4 ms·

After watching the video from that link, I'm very fearful for what people are going to do with this technology in the next decade. This combined with Adobe's n

After watching the video from that link, I'm very fearful for what people are going to do with this technology in the next decade. This combined with Adobe's new "speech photoshop" will make excellent propaganda.

sven-99 9y ago
Well there is such a thing as productive and useful propaganda. Apple knows how to get ppl to line up for blocks to sell a 100 buck phone for 600. Disney's current formula of starwars/marvel/animation is so effificent at getting ppl to shell out cash that last year they basically told analysts they had enough resources and the formula to produce a star wars type movie every week, there are just not enough ppl to buy it. So knowing how to manipulate ppl is now quite scientific. It just has to be towards a constructive end. Something beyond religious/celebrity worship and consumerism and consumption. With such power, if all it takes is one douchebag to cause massive harm very quickly, then you should also believe it is possible for person to do massive good very quickly.
- lightbyte 9y ago
  >With such power, if all it takes is one douchebag to cause massive harm very quickly, then you should also believe it is possible for person to do massive good very quickly. I'm not sure that applies for this technology. What massive good could be done by making a fake video of someone talking?
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Could undermine terrorist organizations and 3rd world dictatorships with it. Spreading a fake of Kim Jong Un saying something embarrassing in North Korea, for example. Unfortunately I think in the long run this is more likely going to be used against us effectively rather than something we can use to destabilize our enemies.
  - artur_makly 9y ago
    this is why i made https://TrumpTweets.io https://TrumpTweets.io - to crowd-source and respin back his tweets in a more honest direction..
- mikeash 9y ago
  That last part doesn't follow at all. It's much easier to destroy than to create. The ability to quickly produce something harmful doesn't imply the ability to quickly produce something beneficial. We have the technology to level an entire city in an instant, but building one still takes decades.
e12e 9y ago
What we really need is simple, preferably free, tools to do this, so kids can start playing with it at an early age. That way the technology can lead to healthy skepticism. On the other hand, there's a difference between being doubtful something is real, and being aware that people speaking in public have an agenda, and a large portion will utilize half-truths and lies more often than not. The difference between "the President lied about WMDs and got thousands killed over it", and "maybe the president didn't actually say that - archive footage might be false".
mtsr 9y ago
Indeed. Combine this technology with something like the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA) from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101405. Instant panic.
saganus 9y ago
At first I was also fearful of people using this tech to make fake "evidence" of things... But now that I think about it, the most damage will come from making people even more incredulous... of everything. It will become even harder to use evidence to prove a point. Uninformed people will just say "yeah sure, it's probably faked". On the other hand... who could blame them?
- problems 9y ago
  It'll just be 2020's "I can tell by the pixels" joke.
- folksinger 9y ago
  I'm not surprised that a forum full of people who work in the information technology industry cannot see the epistomological failure of mass media, but these problems are not new, and the idea that nothing communicated through a screen can be trusted will most definitely cause more good than harm outside of the very near future. Democratic institutions not only functioned but were put into effect before the advent of recorded or transmitted audio and video. Mass media has already been distorting the truth for over a century. "Trust nothing you read online" becoming commonplace is something to be celebrated!
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    There's also another possibility: that media literacy will take off, and children will learn to verify sources. This was the original proposal early blogospherists: that ordinary citizens would learn to do journalism so as to keep microcommunities informed. This is in fact happening, to everyone's benefit. Only in matters of vague mass policy (do we need giant walls? can markets sell health?) has it been largely corrupted by corporate propaganda. Which is probably not terribly worse than before. That scale has always been a big enough target to make it worth the effort to corrupt.
  - saganus 9y ago
    I agree with you in that mass media has been, willingly or otherwise, distorting the truth(s), but the easier and cheaper it is to "create fake information" the higher the verification bar for the public. Right now, faking an interview via real-time 3d rendering plus capture of facial expressions would cost a ton of money. So anyone trying to do so would need (for e.g. to damage a competitor's reputation) both deep pockets and something valuable to gain from it (and would need to factorize the cost of getting caught, etc). If this tech goes mainstream in the future, the cost would be so low that I can imagine some nasty things happening. Hopefully there will be ways to detect this as this technique is further explored, so I'm not saying it's a "catastrophic development", but it certainly made me think more than just "oh wow, this is very neat!", which it also did by the way. It's incredible the kind of things researchers are able to achieve.
novalis78 9y ago
Very simple: a video or data set that has not been verified with a private key by the issuing party on a Blockchain will not be taken for serious and be assumed to be a fabrication
- problems 9y ago
  That would make some things we currently rely on - like voice recordings as evidence of criminal acts nearly impossible. No one is going to sign their crimes into a blockchain.
  - JadeNB 9y ago
    > No one is going to sign their crimes into a blockchain. Just like (to pick a hopefully safely historical example) no president would record himself conspiring to perform illegal activities?
  - 0xffff2 9y ago
    What's the alternative? If it becomes trivial to fabricate voice recordings in general, surely you wouldn't advocate that we continue allowing them as evidence?
    - problems 9y ago
      Of course not, I'm just saying throwing verifiable data onto a blockchain doesn't solve all cases we use voice data for.
- Balgair 9y ago
  Yeah, I'll assume you do not have one of 'those' uncles then, the flat-earther-ish types. Logic and numbers aren't working to begin with.

sven-99 9y ago

Well there is such a thing as productive and useful propaganda. Apple knows how to get ppl to line up for blocks to sell a 100 buck phone for 600. Disney's current formula of starwars/marvel/animation is so effificent at getting ppl to shell out cash that last year they basically told analysts they had enough resources and the formula to produce a star wars type movie every week, there are just not enough ppl to buy it. So knowing how to manipulate ppl is now quite scientific. It just has to be towards a constructive end. Something beyond religious/celebrity worship and consumerism and consumption. With such power, if all it takes is one douchebag to cause massive harm very quickly, then you should also believe it is possible for person to do massive good very quickly.

lightbyte 9y ago
>With such power, if all it takes is one douchebag to cause massive harm very quickly, then you should also believe it is possible for person to do massive good very quickly. I'm not sure that applies for this technology. What massive good could be done by making a fake video of someone talking?
- jrs95 9y ago
  Could undermine terrorist organizations and 3rd world dictatorships with it. Spreading a fake of Kim Jong Un saying something embarrassing in North Korea, for example. Unfortunately I think in the long run this is more likely going to be used against us effectively rather than something we can use to destabilize our enemies.
- artur_makly 9y ago
  this is why i made https://TrumpTweets.io https://TrumpTweets.io - to crowd-source and respin back his tweets in a more honest direction..
mikeash 9y ago
That last part doesn't follow at all. It's much easier to destroy than to create. The ability to quickly produce something harmful doesn't imply the ability to quickly produce something beneficial. We have the technology to level an entire city in an instant, but building one still takes decades.

e12e 9y ago

What we really need is simple, preferably free, tools to do this, so kids can start playing with it at an early age. That way the technology can lead to healthy skepticism. On the other hand, there's a difference between being doubtful something is real, and being aware that people speaking in public have an agenda, and a large portion will utilize half-truths and lies more often than not. The difference between "the President lied about WMDs and got thousands killed over it", and "maybe the president didn't actually say that - archive footage might be false".

mtsr 9y ago

Indeed. Combine this technology with something like the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA) from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101405. Instant panic.

saganus 9y ago

At first I was also fearful of people using this tech to make fake "evidence" of things... But now that I think about it, the most damage will come from making people even more incredulous... of everything. It will become even harder to use evidence to prove a point. Uninformed people will just say "yeah sure, it's probably faked". On the other hand... who could blame them?

problems 9y ago
It'll just be 2020's "I can tell by the pixels" joke.
folksinger 9y ago
I'm not surprised that a forum full of people who work in the information technology industry cannot see the epistomological failure of mass media, but these problems are not new, and the idea that nothing communicated through a screen can be trusted will most definitely cause more good than harm outside of the very near future. Democratic institutions not only functioned but were put into effect before the advent of recorded or transmitted audio and video. Mass media has already been distorting the truth for over a century. "Trust nothing you read online" becoming commonplace is something to be celebrated!
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  There's also another possibility: that media literacy will take off, and children will learn to verify sources. This was the original proposal early blogospherists: that ordinary citizens would learn to do journalism so as to keep microcommunities informed. This is in fact happening, to everyone's benefit. Only in matters of vague mass policy (do we need giant walls? can markets sell health?) has it been largely corrupted by corporate propaganda. Which is probably not terribly worse than before. That scale has always been a big enough target to make it worth the effort to corrupt.
- saganus 9y ago
  I agree with you in that mass media has been, willingly or otherwise, distorting the truth(s), but the easier and cheaper it is to "create fake information" the higher the verification bar for the public. Right now, faking an interview via real-time 3d rendering plus capture of facial expressions would cost a ton of money. So anyone trying to do so would need (for e.g. to damage a competitor's reputation) both deep pockets and something valuable to gain from it (and would need to factorize the cost of getting caught, etc). If this tech goes mainstream in the future, the cost would be so low that I can imagine some nasty things happening. Hopefully there will be ways to detect this as this technique is further explored, so I'm not saying it's a "catastrophic development", but it certainly made me think more than just "oh wow, this is very neat!", which it also did by the way. It's incredible the kind of things researchers are able to achieve.

novalis78 9y ago

Very simple: a video or data set that has not been verified with a private key by the issuing party on a Blockchain will not be taken for serious and be assumed to be a fabrication

problems 9y ago
That would make some things we currently rely on - like voice recordings as evidence of criminal acts nearly impossible. No one is going to sign their crimes into a blockchain.
- JadeNB 9y ago
  > No one is going to sign their crimes into a blockchain. Just like (to pick a hopefully safely historical example) no president would record himself conspiring to perform illegal activities?
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  What's the alternative? If it becomes trivial to fabricate voice recordings in general, surely you wouldn't advocate that we continue allowing them as evidence?
  - problems 9y ago
    Of course not, I'm just saying throwing verifiable data onto a blockchain doesn't solve all cases we use voice data for.
Balgair 9y ago
Yeah, I'll assume you do not have one of 'those' uncles then, the flat-earther-ish types. Logic and numbers aren't working to begin with.