Tomorrow, the post-truth age will officially be a decade old. On November 15, 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary made ‘post-truth’ its Word of the Year. Not because it was hatched that day, but because its use had spiked 2,000 percent that year. Neologisms―and the ideas, hopes and fears they represent―come and go in long cycles. But in that watershed year, the Brexit referendum and the US elections leading to the first Trump presidency propelled ‘post-truth’ to the top of the mind.
The next month, Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to the US President, dropped another neologism: ‘alternative facts’. The post-truth age was still young. The majority had not lost their bearings yet, and they correctly identified alternative facts as falsehoods.
This week, M John Harrison’s Booker Prize for a post-apocalyptic novel featuring aliens whose origins, nature and purpose are unknown―and who may not even be aware of the human race―seems to suggest that the species knows it has suffered an unprecedented epistemological failure. It can no longer differentiate clearly between truth and falsehood. Sadly, the sum of our knowledge at present could be this: we don’t know a thing for sure.
But a controversy about another literary prize awarded in London suggests that humanity may know a little more than nothing. At least, it suspects that its salvation lies in its own hands, in recovering the ability to tell truth from falsehood more reliably than the machines and mechanisms it has created.
In October, an article by Vauhini Vara in The Atlantic, titled ‘Yet Another Literary Prizewinner Seems To Be AI’, suggested that Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza, winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing 2026, had relied upon AI. However, the claim itself relied upon machine intelligence―the AI-detection tool Pangram. It had flagged almost the whole story as AI-aided.
In response, the trustees of the prize took a refreshingly retro course. They conducted a month-long human-driven investigation combining digital forensics and interviews with the author and the editors of the journal in which the suspect story, ‘The Blue Fighter’, had appeared. The entire process was conducted by human experts, using human reasoning and the traditional method of creating knowledge―people asking questions. It found the text to be authentically human and confirmed Kundizeza as the winner of the £10,000 prize. The trustees also criticized The Atlantic for publishing without conducting a human-centred investigation.
The controversy rekindled suspicions that the AI-detection software delivers disproportionately high false positives against writers who are not of Western origin, including regional winners of this year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Ironically, Vauhini Vara, the technology writer and essayist whose article triggered the controversy, is of Indian descent.
AI has put the post-truth world on a spectrum. The depiction of any fact or artefact can now range from completely true to completely false, and one suspects that as in human speech, shades of grey will predominate and keep fact-checkers busy, pending regulation. But this year’s controversies about literary prizes suggest that one aspect of the fondly remembered age of truth remains unchanged―authenticity and perceived value depend on reliable proof of provenance. This applies to all things intellectually estimable, not just creative work.
For instance, a painting has no value until its history, from the artist’s studio to the auctioneer’s storage, including an account of the hands it has passed through, is authenticated. This may be possible for a Raza but not a Vermeer, whereupon restorers and art historians authenticate the style and materials used. Either way, the value of a cultural product is determined by how exhaustively its provenance is established. Even copies have value when they are authenticated. Images by Raghubir Singh or Mitter Bedi in a glossy magazine have zero commercial value, but prints signed by these classical Indian photographers are expensive.
Establishing provenance is at the heart of intellectual propertyrights. Owning basmati was an early victory for India, back when the Dunkel Draft Treaty, a precursor to the World Trade Organization, was being contested by the South. US rice farmers had to rename their produce to Texmati or similar, and it still galls them―US rice farmers made their case to President Trump 2.0 right after he took office, accusing Indian farmers of ripping off America. But it’s a lost cause in Australia, which has rejected India’s claims because basmati is also grown in Pakistan.
On the other hand, India has fought off US patents and established its ownership of the medicinal use of turmeric by quoting Sanskrit medical texts. And recently, it has called out fashion houses Prada, Gucci, Zara, Ralph Lauren and Dior for passing off traditional Indian fashion like Kolhapuri sandals and Punjabi turbans as their innovations. We think the world is changing too fast for human understanding, as depicted in Harrison’s Booker-winning sci-fi, but ownership still vests in authenticated provenance.
What do Harrison’s aliens represent? Climate change, unregulated technology, political regression, the changing nature of communication and conflict, scarcity amid plenty, the rising tide of continuously generated data―all that is baffling about our post-truth era. But instead of feeling overwhelmed and turning to the ghost in the machine, we should rely on our own resources. The truth is, we had created the machine in our own image.
(Views are personal)
(On X @pratik_k)
Pratik Kanjilal / Speakeasy
For years, the author has been speaking easy to a surprisingly tolerant public