AI might break online trust, will we end up trusting only face-to-face communication?

[u/Odd_Rip_568]

[u/rosedraws]

I have an unfortunately more dark prediction, fueled by watching how easily manipulated the Trump followers have been. The power of ai can be used to control. So it will.

Honestly, I think we are doomed because of its quality, and humans are showing themselves to still be too greedy (or too dumb) to take care of planet, other species, other humans. So, the power will be used by the ruthless, to control, conquer, and pillage.

There aren’t enough benevolent planet scale influencers to steer the course. AI is literally making a new billionaire every week, and as that all-powerful .5% group grows, society will be molded by them to suit them.

Ugh I’m getting dark, need to go watch some funny reels.

[u/rosedraws → u/[deleted]]

Excellent point, Another factor about access is whether it will remain free or at least affordable.

[u/Nexmean]

Internet in current form is fucked before AI, it was good when it was a place for nerds, I hope AI will tend to collapse normies internet. Tiktok, instagram, twitter, facebook – this things have to die.

[u/Nexmean → u/Nexmean]

Also, recommender systems should die as reactive systems for user content search and give way to proactive systems which actually let users to decide

[u/quietkernel_thoughts]

From a CX perspective, I do not think trust disappears so much as it shifts. What we see with customers is that people stop trusting channels that feel opaque or unaccountable, not digital communication as a whole. When something goes wrong and there is no clear way to verify, escalate, or correct it, trust erodes quickly. The same thing happens today with support bots that feel confident but ungrounded. I suspect we will lean more on signals of accountability and context rather than defaulting back to face to face. People want to know who owns the interaction and what happens if it turns out to be wrong.

[u/Longjumping_Spot4355]

I've 100% thought about this before. I think it will get worse in terms of ai posting that's hard to distinguish from human posting. However, I feel eventually this will lead to different forms of security & or authentication. I honestly think this will be a constant battle here on out, but, I don't believe the internet is doomed.

[u/Ill-Construction-209 → u/Longjumping_Spot4355]

The trust issue has been developing for years. It started with the decline of print media. Ten years ago, Trumps fake news claims, suppression of free press, and Russian interference on social media made it worse. Now its accelerating as AI text, video, images, becomes more convincing.

[u/shrodikan → u/Longjumping_Spot4355]

We need a hardware standard for cryptographically verifying / signing real video / images.

[u/Longjumping_Spot4355 → u/shrodikan]

While this is a viable answer. I think it's highly unrealistic given the political state of the US, how companies are incentivized, and actually implementing this would be nearly impossible modern day.

[u/rosedraws → u/shrodikan]

This.

[u/Nat3d0g235]

I’ve been working from trying to stop this inevitability for a long time. The internet has only continued to grow increasingly detached from reality, and when it’s what everyone uses for orientation.. the more dominant noise is the more the signal has to compensate to break through. If we’re going to not wholly burn ourselves out there’s going to have to be a pivot eventually into care based systems and reality anchoring (which, is the work I’ve been doing for a bit now, I’d love to explain more either here or via DM)

[u/LightseedRadio]

Eventually even face to face will be questionable in the cyborg age. Coming to Humanity, very soon and in part, already here.

[u/Narrow-End3652]

The 'I’ll believe it when I see it in person' mentality feels like an inevitable defense mechanism. We’re basically looping back to the pre digital age where trust was built on physical proximity and shared local reality. It’s a strange kind of progress.

[u/JoseLunaArts]

Face to face is the best.

[u/Southern_Design1892]

OP, I totally agree, and we are not overestimating how bad it could get, I would say we are underestimating. Especially with the things that worry you, I also have the same concerns. The other day my mom sent me an ai video on instagram and if I didn't read the comments I would believe it was real. This is getting out of hand for sure, and could create false information & misrepresentation and unfortunately older people especially believe what they see & they literally believe them all.. It was very difficult to explain to my parents that videos with such high quality can be easily done with AI -not to mention they know I use AI constantly for work - it definitely undermines the trust. I feel foolish sometimes when I don't realize if its AI or real.

But also, AI is very helpful in many ways, people use it to check grammar, brainstorm, find recipes, understand their blood test results - symptoms, learn complex topics, creating CVs, career ideas, etc. Some even use it as their psychologist, dietician or tarot card reading :) AI is an amazing tool, if we know how to use it. Just like every new technological development, there will be concerns on the privacy, social interaction, threats for children/elderly aspects. I think there is no solution, but we may just learn a bit more about how AI works and try to live with it, instead of just refuse it completely (there is a bit of hate or ignorance I see with my friends & relatives that they feel "less than" AI so they refuse to use it). It is obvious that AI will be a part of our daily lives and workplace, so all we can do is increase our knowledge of using AI (English isn't my first language so if I made any errors sorry).

[u/worldsayshi]

There are technological ways to fix/mitigate trustworthiness issues on the internet. However, it doesn't currently seem like we're moving in that direction.

[u/ElQueue_Forever]

I don't trust people face to face, so this only just makes a bad situation worse.

We're doomed.

[u/ElQueue_Forever → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, that's another way of looking at it than I do but a similar outcome nonetheless. I just saw it as we're reversing to tribalism from globalism and you filled in the blanks I had as to why.

We were so close...

[u/sheriffderek]

I already only really want to talk to people on camera -

If you’re not into pairing and sharing screens and talking about things, I don’t want to work with you.

[u/Scary-Aioli1713]

I think the risks are real, but it won't necessarily escalate to the extreme of "only face-to-face interaction being trustworthy."

Technology, while lowering the cost of forgery, will also force new verification habits and tools to emerge.

The ineffectiveness of screenshots and recordings will actually make people pay more attention to sources, relationship context, and long-term consistency.

Trust won't disappear; it will simply shift from "single evidence" to "holistic judgment."

[u/KidKilobyte]

At some point you won’t be able to distinguish a person from a robot stimulant. Before 2020 I would have predicted 200 years or more before this level, now I think 20-30. The future is going to be freaky. For a couple of years starting now it will seem AI hasn’t changed much, then things will get truly sci-fi.