🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 138 (from laksa054)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa138.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://bendbulletin.com/2026/02/25/commentary-the-key-to-regaining-trust-in-the-era-of-ai/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://bendbulletin.com/2026/02/25/commentary-the-key-to-regaining-trust-in-the-era-of-ai/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/02\/25\/commentary-the-key-to-regaining-trust-in-the-era-of-ai\/","crawl_time":1775941788,"first_indexed_time":1772035071,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,bendbulletin!\/2026\/02\/25\/commentary-the-key-to-regaining-trust-in-the-era-of-ai\/ s443","src_root_hash":"11162254445667393538","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Commentary: The key to regaining trust in the era of AI | The Bulletin","meta_descriptions":[],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Published 6:30 am Wednesday, February 25, 2026\nBy Gautam Mukunda, Bloomberg Opinion\nYour grandmother trusted her doctor. Your mother trusted Consumer Reports. You trust the 4.7-star rating from 2,300 strangers.\nBut if you’ve recently used the internet to look at reviews for a stroller, or even for help selecting a health insurance plan, you likely noticed that it’s not very helpful anymore. Real information has become buried by an avalanche of artificial intelligence-produced fakery.\nToday’s internet is less authentic. And less human. If you rely on it for information about anything from polo shirts to politics, that’s a big problem. The good news might just be that in an age when AI can manufacture those strangers — and their enthusiasm — overnight, people may start trusting institutions and experts again.\nPartly due to the influence of the internet, we’ve seen a rejection of institutional credibility and the value of expertise in favor of the distributed judgment of everyday users. Generative AI’s infinite stream of digitally produced nonsense is making that an increasingly bad bet.\nA Graphite study of 65,000 English-language web articles found that before ChatGPT, about 5% of those were primarily AI-generated. By late 2024 that figure crossed 50%. In April 2025, Ahrefs found that 74% of newly created web pages contained AI-generated content. This isn’t a content quality problem — it’s a cost collapse. Producing plausible text used to need a person with time and at least some effort. Now it requires a prompt.\nInstead of being useful, many AI-written articles are lies. The issue isn’t AI hallucinations but rather generative AI’s ability to produce plausible fiction cheaply and at scale. The consequence is an endless flood of AI-created nonsense on every topic where propagating falsehoods is in someone’s interest, from Amazon product reviews to global politics.\nThe natural response is to be skeptical, do your own research, triangulate sources, etc. That can work if you already have expertise on the question you’re trying to answer. It falls apart for everything else. When you’re buying a stroller, you can’t crash-test every model. You rely on reviewers who are real, hopefully aren’t selling you something, and seem to have good judgment. There’s a name for that arrangement: delegated trust.\nFor a while, the internet’s distributed version of delegated trust — Amazon reviews, TikTok influencers — looked like it could replace institutional authority. And why not? Institutions fail all the time. But when anyone can generate infinite flimflam, relying on unfiltered views means listening to whoever has most aggressively deployed fakery to drown the truth in synthetic blather.\nAnd it gets worse. Decades of psychology research have shown that simple repetition makes claims feel true. Research demonstrated in 2015 that this “illusory truth effect” persists even when people know a claim is false. When AI enables cheap, massive repetition of plausible narratives, familiarity substitutes for credibility. That is not a problem anyone can think their way out of.\nSo here’s my prediction: As AI-generated content overwhelms the open web, trust will recentralize. People will fall back on recognizable institutions, named authors, and visible editorial processes. They’ll also fall back on individuals with established track records, whether a named journalist or a parent influencer who tests strollers with her own kids on real sidewalks and in actual airports.\nThe key in both cases is authenticity. You have confidence that a real person is providing truthful, trustworthy information. The reviewer you watch on Instagram is almost certainly real … today. But even that will fade as AI-generated video improves.\nInstitutions that assume public distrust is permanent will underinvest in credibility. That’s a strategic mistake. Credibility compounds slowly. It takes years of editorial standards, sourcing discipline, and accountability before people treat you as a default. The institutions that will benefit from the coming recentralization of trust are the ones building that infrastructure now, before the market demands it.\nGautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management.","attrs_markdown":"[![The Bulletin](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/themes\/2024-bendbulletin-child\/media\/img\/brand\/logo-white-bendbulletin-updated.png)](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/)\n\n[**Log out**](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/02\/25\/commentary-the-key-to-regaining-trust-in-the-era-of-ai\/) [**Log in**](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/02\/25\/commentary-the-key-to-regaining-trust-in-the-era-of-ai\/)   [**Activate**](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/02\/25\/commentary-the-key-to-regaining-trust-in-the-era-of-ai\/) [**Subscribe**](https:\/\/subscribe.bendbulletin.com\/) [**My Account**](https:\/\/myaccount.bendbulletin.com\/)\n\n- [News](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/news\/ \"News\")\n  - [Crime & Justice](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/news\/crime-justice\/ \"Crime & Justice\")\n  - [Education](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/news\/education\/ \"Education\")\n  - [Elections](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/news\/elections\/ \"Elections\")\n  - 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[LA Times Sunday Crossword](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/puzzles\/la-times-sunday-crossword-2\/ \"LA Times Sunday Crossword\")\n  - [TV Crossword](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/puzzles\/tv-crossword-2\/ \"TV Crossword\")\n  - [TV Jumble](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/puzzles\/tv-jumble-2\/ \"TV Jumble\")\n\n## Commentary: The key to regaining trust in the era of AI\nPublished 6:30 am Wednesday, February 25, 2026\n\n**By Gautam Mukunda, Bloomberg Opinion**\n\n![](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/02\/The-letters-AI-are-shown-on-a-laptop-screen-next-to-the-logo-of-the-ChatGPT-application-on-a-sma.jpg?w=729)\n\nThe letters AI are shown on a laptop screen next to the logo of the ChatGPT application on a smartphone screen in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. (Kirill Kudryavtsev\/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nYour grandmother trusted her doctor. Your mother trusted Consumer Reports. You trust the 4.7-star rating from 2,300 strangers.\n\nBut if you’ve recently used the internet to look at reviews for a stroller, or even for help selecting a health insurance plan, you likely noticed that it’s not very helpful anymore. Real information has become buried by an avalanche of artificial intelligence-produced fakery.\n\nToday’s internet is less authentic. And less human. If you rely on it for information about anything from polo shirts to politics, that’s a big problem. The good news might just be that in an age when AI can manufacture those strangers — and their enthusiasm — overnight, people may start trusting institutions and experts again.\n\nPartly due to the influence of the internet, we’ve seen a rejection of institutional credibility and the value of expertise in favor of the distributed judgment of everyday users. Generative AI’s infinite stream of digitally produced nonsense is making that an increasingly bad bet.\n\nA Graphite study of 65,000 English-language web articles found that before ChatGPT, about 5% of those were primarily AI-generated. By late 2024 that figure crossed 50%. In April 2025, Ahrefs found that 74% of newly created web pages contained AI-generated content. This isn’t a content quality problem — it’s a cost collapse. Producing plausible text used to need a person with time and at least some effort. Now it requires a prompt.\n\nInstead of being useful, many AI-written articles are lies. The issue isn’t AI hallucinations but rather generative AI’s ability to produce plausible fiction cheaply and at scale. The consequence is an endless flood of AI-created nonsense on every topic where propagating falsehoods is in someone’s interest, from Amazon product reviews to global politics.\n\nThe natural response is to be skeptical, do your own research, triangulate sources, etc. That can work if you already have expertise on the question you’re trying to answer. It falls apart for everything else. When you’re buying a stroller, you can’t crash-test every model. You rely on reviewers who are real, hopefully aren’t selling you something, and seem to have good judgment. There’s a name for that arrangement: delegated trust.\n\nFor a while, the internet’s distributed version of delegated trust — Amazon reviews, TikTok influencers — looked like it could replace institutional authority. And why not? Institutions fail all the time. But when anyone can generate infinite flimflam, relying on unfiltered views means listening to whoever has most aggressively deployed fakery to drown the truth in synthetic blather.\n\nAnd it gets worse. Decades of psychology research have shown that simple repetition makes claims feel true. Research demonstrated in 2015 that this “illusory truth effect” persists even when people know a claim is false. When AI enables cheap, massive repetition of plausible narratives, familiarity substitutes for credibility. That is not a problem anyone can think their way out of.\n\nSo here’s my prediction: As AI-generated content overwhelms the open web, trust will recentralize. People will fall back on recognizable institutions, named authors, and visible editorial processes. They’ll also fall back on individuals with established track records, whether a named journalist or a parent influencer who tests strollers with her own kids on real sidewalks and in actual airports.\n\nThe key in both cases is authenticity. You have confidence that a real person is providing truthful, trustworthy information. The reviewer you watch on Instagram is almost certainly real … today. But even that will fade as AI-generated video improves.\n\nInstitutions that assume public distrust is permanent will underinvest in credibility. That’s a strategic mistake. Credibility compounds slowly. It takes years of editorial standards, sourcing discipline, and accountability before people treat you as a default. The institutions that will benefit from the coming recentralization of trust are the ones building that infrastructure now, before the market demands it.\n\n*Gautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management.*\n\n### Marketplace\n‹\n\n›\n\n### You Might Like\n[![](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/Bulletin-letter-writer-Ron-Sadler-wants-you-to-consider-an-EV-and-plugging-in-rather-than-gassin.jpg?w=300) Letters Letters to the editor](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/04\/10\/letters-to-the-editor-578\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/The-Alvord-Desert-outside-Burns-in-Harney-County-is-one-of-the-driest-places-in-Oregon.jpg?w=300) Columnists Commentary: Drought time ahead for Oregon](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/04\/10\/commentary-drought-time-ahead-for-oregon\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/20260410edshe-b.tif_.jpg?w=300) Columnists Editorial cartoon for 4\/12](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/04\/10\/editorial-cartoon-for-4-12\/)\n\n[![](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/Suzanne-Cable.jpg?w=276) Columnists Guest column: The best approach to wilderness: Leave it alone](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/2026\/04\/10\/guest-column-the-best-approach-to-wilderness-leave-it-alone\/)\n\n- ![](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Gocentralorgon.jpeg?w=1024)\n- [![](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/07\/Newsletter_signUp.png)](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/newsletters\/)\n\n[![The Bulletin](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/wp-content\/themes\/2024-bendbulletin-child\/media\/img\/brand\/logo-white-bendbulletin-updated.png)](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/)\n\n#### Sections\n- [Local News](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/news\/local\/)\n- [Nation & World](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/nation-world\/)\n- [Business](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/business\/)\n- [Obituaries](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/obituaries\/)\n- [Sports](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/sports\/)\n- [Opinion](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/opinion\/)\n- [Entertainment](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/category\/lifestyle\/)\n- [Weather](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/weather\/)\n- [Press Releases](https:\/\/pr.bendbulletin.com\/)\n\n#### Services\n- [eEdition](https:\/\/bendbulletin-or.newsmemory.com\/)\n- [Submission Forms](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/)\n- [Contribute](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/contribute\/)\n- [FAQs](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/faqs\/)\n- [Advertising Rate Card](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/download-advertising-rate-card\/)\n- [Newsletters](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/newsletters\/)\n- [Newsstand Returns](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/newsstand-returns\/)\n- [Classifieds](https:\/\/centralah.eomediagroup.com\/)\n- [Newspapers in Education](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/nie\/)\n\n#### Our Company\n- [About Us](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/about-us\/)\n- [Contact Us](https:\/\/bendbulletin.com\/services\/contact-us\/)\n- [Careers](https:\/\/eomediagroup.applicantpro.com\/jobs\/)\n- [Our Partners](https:\/\/www.carpentermediagroup.com\/locations\/)\n\n© 2026 The Bulletin.\n\n[Privacy Policy](https:\/\/www.carpentermediagroup.com\/privacy-policy\/)\n\n[Terms of Service](https:\/\/www.carpentermediagroup.com\/terms-of-service\/)","attrs_readable_markdown":"Published 6:30 am Wednesday, February 25, 2026\n\n**By Gautam Mukunda, Bloomberg Opinion**\n\nYour grandmother trusted her doctor. Your mother trusted Consumer Reports. You trust the 4.7-star rating from 2,300 strangers.\n\nBut if you’ve recently used the internet to look at reviews for a stroller, or even for help selecting a health insurance plan, you likely noticed that it’s not very helpful anymore. Real information has become buried by an avalanche of artificial intelligence-produced fakery.\n\nToday’s internet is less authentic. And less human. If you rely on it for information about anything from polo shirts to politics, that’s a big problem. The good news might just be that in an age when AI can manufacture those strangers — and their enthusiasm — overnight, people may start trusting institutions and experts again.\n\nPartly due to the influence of the internet, we’ve seen a rejection of institutional credibility and the value of expertise in favor of the distributed judgment of everyday users. Generative AI’s infinite stream of digitally produced nonsense is making that an increasingly bad bet.\n\nA Graphite study of 65,000 English-language web articles found that before ChatGPT, about 5% of those were primarily AI-generated. By late 2024 that figure crossed 50%. In April 2025, Ahrefs found that 74% of newly created web pages contained AI-generated content. This isn’t a content quality problem — it’s a cost collapse. Producing plausible text used to need a person with time and at least some effort. Now it requires a prompt.\n\nInstead of being useful, many AI-written articles are lies. The issue isn’t AI hallucinations but rather generative AI’s ability to produce plausible fiction cheaply and at scale. The consequence is an endless flood of AI-created nonsense on every topic where propagating falsehoods is in someone’s interest, from Amazon product reviews to global politics.\n\nThe natural response is to be skeptical, do your own research, triangulate sources, etc. That can work if you already have expertise on the question you’re trying to answer. It falls apart for everything else. When you’re buying a stroller, you can’t crash-test every model. You rely on reviewers who are real, hopefully aren’t selling you something, and seem to have good judgment. There’s a name for that arrangement: delegated trust.\n\nFor a while, the internet’s distributed version of delegated trust — Amazon reviews, TikTok influencers — looked like it could replace institutional authority. And why not? Institutions fail all the time. But when anyone can generate infinite flimflam, relying on unfiltered views means listening to whoever has most aggressively deployed fakery to drown the truth in synthetic blather.\n\nAnd it gets worse. Decades of psychology research have shown that simple repetition makes claims feel true. Research demonstrated in 2015 that this “illusory truth effect” persists even when people know a claim is false. When AI enables cheap, massive repetition of plausible narratives, familiarity substitutes for credibility. That is not a problem anyone can think their way out of.\n\nSo here’s my prediction: As AI-generated content overwhelms the open web, trust will recentralize. People will fall back on recognizable institutions, named authors, and visible editorial processes. They’ll also fall back on individuals with established track records, whether a named journalist or a parent influencer who tests strollers with her own kids on real sidewalks and in actual airports.\n\nThe key in both cases is authenticity. You have confidence that a real person is providing truthful, trustworthy information. The reviewer you watch on Instagram is almost certainly real … today. But even that will fade as AI-generated video improves.\n\nInstitutions that assume public distrust is permanent will underinvest in credibility. That’s a strategic mistake. Credibility compounds slowly. It takes years of editorial standards, sourcing discipline, and accountability before people treat you as a default. The institutions that will benefit from the coming recentralization of trust are the ones building that infrastructure now, before the market demands it.\n\n*Gautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management.*","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	Published 6:30 am Wednesday, February 25, 2026 By Gautam Mukunda, Bloomberg Opinion Your grandmother trusted her doctor. Your mother trusted Consumer Reports. You trust the 4.7-star rating from 2,300 strangers. But if you’ve recently used the internet to look at reviews for a stroller, or even for help selecting a health insurance plan, you likely noticed that it’s not very helpful anymore. Real information has become buried by an avalanche of artificial intelligence-produced fakery. Today’s internet is less authentic. And less human. If you rely on it for information about anything from polo shirts to politics, that’s a big problem. The good news might just be that in an age when AI can manufacture those strangers — and their enthusiasm — overnight, people may start trusting institutions and experts again. Partly due to the influence of the internet, we’ve seen a rejection of institutional credibility and the value of expertise in favor of the distributed judgment of everyday users. Generative AI’s infinite stream of digitally produced nonsense is making that an increasingly bad bet. A Graphite study of 65,000 English-language web articles found that before ChatGPT, about 5% of those were primarily AI-generated. By late 2024 that figure crossed 50%. In April 2025, Ahrefs found that 74% of newly created web pages contained AI-generated content. This isn’t a content quality problem — it’s a cost collapse. Producing plausible text used to need a person with time and at least some effort. Now it requires a prompt. Instead of being useful, many AI-written articles are lies. The issue isn’t AI hallucinations but rather generative AI’s ability to produce plausible fiction cheaply and at scale. The consequence is an endless flood of AI-created nonsense on every topic where propagating falsehoods is in someone’s interest, from Amazon product reviews to global politics. The natural response is to be skeptical, do your own research, triangulate sources, etc. That can work if you already have expertise on the question you’re trying to answer. It falls apart for everything else. When you’re buying a stroller, you can’t crash-test every model. You rely on reviewers who are real, hopefully aren’t selling you something, and seem to have good judgment. There’s a name for that arrangement: delegated trust. For a while, the internet’s distributed version of delegated trust — Amazon reviews, TikTok influencers — looked like it could replace institutional authority. And why not? Institutions fail all the time. But when anyone can generate infinite flimflam, relying on unfiltered views means listening to whoever has most aggressively deployed fakery to drown the truth in synthetic blather. And it gets worse. Decades of psychology research have shown that simple repetition makes claims feel true. Research demonstrated in 2015 that this “illusory truth effect” persists even when people know a claim is false. When AI enables cheap, massive repetition of plausible narratives, familiarity substitutes for credibility. That is not a problem anyone can think their way out of. So here’s my prediction: As AI-generated content overwhelms the open web, trust will recentralize. People will fall back on recognizable institutions, named authors, and visible editorial processes. They’ll also fall back on individuals with established track records, whether a named journalist or a parent influencer who tests strollers with her own kids on real sidewalks and in actual airports. The key in both cases is authenticity. You have confidence that a real person is providing truthful, trustworthy information. The reviewer you watch on Instagram is almost certainly real … today. But even that will fade as AI-generated video improves. Institutions that assume public distrust is permanent will underinvest in credibility. That’s a strategic mistake. Credibility compounds slowly. It takes years of editorial standards, sourcing discipline, and accountability before people treat you as a default. The institutions that will benefit from the coming recentralization of trust are the ones building that infrastructure now, before the market demands it. Gautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management.
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(Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images) Your grandmother trusted her doctor. Your mother trusted Consumer Reports. You trust the 4.7-star rating from 2,300 strangers. But if you’ve recently used the internet to look at reviews for a stroller, or even for help selecting a health insurance plan, you likely noticed that it’s not very helpful anymore. Real information has become buried by an avalanche of artificial intelligence-produced fakery. Today’s internet is less authentic. And less human. If you rely on it for information about anything from polo shirts to politics, that’s a big problem. The good news might just be that in an age when AI can manufacture those strangers — and their enthusiasm — overnight, people may start trusting institutions and experts again. Partly due to the influence of the internet, we’ve seen a rejection of institutional credibility and the value of expertise in favor of the distributed judgment of everyday users. Generative AI’s infinite stream of digitally produced nonsense is making that an increasingly bad bet. A Graphite study of 65,000 English-language web articles found that before ChatGPT, about 5% of those were primarily AI-generated. By late 2024 that figure crossed 50%. In April 2025, Ahrefs found that 74% of newly created web pages contained AI-generated content. This isn’t a content quality problem — it’s a cost collapse. Producing plausible text used to need a person with time and at least some effort. Now it requires a prompt. Instead of being useful, many AI-written articles are lies. The issue isn’t AI hallucinations but rather generative AI’s ability to produce plausible fiction cheaply and at scale. The consequence is an endless flood of AI-created nonsense on every topic where propagating falsehoods is in someone’s interest, from Amazon product reviews to global politics. The natural response is to be skeptical, do your own research, triangulate sources, etc. That can work if you already have expertise on the question you’re trying to answer. It falls apart for everything else. When you’re buying a stroller, you can’t crash-test every model. You rely on reviewers who are real, hopefully aren’t selling you something, and seem to have good judgment. There’s a name for that arrangement: delegated trust. For a while, the internet’s distributed version of delegated trust — Amazon reviews, TikTok influencers — looked like it could replace institutional authority. And why not? Institutions fail all the time. But when anyone can generate infinite flimflam, relying on unfiltered views means listening to whoever has most aggressively deployed fakery to drown the truth in synthetic blather. And it gets worse. Decades of psychology research have shown that simple repetition makes claims feel true. Research demonstrated in 2015 that this “illusory truth effect” persists even when people know a claim is false. When AI enables cheap, massive repetition of plausible narratives, familiarity substitutes for credibility. That is not a problem anyone can think their way out of. So here’s my prediction: As AI-generated content overwhelms the open web, trust will recentralize. People will fall back on recognizable institutions, named authors, and visible editorial processes. They’ll also fall back on individuals with established track records, whether a named journalist or a parent influencer who tests strollers with her own kids on real sidewalks and in actual airports. The key in both cases is authenticity. You have confidence that a real person is providing truthful, trustworthy information. The reviewer you watch on Instagram is almost certainly real … today. But even that will fade as AI-generated video improves. Institutions that assume public distrust is permanent will underinvest in credibility. That’s a strategic mistake. Credibility compounds slowly. It takes years of editorial standards, sourcing discipline, and accountability before people treat you as a default. The institutions that will benefit from the coming recentralization of trust are the ones building that infrastructure now, before the market demands it. Gautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management. ### Marketplace ‹ › ### You Might Like [![](https://bendbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Bulletin-letter-writer-Ron-Sadler-wants-you-to-consider-an-EV-and-plugging-in-rather-than-gassin.jpg?w=300) Letters Letters to the editor](https://bendbulletin.com/2026/04/10/letters-to-the-editor-578/) [![](https://bendbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/The-Alvord-Desert-outside-Burns-in-Harney-County-is-one-of-the-driest-places-in-Oregon.jpg?w=300) Columnists Commentary: Drought time ahead for Oregon](https://bendbulletin.com/2026/04/10/commentary-drought-time-ahead-for-oregon/) [![](https://bendbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/20260410edshe-b.tif_.jpg?w=300) Columnists Editorial cartoon for 4/12](https://bendbulletin.com/2026/04/10/editorial-cartoon-for-4-12/) [![](https://bendbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/04/Suzanne-Cable.jpg?w=276) Columnists Guest column: The best approach to wilderness: Leave it alone](https://bendbulletin.com/2026/04/10/guest-column-the-best-approach-to-wilderness-leave-it-alone/) - ![](https://bendbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/Gocentralorgon.jpeg?w=1024) - [![](https://bendbulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/Newsletter_signUp.png)](https://bendbulletin.com/services/newsletters/) [![The Bulletin](https://bendbulletin.com/wp-content/themes/2024-bendbulletin-child/media/img/brand/logo-white-bendbulletin-updated.png)](https://bendbulletin.com/) #### Sections - [Local News](https://bendbulletin.com/category/news/local/) - [Nation & World](https://bendbulletin.com/category/nation-world/) - [Business](https://bendbulletin.com/category/business/) - [Obituaries](https://bendbulletin.com/category/obituaries/) - [Sports](https://bendbulletin.com/category/sports/) - [Opinion](https://bendbulletin.com/category/opinion/) - [Entertainment](https://bendbulletin.com/category/lifestyle/) - [Weather](https://bendbulletin.com/weather/) - [Press Releases](https://pr.bendbulletin.com/) #### Services - [eEdition](https://bendbulletin-or.newsmemory.com/) - [Submission Forms](https://bendbulletin.com/services/) - [Contribute](https://bendbulletin.com/contribute/) - [FAQs](https://bendbulletin.com/services/faqs/) - [Advertising Rate Card](https://bendbulletin.com/services/download-advertising-rate-card/) - [Newsletters](https://bendbulletin.com/services/newsletters/) - [Newsstand Returns](https://bendbulletin.com/services/newsstand-returns/) - [Classifieds](https://centralah.eomediagroup.com/) - [Newspapers in Education](https://bendbulletin.com/nie/) #### Our Company - [About Us](https://bendbulletin.com/services/about-us/) - [Contact Us](https://bendbulletin.com/services/contact-us/) - [Careers](https://eomediagroup.applicantpro.com/jobs/) - [Our Partners](https://www.carpentermediagroup.com/locations/) © 2026 The Bulletin. 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Readable Markdown	Published 6:30 am Wednesday, February 25, 2026 By Gautam Mukunda, Bloomberg Opinion Your grandmother trusted her doctor. Your mother trusted Consumer Reports. You trust the 4.7-star rating from 2,300 strangers. But if you’ve recently used the internet to look at reviews for a stroller, or even for help selecting a health insurance plan, you likely noticed that it’s not very helpful anymore. Real information has become buried by an avalanche of artificial intelligence-produced fakery. Today’s internet is less authentic. And less human. If you rely on it for information about anything from polo shirts to politics, that’s a big problem. The good news might just be that in an age when AI can manufacture those strangers — and their enthusiasm — overnight, people may start trusting institutions and experts again. Partly due to the influence of the internet, we’ve seen a rejection of institutional credibility and the value of expertise in favor of the distributed judgment of everyday users. Generative AI’s infinite stream of digitally produced nonsense is making that an increasingly bad bet. A Graphite study of 65,000 English-language web articles found that before ChatGPT, about 5% of those were primarily AI-generated. By late 2024 that figure crossed 50%. In April 2025, Ahrefs found that 74% of newly created web pages contained AI-generated content. This isn’t a content quality problem — it’s a cost collapse. Producing plausible text used to need a person with time and at least some effort. Now it requires a prompt. Instead of being useful, many AI-written articles are lies. The issue isn’t AI hallucinations but rather generative AI’s ability to produce plausible fiction cheaply and at scale. The consequence is an endless flood of AI-created nonsense on every topic where propagating falsehoods is in someone’s interest, from Amazon product reviews to global politics. The natural response is to be skeptical, do your own research, triangulate sources, etc. That can work if you already have expertise on the question you’re trying to answer. It falls apart for everything else. When you’re buying a stroller, you can’t crash-test every model. You rely on reviewers who are real, hopefully aren’t selling you something, and seem to have good judgment. There’s a name for that arrangement: delegated trust. For a while, the internet’s distributed version of delegated trust — Amazon reviews, TikTok influencers — looked like it could replace institutional authority. And why not? Institutions fail all the time. But when anyone can generate infinite flimflam, relying on unfiltered views means listening to whoever has most aggressively deployed fakery to drown the truth in synthetic blather. And it gets worse. Decades of psychology research have shown that simple repetition makes claims feel true. Research demonstrated in 2015 that this “illusory truth effect” persists even when people know a claim is false. When AI enables cheap, massive repetition of plausible narratives, familiarity substitutes for credibility. That is not a problem anyone can think their way out of. So here’s my prediction: As AI-generated content overwhelms the open web, trust will recentralize. People will fall back on recognizable institutions, named authors, and visible editorial processes. They’ll also fall back on individuals with established track records, whether a named journalist or a parent influencer who tests strollers with her own kids on real sidewalks and in actual airports. The key in both cases is authenticity. You have confidence that a real person is providing truthful, trustworthy information. The reviewer you watch on Instagram is almost certainly real … today. But even that will fade as AI-generated video improves. Institutions that assume public distrust is permanent will underinvest in credibility. That’s a strategic mistake. Credibility compounds slowly. It takes years of editorial standards, sourcing discipline, and accountability before people treat you as a default. The institutions that will benefit from the coming recentralization of trust are the ones building that infrastructure now, before the market demands it. Gautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management.
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