AI will add to the info overwhelming us. Resisting the delusion that info equals truth, especially when it reinforces our biases, will get harder. Truth takes time, energy, money and individuals, nations and enterprise benefit when we invest in it.

I say this after watching MSNBC’s Ari Melber interview Yuval Noah Harari on his new book Nexus, among other things.

Here is the relevant snippet from the interview:

Transcript here

The key thing to realize about information is that information isn’t truth. Most information in the world is not truth because the truth is a very costly and rare kind of information. This kind of very naïve thinking that if we just flood the world with more and more information, the truth will float up. It won’t, it will sink to the bottom.

If you want to write a true story you need to do a lot of research, it takes time and energy, money. Whereas fiction and delusions and conspiracy theories – you just write whatever you want.

The truth also has another problem which is that it tends to be complicated because reality is complicated. Whereas fiction can be as simple as you would like it to be and people usually prefer simple theories, simple stories, over the complicated ones.

The last point is that the truth tends sometimes to be painful, to be unattractive.

Whether it’s the truth about me personally and my life and relationships or the truth about the history of a nation. There are often dark chapters there that we don’t want to acknowledge and with fiction you can make it as attractive, as pleasant as you would like it to be.

Because the truth is costly and complicated and sometimes painful, if we don’t invest in institutions, in mechanisms, to help the truth float up, then we will be flooded with junk information and fake news and conspiracy theories.

For me it’s not just about the personal truth and the truth about nations, as Yuval points out.

This also applies to business Truth’s

What do I mean? I mean businesses and the leaders and employees in them are equally prone to taking the easy route and spreading misinformation when the truth would be better.

Leaders and employees are just as likely to create fictional successes or stories. They would rather not put in the hard effort that creating real value requires.

For one effort costs money.

Then there is the pressure for results, by the quarter. Creating real value takes time.

What to do and stop doing

If we are ever to create anything of lasting value in the companies we lead or work in, we must do the work.

We must commit to our efforts to build something meaningful.

We must face our limitations and those of the products and services we build. We should be honest about them to customers and double down and work hard to improve them.

We must stop obfuscating with waffle and irrelevant, made-up information. Sound bites won’t do it.

Focusing on creating more content won’t help if it’s not based on truth. Adding to that with AI will make things worse. If it doesn’t have a human in the loop, sense checking it, it’s likely to replicate untruths.

Let’s not fall in the trap and make no mistake, it’s going to get harder not to.