Writing for *City Journal*, Senior Fellow Scott W. Atlas notes that citizens who have lost trust in institutions are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to provide answers to the questions on their mind. AI outputs “can seem remarkably authoritative,” Atlas notes, but pose users a serious challenge: “Is the answer true, or is it just what the prevailing authorities currently believe to be true?” Atlas delves into the nature of truth and emphasizes that it does not mean simply what a consensus of experts asserts. “Scientific and intellectual history contains no shortage of views once regarded as settled that later required substantial revision,” he writes, adding that confident AI responses might obscure this reality. Truth, Atlas argues, “is discovered only after debate and proven by the critical analysis of evidence.” He concludes that we “should not mistake [AI’s] ability to summarize [existing] knowledge for an ability to tell us what is true.”
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Writing for *City Journal*, Senior Fellow Scott W. Atlas notes that citizens who have lost trust in institutions are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to provide answers to the questions on their mind. AI outputs “can seem remarkably authoritative,” Atlas notes, but pose users a serious challenge: “Is the answer true, or is it just what the prevailing authorities currently believe to be true?” Atlas delves into the nature of truth and emphasizes that it does not mean simply what a consensus of experts asserts. “Scientific and intellectual history contains no shortage of views once regarded as settled that later required substantial revision,” he writes, adding that confident AI responses might obscure this reality. Truth, Atlas argues, “is discovered only after debate and proven by the critical analysis of evidence.” He concludes that we “should not mistake [AI’s] ability to summarize [existing] knowledge for an ability to tell us what is true.”