The Trust Crisis: AI and Social Media

Executive Summary 

• Nvidia is entering robotics market.

• Technology to see through closed paper boxes was presented by MIT.

• Summary of new tech unicorns in 2025.

• Discussion: Will AI remove ‘social‘ aspect from social media?

News

 🤖 Nvidia targets robotics as its next trillion-dollar market. Link

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has identified robotics as the company's next growth opportunity, representing a potential multi-trillion-dollar market.

• The company is shifting from being just a chipmaker to an "infrastructure" or "computing platform" provider, supplying the underlying technology for humanoid robots, self-driving cars, and automated factories.

• This strategy is powered by platforms like Jetson for on-device computing in robots and Cosmos for training AI in complex simulated environments.

📦 MIT develops tech to see through closed boxes. Link

• Researchers at MIT have created a new imaging system called "mmNorm" that uses millimeter-wave (mmWave) signals to see through materials like cardboard, plastic, and some interior walls.

• The technology analyzes how wireless signals reflect off hidden objects to reconstruct their detailed 3D shapes, achieving a 96% reconstruction accuracy in tests on complex items like power tools and silverware.

• This breakthrough could revolutionise warehouse automation and quality control by allowing robots to inspect products for damage or correctness without opening sealed boxes.

 🦄 36 new tech unicorns were created in 2025. Link

• An analysis of startups that reached a $1 billion+ valuation in 2025 shows AI continues to be a dominant force.

• Beyond pure AI, the list includes a diverse range of industries, such as robotics (Gecko), health tech (Nourish, Pathos), and even a probiotic soda company (Olipop), indicating broad investor interest.

• Several companies providing infrastructure and development tools also became unicorns, including software management tool Linear and data platform Hightouch, highlighting the demand for technologies that support the wider tech ecosystem.

Discussion

The Trust Crisis: AI and Social Media

As synthetic content becomes indistinguishable from human-generated, the central question is no longer whether AI will transform social media, but whether it will destroy the very trust that makes social platforms functional.

The rise of AI-generated content has created the online authenticity paradox, a situation where users simultaneously crave genuine connections while being increasingly unable to distinguish between real and artificial content. 81% of UK adults now worry about the trustworthiness of online content in general, with 73% expressing specific concerns about AI-generated material.

At the heart of this crisis lies the liar's dividend, a phenomenon where the existence of AI-generated content allows bad actors to dismiss authentic evidence as fake.

Social media platforms are fighting to address this crisis through various detection and labelling strategies, but the results are mixed at best. Meta's "AI Info" label, YouTube's disclosure requirements, and other platform initiatives represent a patchwork approach that may be too little, too late.

Studies show that while labelling AI-generated content reduces belief in the presented claims, simply identifying content as "AI-generated" has little impact on users' likelihood of engaging with it. It creates a weird situation where users may recognise content as synthetic but continue to interact with it as if it were authentic.

The challenge is technical as well as psychological. Only around two-thirds of deepfakes are currently detected by existing systems, and as AI technology advances, the detection gap widens.

More concerning is the finding that 27% of TikTok users struggle to detect trustworthy news, the highest rate among all social platforms. This is particularly troubling given TikTok's growing influence as a news source, especially among younger demographics who are increasingly skeptical of traditional media but may lack the skills to navigate synthetic content.

The question isn't whether AI will reduce trust in social media, it already has. The critical question is whether platforms, policymakers, and users can adapt quickly enough to prevent a complete breakdown of digital trust.

How we answer these questions will determine the future of social media. Potentially, word ‘social’ might not be applicable in some time.

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