10 ms·

Contrary to the article's stance that this would be used to create fake revenge porn or celebrity sex tapes that are taken as real, I'd expect this to devalue t

Contrary to the article's stance that this would be used to create fake revenge porn or celebrity sex tapes that are taken as real, I'd expect this to devalue the real thing and give space for people to claim anything with their face in it is fake.

ekimekim 9y ago
We've already seen this with images and Photoshop. Society and their heuristics of belief will adjust as these new capabilities become widespread. What's more troubling is that as media becomes falsifiable, solid evidence of...well, anything, becomes hard to have. The ultimate loser there is the truth, sadly.
- xarball 9y ago
  This is where hardware signing comes into play.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Indeed. The worst use of this will be forged political speeches. What happens when you can fake any video of anyone saying anything and then feed it to the social media outrage machine?
  - slededit 9y ago
    Its really not so different than it was prior to the advent of radio. By the time news reached you about what some politician said it had gone through multiple people and could be altered in any number of ways. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes through misunderstanding.
    - WalterBright 9y ago
      I've suspected for a long time that much of what we know about history from written accounts is false.
      - cortesoft 9y ago
        This is a basic assumption historians take. They assume sources have biases and agendas, and try to figure out what is true. It isn't a perfect system, but no historian takes a source at face value.
  - telesilla 9y ago
    As the parent noted, society will adjust expectations about how to determine facts. When radio first came along, some people were fooled that Orson Welles's War of the Worlds [1] was actually happening, because it was in the style of a news broadcast. We learn and adjust how to process data as systems change around us. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-r...
    - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
      Yes, but that in no way implies that the method/means society adjusts it's behaviours/expectations will be desirable. One could even hypothesise that social media bubbles are the first step precisely in that direction.
  - wisty 9y ago
    You can already fake a political speech if you've got the resources. A look-alike and a good make-up artist can do a lot. The danger isn't a really good fake that can be discussed, but a high volume of OK fakes.
  - wruza 9y ago
    The question that concerns me more than Terminator- and Matrix-like scenarios is why we allow "the social media outrage machine" to exist in the first place. It is nothing more than a bunch of mostly uneducated opinions that create erratic views around the world of their M-sized subscriber sets. Maybe this new tech will force people to bet their credibility on what they say and spread.
- belorn 9y ago
  The truth can benefit greatly if the standard for fact checking changes. Media is not a great friend to truth, especially not when it conflict with either revenue or political direction. Just take the massive global interest in fact checking sites after the 2016 US election. It seems as a strong trend in competing with media for carrying the banner for truth, and the best part is that many such sites seems to have a non-partisan policy in stark contrast to most media out there. The loser don't seem to be the truth, but rather those who wish to use a few seconds of video with no context to push a point.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Trolls seem to be doing just fine. It's also cool to be a fact checker but if you think the fakers have lost then you're naive, they're stronger than ever.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  > The ultimate loser there is the truth, sadly. No, it will force the development of AI to detect whether things are fake or not. We'll soon be in an arms race as better-and-better AIs alternately try to fool or not be fooled. The people who are able to understand and wield these technologies will have incredible amounts of power over those who are not. This is one route to the singularity - to deal with the consequences of ML and AI advancements, you need to invest even more. This ever-increasing arms race sucks vast amounts of human and financial capital into the 'tech sphere'.
  - manicdee 9y ago
    Another option is that we will develop both cynicism about claims and care less about nudes/porn
  - dynofuz 9y ago
    a lot of this stuff is already generated using generative adversairal networks, so i think the AI to fool is just as good as the one thats trying not to be fooled by design.
  - prawn 9y ago
    I think we're already seeing a lot of cases where even AI to detect fakes will be irrelevant if the viewer wants to believe or ignore the alternative.
  - thomas_howland 9y ago
    That ignores the role of actual social networks and social proof in the construction of consensus reality. "Our" AI says it's real, and "your" AI says it's fake, and one can debate the margins - just as one debated whether it was metaphysically true that Clinton didn't have "sexual relations" with Lewinsky, or that Bush "lied" about Iraq.
- psergeant 9y ago
  I started pursuing a PhD application on this topic, speaking to a couple of potential supervisors, before losing interest. Ideas: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/multimedia-trust-and-certification https://github.com/pjlsergeant/multimedia-trust-and-certific...
- paulryanrogers 9y ago
  Did you mean "less falsifiable"?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- throwaway5752 9y ago
  It's horrible, people will have to have reputations, be careful about what they say, and consider who they trust again. It wasn't the good old days or anything, but that was how it worked for a while. There will be value in being a trustworthy source of information again.
- swyx 9y ago
  i often wonder if there is a way for people to put information on the blockchain so it -is- verifiable (you can post a public key to demonstrate that the information is from you). so that all public information is only official if its on the blockchain. soon enough people learn that they can't trust anything that is not on blockchain. of course, talk is cheap. i dont have the chops to actually spec this out.
  - Quiark 9y ago
    did you know you can make digital signatures without a blockchain
    - swyx 9y ago
      immutability/permanent record
      - Quiark 9y ago
        What do you mean? A change to digitally signed data can be detected immediately without any blockchain.
  - bschwindHN 9y ago
    Yeah and then someone puts something fake on the blockchain. Now what?
    - swyx 9y ago
      then it wouldnt be signed by them
      - bschwindHN 9y ago
        "Oh that porn video of me isn't signed. My signed porn videos are over there" How are you not seeing the obvious issues with your idea? People are not going to put compromising photos and videos on this blockchain because they are compromising. And yet some compromising photos and videos taken by other people are real. The fact that it's "on the blockchain" means basically nothing in this case. Other users who were discussing "hardware signing" are closer to a working system. This is not a problem for a blockchain to solve.
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  You could make a market out of tamper proof blockchained cameras?
defertoreptar 9y ago
Pretty much what happened with UFO photos, ghost photos, etc.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Why not both?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Eliezer 9y ago
I'd like to believe that, but I suspect that more likely would be that people believe the videos of their friends are fake and believe the videos of their enemies are real, pushing us further down the easy slope of polarization by giving it even more fodder to work with.

ekimekim 9y ago

We've already seen this with images and Photoshop. Society and their heuristics of belief will adjust as these new capabilities become widespread. What's more troubling is that as media becomes falsifiable, solid evidence of...well, anything, becomes hard to have. The ultimate loser there is the truth, sadly.

xarball 9y ago
This is where hardware signing comes into play.
pjc50 9y ago
Indeed. The worst use of this will be forged political speeches. What happens when you can fake any video of anyone saying anything and then feed it to the social media outrage machine?
- slededit 9y ago
  Its really not so different than it was prior to the advent of radio. By the time news reached you about what some politician said it had gone through multiple people and could be altered in any number of ways. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes through misunderstanding.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    I've suspected for a long time that much of what we know about history from written accounts is false.
    - cortesoft 9y ago
      This is a basic assumption historians take. They assume sources have biases and agendas, and try to figure out what is true. It isn't a perfect system, but no historian takes a source at face value.
- telesilla 9y ago
  As the parent noted, society will adjust expectations about how to determine facts. When radio first came along, some people were fooled that Orson Welles's War of the Worlds [1] was actually happening, because it was in the style of a news broadcast. We learn and adjust how to process data as systems change around us. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-r...
  - ACow_Adonis 9y ago
    Yes, but that in no way implies that the method/means society adjusts it's behaviours/expectations will be desirable. One could even hypothesise that social media bubbles are the first step precisely in that direction.
- wisty 9y ago
  You can already fake a political speech if you've got the resources. A look-alike and a good make-up artist can do a lot. The danger isn't a really good fake that can be discussed, but a high volume of OK fakes.
- wruza 9y ago
  The question that concerns me more than Terminator- and Matrix-like scenarios is why we allow "the social media outrage machine" to exist in the first place. It is nothing more than a bunch of mostly uneducated opinions that create erratic views around the world of their M-sized subscriber sets. Maybe this new tech will force people to bet their credibility on what they say and spread.
belorn 9y ago
The truth can benefit greatly if the standard for fact checking changes. Media is not a great friend to truth, especially not when it conflict with either revenue or political direction. Just take the massive global interest in fact checking sites after the 2016 US election. It seems as a strong trend in competing with media for carrying the banner for truth, and the best part is that many such sites seems to have a non-partisan policy in stark contrast to most media out there. The loser don't seem to be the truth, but rather those who wish to use a few seconds of video with no context to push a point.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Trolls seem to be doing just fine. It's also cool to be a fact checker but if you think the fakers have lost then you're naive, they're stronger than ever.
smallnamespace 9y ago
> The ultimate loser there is the truth, sadly. No, it will force the development of AI to detect whether things are fake or not. We'll soon be in an arms race as better-and-better AIs alternately try to fool or not be fooled. The people who are able to understand and wield these technologies will have incredible amounts of power over those who are not. This is one route to the singularity - to deal with the consequences of ML and AI advancements, you need to invest even more. This ever-increasing arms race sucks vast amounts of human and financial capital into the 'tech sphere'.
- manicdee 9y ago
  Another option is that we will develop both cynicism about claims and care less about nudes/porn
- dynofuz 9y ago
  a lot of this stuff is already generated using generative adversairal networks, so i think the AI to fool is just as good as the one thats trying not to be fooled by design.
- prawn 9y ago
  I think we're already seeing a lot of cases where even AI to detect fakes will be irrelevant if the viewer wants to believe or ignore the alternative.
- thomas_howland 9y ago
  That ignores the role of actual social networks and social proof in the construction of consensus reality. "Our" AI says it's real, and "your" AI says it's fake, and one can debate the margins - just as one debated whether it was metaphysically true that Clinton didn't have "sexual relations" with Lewinsky, or that Bush "lied" about Iraq.
psergeant 9y ago
I started pursuing a PhD application on this topic, speaking to a couple of potential supervisors, before losing interest. Ideas: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/multimedia-trust-and-certification https://github.com/pjlsergeant/multimedia-trust-and-certific...
paulryanrogers 9y ago
Did you mean "less falsifiable"?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway5752 9y ago
It's horrible, people will have to have reputations, be careful about what they say, and consider who they trust again. It wasn't the good old days or anything, but that was how it worked for a while. There will be value in being a trustworthy source of information again.
swyx 9y ago
i often wonder if there is a way for people to put information on the blockchain so it -is- verifiable (you can post a public key to demonstrate that the information is from you). so that all public information is only official if its on the blockchain. soon enough people learn that they can't trust anything that is not on blockchain. of course, talk is cheap. i dont have the chops to actually spec this out.
- Quiark 9y ago
  did you know you can make digital signatures without a blockchain
  - swyx 9y ago
    immutability/permanent record
    - Quiark 9y ago
      What do you mean? A change to digitally signed data can be detected immediately without any blockchain.
- bschwindHN 9y ago
  Yeah and then someone puts something fake on the blockchain. Now what?
  - swyx 9y ago
    then it wouldnt be signed by them
    - bschwindHN 9y ago
      "Oh that porn video of me isn't signed. My signed porn videos are over there" How are you not seeing the obvious issues with your idea? People are not going to put compromising photos and videos on this blockchain because they are compromising. And yet some compromising photos and videos taken by other people are real. The fact that it's "on the blockchain" means basically nothing in this case. Other users who were discussing "hardware signing" are closer to a working system. This is not a problem for a blockchain to solve.
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
You could make a market out of tamper proof blockchained cameras?

defertoreptar 9y ago

Pretty much what happened with UFO photos, ghost photos, etc.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Why not both?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Eliezer 9y ago

I'd like to believe that, but I suspect that more likely would be that people believe the videos of their friends are fake and believe the videos of their enemies are real, pushing us further down the easy slope of polarization by giving it even more fodder to work with.