Sustainable Media Center executive director Rosenbaum takes readers on a road trip through contemporary thinking on AI and truth. From anecdotes, lectures, blog posts, and interviews with both prominent and lesser-known scholars and cultural commentators, he assembles a curated collage of issues. Rosenbaum repeatedly notes that AI-moderated truths are slippery, especially when motivated by profit. His discussion of the GameStop meme stock saga is emblematic, noting that “Truth was whatever enough people decided it would be. Artificial intelligence doesn’t create this phenomenon—it perfects it.” The observation underscores the invocation of “alternative facts” by Kellyanne Conway, then-counselor to President Donald Trump. As Rosenbaum writes, “Human truth-making was always imperfect—influenced by bias, limited information, emotional responses. Machine systems introduce a different kind of distortion: a Truth so mathematically complex, so rapidly generated and validated, that it becomes incomprehensible to human perception.” AI’s algorithmic biases can distort the news, medical, insurance, employment, and many other fields. While the book offers numerous examples of AI’s ethical shortcomings, connecting the dots between anecdotes is less clear. Readers may wish for more scrutiny of who is building these systems and how power operates within major AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. Rosenbaum concludes, “The most urgent question…is not whether AI is inherently good or bad. Rather, it is whether the people and institutions developing, funding, and profiting from AI are willing to confront the profound ethical dilemmas that arise.” Although the book does not resolve these dilemmas or cover much new ground, it sketches a cautiously optimistic framework for disentangling truth, technology, and human responsibility.