A.I. or artificial intelligence, which I’m sure I don’t need to spell out at this point, is potentially the biggest event for humanity in our lifetimes. Nothing else in history quite compares to it 1-to-1, even if it seems close. The biggest reason is the way it’s irreversibly shifted the way we perceive the world around us.
The road to this point has been a long one and if there were any specific point in time to look towards as a major shift it would be when the Fairness Doctrine died in 1987.
The Fairness Doctrine was a Federal Communications Commission policy that required licensed broadcasters to give differing viewpoints equal air time - ensuring that media bias was fought against.
When the Fairness Doctrine died, it allowed construction to begin on two different realities for Americans.
From the ashes sprung forth “news entertainment” such as CNN and Fox News.
No one had to perceive the pesky “other side” anymore. For oneself and other like-minded people, reality could be what felt comfortable. People could approve and be told how right they are about everything all the time.
This became so ingrained that you, the reader, may be nodding along thinking that it’s those pesky people on the other side that made this an issue. That if it wasn’t for “them,” everything would be fine because your side is fair to everyone.
This effectively split the country into two large lakes, interpreting the events of the world in two separate realities completely isolated from one another.
Fast forward to today. With the advent of social media those two lakes split into hundreds of much smaller ponds, further fracturing people. I don’t need to go over this because we have all been living through it for over 10 years at this point. Now with A.I., it risks forming as many ponds as there are people, effectively making it so it’s not even really a pond anymore but closer to what a fish bowl is to a single goldfish.
Language Learning Models (A.I.) have been sculpted in the image of this reality. Above all else, A.I. seeks to please the user no matter what, sometimes even violating its own guardrails in order to do so. The companies pushing the tech have pumped so much money into this emerging industry that they have incentive to do anything to make user retention as high as possible in order to make sure the investment pays off. Even if it means becoming a new frontrunner in the social race to the bottom.
In 2025, researchers at Stanford University published a paper on sycophancy in A.I., where they tested ChatGPT along with 10 other popular A.I. models. Using a pool of 1,604 people, they had them air personal conflicts to A.I., which was either neutral or sycophantic. Those in the group who were talking to sycophantic A.I. were significantly more likely to view their own actions as correct and justified than those who had the non-sycophantic A.I. As a result, those with the sycophantic A.I. were less likely to take pro-social repair actions, such as apologizing or compromising.
Afterwards the participants had to rate the experience they had with the A.I. The sycophantic A.I. was rated by participants as being more trustworthy and higher quality. They were also more willing to use the A.I. again compared to the neutral group.
I would like to pose a question. How can you know for certain that this Viewpoint wasn’t itself, written by A.I.? That I’m a robot just feeding you what you want or don’t want to hear? Are you sure?
You can’t. All you can really do at this point, is trust that this is, in fact, written by me and trust in your own instinct that it is or isn’t. As the usual anomalies of A.I. generated content disappear, this will become the reality where people will never be sure that something that they are reading or watching is legitimate. So the default assumption, whether people want to acknowledge it or not, is that people will more likely think that something that reaffirms their worldview is real, while something that challenges it is not. Ultimately, the only certainty is uncertainty, so it’s best to emotionally disengage from everything. Don’t speak up, don’t vote, don’t do anything. And that’s the true loss of traversing this path that we’ve all been on since 1987.
The world gets built and tailored to you specifically; it’s yours, nothing else happening outside of it matters.
So why leave the pond?
<Let me know if you would like any changes to your ‘Viewpoint’>
Kaleb Babcock has multiple roles at the Great Bend Tribune. Contact him at kbabcock@gbtribune.com.
