Artificially generated images open up new ethical issues. Since it is no longer easy to understand and discern the true from the false, we can adopt a consciously critical view or a nihilistic view. In the field of information, the criterion of visual truth has become abolished. Artificial images are “nontransparent,” subject to a potentially endless process of transformation; they are, moreover, replete with biases that make it difficult to understand the meaning of the image. The crisis of truth, the personalization of visual data, the enclosure into knowledge bubbles, machine learning systems, their conveyance and reception, question the very existence of visual information. The risk is the process of “defacticization” of reality, a loss of trust in the facts being told. This can lead to a kind of informational nihilism and the extinction of trust in “the other.” Therefore, it is necessary to reflect on an ethics that overcomes the devaluation of the meaning of today’s visual signs and allows them to be rehabilitated as bearers of informational, but also social, cultural, and anthropological meaning.
Images, Artificial Intelligence, and Informational Nihilism
Veronica Neri
2024-01-01
Abstract
Artificially generated images open up new ethical issues. Since it is no longer easy to understand and discern the true from the false, we can adopt a consciously critical view or a nihilistic view. In the field of information, the criterion of visual truth has become abolished. Artificial images are “nontransparent,” subject to a potentially endless process of transformation; they are, moreover, replete with biases that make it difficult to understand the meaning of the image. The crisis of truth, the personalization of visual data, the enclosure into knowledge bubbles, machine learning systems, their conveyance and reception, question the very existence of visual information. The risk is the process of “defacticization” of reality, a loss of trust in the facts being told. This can lead to a kind of informational nihilism and the extinction of trust in “the other.” Therefore, it is necessary to reflect on an ethics that overcomes the devaluation of the meaning of today’s visual signs and allows them to be rehabilitated as bearers of informational, but also social, cultural, and anthropological meaning.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
