Deepfakes, AI, and the Death of Critical Thinking: How Not to Get Duped

Nowadays, many say that artificial intelligence, or AI, is turning us into the dumbest generation. To me, it doesn’t seem that way. The real danger lies in our crisis of critical thinking. In the age of AI, everything can be easily duplicated. Even a blatant lie can feel exactly like the truth. This is precisely where personal judgment and critical thinking are needed the most. When machines become smarter than us, the only thing that will save us is our own decision-making ability.

Let’s start with an incident. In January 2024, a finance employee at a company in Hong Kong received a message from his CFO instructing him to transfer twenty-five million dollars. Suspicious, he requested a video call to confirm. Without any issue, the CFO joined the video call alongside other team members and explained step-by-step how to transfer the money. The employee was overjoyed because he had received instructions face-to-face over a video call. So, feeling completely assured, he transferred the money.

A few days later, he learned that everyone on that video call was a deepfake! Using various clips of the CFO from the internet, AI was used to replicate both the face and the voice. Now, among countless fake needles, we have to find the real one—because the fakes look identical to the original.

Behind the difficulty of finding this real needle lie five major distortions that obstruct our judgment.

The first is blindly trusting authority.

Many of you may have heard of the company Theranos. A young woman named Elizabeth Holmes claimed that her company could perform hundreds of medical tests with just a single drop of blood. From Silicon Valley investors to former Secretaries of State, people invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this company. Elizabeth spoke with immense confidence and kept the technology secret. Such prominent individuals were duped by her words because they were suffering from the halo effect and the fear of missing out (FOMO). Astonishingly, no one asked the simple question: how does the technology actually work? When the truth came out, it was revealed that the whole thing was a massive fraud. Therefore, when someone makes a grand claim, ask them: what real proof is needed to show that this is actually true?

The second reason confusing our judgment is clever marketing language, or “true lies.”

Companies don’t tell outright lies; they tell the truth in a way that fools us. For instance, when launching a phone, a company might say its battery lasts up to thirty-six hours. The word “up to” is the real trap. It doesn’t mean you will always get thirty-six hours of backup. When buying a car, you might hear that the price starts from thirty-seven thousand dollars. But once you add your preferred features, see where the price ends up! Whenever you hear such catchy phrasing, place a mental question mark beside it. Ask yourself, what does this actually mean? This will help you distinguish between empty rhetoric and reality.

The third reason is conforming with everyone else, or groupthink.

A famous psychological experiment showed that when a group of people is asked a simple question, if everyone else in the group intentionally gives the wrong answer, an average person will also give that wrong answer just to fit in with the group. We are afraid of standing out from others. We think that when so many people are saying something, it surely can’t be wrong. But if you look through history, thousands of people have walked the wrong path together based on rumors. Therefore, when you see everyone around you agreeing on a particular topic, find someone who opposes it.

The fourth distortion is handing over our entire responsibility of thinking to AI.

A study showed that people who wrote essays using ChatGPT couldn’t remember a single line from their own writing shortly after. AI has certainly made our work much easier, but as a result, we are losing our ability to analyze. So, when using AI, always instruct it to provide accurate information, and cross-check its output using another AI. The responsibility to verify the information they provide rests entirely on you.

Finally, the factor that confuses us the most is that we cling to whatever we personally want to believe as the truth.

We might want something so intensely that we no longer verify the reality behind it. Someone might love another person deeply and believe in their heart that they are made for each other. That intense love blinds them, leaving them unable to accept the reality that the other person might not love them back at all.

The hardest question for a critical thinker to ask themselves is: what brutal truth am I avoiding for the sake of my wishful narrative?

Today’s world is far more murky. Here, what is real and what is fake are blended in such a way that separating them is nearly impossible. So, take a moment, think calmly, and invest in your own decision-making ability. Stay close to reality, and you will surely reach your destination.