Jack Dorsey, the billionaire co-founder of Twitter, now X, predicts that within the next decade, it’ll be harder than ever to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake — and he has a key tip for how to deal with a reality that feels like a simulation.
On Sunday, Dorsey spoke about tech and freedom at the Festival of the Sun, a music celebration in Tuscany, Italy.
Towards the end of his presentation, Dorsey said we “will not know what is real and what is fake” in the next five to 10 years because of the proliferation of fake images and videos, or deepfakes, out there.
“It will be almost impossible to tell,” he said. “It will feel like you’re in a simulation.”
X owner Elon Musk commented on a clip of Dorsey’s presentation with the question, “How do we know we aren’t already there?”
How do we know we aren’t already there?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 23, 2024
Dorsey’s tip was not to trust anything — not even what he was saying — and to experience and verify everything yourself.
Related: Jack Dorsey Says Corporate AI Has Surpassed Twitter, X
Jack Dorsey. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“The only truth you have is what you can verify yourself, with your experience,” Dorsey said.
He reiterated what he said in a clip publicized on X earlier this month, that the free speech debate is really about free will, which could be shaped by corporate interests that control the content people see on their newsfeeds.
Yeah, @Jack is right
pic.twitter.com/sIhNIE3QXV— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2024
According to Dorsey, anyone who interacts with technology should be more mindful of their digital footprint.
Related: Jack Dorsey Says Social Media Has an Algorithm Problem, and Elon Musk Agrees: ‘We Are Being Programmed’
Dorsey also called for more open-source AI models, or AI that is less of a black box with more transparent mechanisms — like how it works and what it has been trained on.
Making AI open-source is something that Musk has been in support of as well. In March, Musk’s startup xAI open-sourced the AI model behind its flagship AI chatbot Grok.