Resisting the chaos machine

On AI-content, social manipulation, and making different choices about what we reshare online

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

“They’re manipulating you!”

I wanted to yell these words from the rooftop as I swiped through my friend’s Instagram story. She’d shared a reel featuring a woman supposedly yelling at federal immigration officers from her Minneapolis garage. While the video was clearly evocative, it was also clearly generated by artificial intelligence. The movements were unnatural; the immigration agents were standing awkwardly still—like robots, not like people—and the way the camera panned back and forth looked exactly like a series of other artificially-generated videos I’d seen posted online.

Great, I thought to myself. Not only do we have the difficult realities of immigration enforcement to contend with, but now we have truly fake news in the mix. It’s messing with our emotions, stoking outrage, and feeding the chaos machine.

I went back-and-forth about whether or not to tell my friend that she was sharing artificially-generated content with her fifteen thousand followers. She’d reposted from a much larger account, a supposed news outlet, that perhaps hadn’t adequately vetted the information. The outrage churn was in full swing and I felt powerless to do anything about it. I was annoyed, not with her, but with the enterprise that makes such propaganda possible. I resolved to let it go.

Fast-forward two days, and another dear friend, a person I respect and admire, had also shared a video. This one featured a Black police officer, supposedly in New York City, shouting at a federal immigration officer, loudly proclaiming that the federal officers had no place in his city. The comment thread was popping, full of NYC residents pumping up this officer with statements like, “That’s my city!,” and “Let’s go!”

Unfortunately, however, this video was also generated by artificial-intelligence. Not only were the federal agents standing awkwardly still and failing to move in ways that human bodies typically do, but if you looked closely at the NY police officer’s arm badge, the text wasn’t in English; the alphabet featured some Cyrillic text.

The icing on the cake for this video is that I later saw the exact same one, featuring an NY police officer saying the exact same script, wearing the exact same uniform, with the exact same awkwardly-standing immigration officers, with one exception: the NYPD officer was Latino, and not Black.

The Instagram page churning out these fake videos of police officers, baristas, and clergy “resisting” immigration officers has over three-hundred thousand followers. Is this a bot page or a real person? I have no idea. Are the followers real or bot-generated? I have no idea.

What I do know is the three videos I’ve described here (the woman, the Black police officer, and the Latino police officer) were all shared and reposted by my actual friends and peers. The videos may not have featured living humans, but they were shared and amplified by living humans as if these scenarios really happened. The information comprising this content may have been artificial, but their impact on actual people—on our minds, our souls, and our actions, was very much real.

Concerning, right? What are we to do?

I’m bothered by all this on multiple levels. I’m annoyed by the fact that there’s no regulation or accountability for those who create and disseminate this artificially- generated content. I understand that it’s a relatively new technology and that it takes time to create infrastructure, policy, and ethical guidelines related to how we use technology in the world. For example, Instagram has existed for years and we’re just now getting around to common sense legislation that protects children and minors on social media. I understand it takes time, and unfortunately social and political pressure, to get corporations to do the right thing. But even still, I’m distressed by all the chaos, harm, and manipulation that will unfold while we wait for such pressure to build and for these needed changes to arrive.

I’m also saddened by the fact that we have so few resources, as social media users, to discern when we’re being duped by technology. I’ve only just begun cultivating an eye for this sort of thing. A few months ago, I stumbled upon a video in which an interviewer asked a group of young people if they could tell the difference between a real video and an AI-generated video. My mind was blown by their responses, and my own, as we all failed to tell the difference between the artificial and the real, over and over again. I am by no means immune to being manipulated by content created by artificial intelligence, so I’m doing my best to pay attention, to ask questions, and to take nothing at face value. I hate that it’s come to this place where I can’t trust my own eyes, or even my own reactions, but it seems to be par for the course where social media and online engagement is concerned.

I’m also aware, and disheartened, by the fact that some people are okay with spreading artificial political fodder if it aligns with their worldview. In fact, for some, this is exactly how they think we ought to be using AI—to tell whatever story gets people worked up enough to do their political bidding. While I’m assuming my friends reshared fake content unknowingly, I’m willing to bet there are many who reshare AI-generated political content knowingly because they want to convey a particular worldview and because they want to manipulate the emotions of others. Truth ceases to matter in a political environment where the primary objective is to win at all costs.

I find myself asking, again, what are we to do?

Our options are few. We cast our votes and we hope for the best, but the machine itself—the one harvesting and perhaps exploiting our attention, our emotions, our psychology, and even our compassion—is larger than all of us. We have very little influence here. It’s important to recognize our limitations because it focuses our energy and helps us to right-size our responses. We cannot do everything. We cannot fix it all, but we can make some choices about the little lives we lead as the chaos machine grinds onward.

We can resist manipulation.

When we see news stories and videos pop-up on our feeds, we can ask questions, like Is this vetted? Where did this come from? Who wants me to believe this. Why might they want me to believe it? Even if the content does align with our own political values, we still have a responsibility to be good stewards of the information we encounter and share with others.

In the wake of the 5-year old boy, Liam Ramos, being detained by immigration officers, the internet went haywire. Of course, the story was tragic and scary in its own right, and I’m grateful for the work many have done to ensure his safety and wellbeing. However, in the onslaught of information and reporting, I read one piece where an author stated that he was “…pulled from his mother’s arms,” which is horrifying and worthy of condemnation, if it were true. But it wasn’t. He was not pulled from his mother’s arms.¹

While this detail may seem silly or unimportant, in the grand scheme of things, when media outlets traffic in misinformation and disinformation, it’s more important than ever that we ordinary people remain rooted in reality, even as we advocate for our values on the social and political stage. We must resist being manipulated and we must resist the highly-rewarded temptation to manipulate others through what we share online.

We can stop feeding the machine.

We can refuse to feed the chaos with our input, our reshares, and our hot takes. We can simply stop posting, and if the grace to do so finds you, to leave these platforms altogether.

I fail at this all the time. Staying quiet is not easy. I’ve felt the weight of the guilt that comes with not posting when something horrible is happening. I’ve sat with the fear that I’m complicit in said horrible things because I haven’t shared about it on my Instagram feed. And honestly, if whether or not I post online is the measure of my goodness, my civic engagement, or of my care for the marginalized, then sure, call me complicit.

But what I’m learning how to do, the muscle I’m hoping and praying to build, is one in which I can withstand the short-term guilt that comes with my online silence because I’m aiming to live in service to values that will outlive the news cycle. It’s tough because my very soul has been formed by social media to believe that online engagement is the only engagement that matters. But with God’s help, I will extract myself from this engine and learn new ways of connecting, learning, and advocating in the world.

This option is available to all of us. It’s hard because the pressure to perform our virtue is real. The deep need to feel that we are the “good guys” on “the right side of history” is real. The pull to demonstrate our commitment to the marginalized is real. I get it and I’m in it with you. But I’m daily, now, reminding myself that this machine doesn’t care about me, or you, and it exists to make money off of our outrage, grief, and compassion. The sooner we opt-out of it, the better off we’ll be.

We can tend to our inner lives.

In the midst of January’s uprisings in Minneapolis, I asked a priest, one I've learned a lot from, about how Orthodox Christians ought to respond in the face of state-sanctioned violence. Given my upbringing as an American, Protestant, evangelical woman, revolution and resistance run in my veins. But as a new Orthodox Christian, one seeking to be formed no longer by the patterns of American culture but by the patterns of the ancient, traditional Christian church, I’m learning another way to be in the world. I had to seek advice on this.

The priest’s response was both predictable and challenging. Predictable because he called me back to the daily practices of Orthodox Christians around the world. Challenging because its a life wholly lacking in the building of social and political power.

He told me to keep the church’s fasts. He told me to pray. He told me to give alms. He told me to live a life of repentance. He said it is through these things that Christ will heal and transform me, and in so doing, make it possible that Christ might work through me to heal and transform the world.

It’s counter to nearly everything we’ve been taught, especially in American life, to embrace our limits and to believe in the sufficiency of one simple, quiet life lived in devotion to God above all else. We fear that if we are not doing more, being more, pushing more for change in the political realm then we are complicit, we are failures, and that we are the enemies of progress. In a sense, this may be true. But what I found in the priest’s offering here was an invitation not to look away or avoid the harmful and harsh realities of life, but to instead take up the rigorous, daily work of partnering with God to heal those impulses in my own soul that create harm and harshness in the world around me.

I hold these things in tension. I pray for wisdom. I stumble through keeping the fasts. I’m learning to unclinch my fists in hopes of practicing generosity. Are these things enough? I don’t know. I’m learning to trust God.

We are not powerless in the face of the chaos machine. We do have choices. Our choices may feel small in the face of artificial intelligence, tech overlords, political pundits, and shameless billionaire elites. But we can resist manipulation. We can pull back from feeding the machine itself. We can tend to our inner lives with faithfulness and humility, all in hopes of becoming agents of blessing, healing, and lasting change.

Thank you for reading, and for leaning into these tensions alongside me. Please share your thoughts, ideas, and opinions below. I’d love to hear from you.

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1. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mother-5-year-old-taken-ice-immigration-agents-use-son-bait-rcna256729