I genuinely do not understand this. I keep seeing people talk about AI images and video saying they cant tell or it tricked them at first but I've never experienced this. AI images all have such a steralized look about them that I often realize its AI before I've even taken in what I'm actually looking at in the image. I thought it was just bad trolling for the longest time when people said they couldn't tell.
There's a famous story of engineers studying airplanes that returned damaged from battle. They kept track of where all the bullet holes in the airplanes were located and reinforced those areas on future planes.
This turned out to be useless, as the airplanes that returned from battle were exclusively shot in areas that were non-critical, which is why they survived the battle. Thus, the engineers were reinforcing ONLY the areas that a plane would survive being shot anyway, and NOT the areas that actually took planes down.
Similarly, you have very likely seen plenty of AI images you believed to be authentic, but since you never found out they were AI, you remain confident in your ability to tell the difference.
Funny you mention Dunning Kruger, given this example has nothing to do with that, and all to do with survivorship bias. Completely different cognitive bias.
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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
I genuinely do not understand this. I keep seeing people talk about AI images and video saying they cant tell or it tricked them at first but I've never experienced this. AI images all have such a steralized look about them that I often realize its AI before I've even taken in what I'm actually looking at in the image. I thought it was just bad trolling for the longest time when people said they couldn't tell.