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I find it quite funny, rather intruiging, that we seem to have gone full circle on trusted sources of information. Historically, a face-to-face meeting was cons

I find it quite funny, rather intruiging, that we seem to have gone full circle on trusted sources of information. Historically, a face-to-face meeting was considered as the ultimate legitimate and trustworthy way. Not story or rumors or witnessing, since the courts say people can be "decieved", "traumatised", etc. Then came microphones, cameras, CCTV in the 20th century, and then they became the ultimate trusted sources of information. And due to AI and it's rapidly increasing misuse by enormous conglomerates, it will be very soon when videos are never trusted but rather treated as comedic rumor and folklore, and we will go back again to how it always was. ...until replicants come. I'm saddened that there are actual "smart" people who waste their days to work on these malicious forms of AI, be it Google's almost entire arsenal, or anything. However, i'm not surprised they do, but it is still sad.

VMG 9y ago
There is and will be a place for strong crypto for trust, however probably not on standard commodity hardware.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  Crypto works for trust of computing systems - it can make some claims about the transformations of the captured data or about the integrity of the software handling these transformations, but it fundamentally can't make solid claims about reality that's supposedly being captured. You can't put crypto between reality and a sensor. At best, crypto can give you a statement like "something possessing the particular secret X claims to have sensed this data at this point of time" combined with "there's a device with secret X that has it's software/firmware integrity verified and signed by entity Y". Crypto can't ensure that the secrets on the device aren't actually leaked by the manufacturer to enable "verifying" of arbitrary data outside of that device, and there's always the option to simply ensure that the sensor "sees" what you want; a camera and all the crypto on it can't tell whether it's pointed at a real event, at a staged event, or at a sophisticated optical device projecting arbitrary photoshopped data.
rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
Your comment reminds me of a silly little graph I saw posted to reddit once, basically stating that the prevalence of things like miracles and witchcraft was high throughout human history until the development of the camera, where it stayed low until the development of Photoshop.
- emiliobumachar 9y ago
  Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1235/ https://xkcd.com/1235/ "In the last few years, with very little fanfare, we've conclusively settled the questions of flying saucers, lake monsters, ghosts, and Bigfoot."
- lawlessone 9y ago
  You would think the existence of Photoshop would make people even more skeptical.
  - rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
    Depends on the community. People are gullible enough on Facebook. I think seeing friends and family like or share a thing tends towards herd behavior. Whereas on, say, 4Chan, where users are generally anonymous and usually have no repercussions for their posts, everything remotely worthy of skepticism is “shopped”.
Santosh83 9y ago
> I'm saddened that there are actual "smart" people who waste their days to work on these malicious forms of AI, be it Google's almost entire arsenal, or anything. However, i'm not surprised they do, but it is still sad. Am sure the usual justification to apply salve to your conscience for this sort of activity is the trope that the 'bad guys' will do it anyway, so we need to do it before them to counter them and be the torch-bearer of liberty. The atom bomb was developed upon that fear and pretext. Compared to that AI is a fairly mild thing.
- merpnderp 9y ago
  Trope about bad guys? Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan worked hard to get the atom bomb. If the 'bad guys' had created it first, would the world be a better place?
  - nukeop 9y ago
    The bad guys _did_ get it first. If Germany or Japan developed it first, they would be sure to go down as the "good guys" in the history textbooks, and you'd be on hackernews wondering how awful it would be if the demonic United States of America developed it first.
    - merpnderp 9y ago
      This comment shows either an incredible ignorance of history or a pathological view of right and wrong. Nazi Germany was exterminating whole races in the millions. Imperial Japan was doing the same, averaging 100,000 dead Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese PER MONTH for over 8 years. Tokyo newspapers regularly published head counts for officers who were in head chopping contests of villagers in areas where the population needed to be suppressed. They would roll into a village and just start lining up people to cut off their heads. The Rape of Nanking by itself stands out as one of the most brutal events of the war. The US isn't perfect but to say it was the "bad guy" in the war isn't an argument supported by anyone's facts.
- edanm 9y ago
  Calling it a trope or a justification doesn't make it wrong.

VMG 9y ago

There is and will be a place for strong crypto for trust, however probably not on standard commodity hardware.

PeterisP 9y ago
Crypto works for trust of computing systems - it can make some claims about the transformations of the captured data or about the integrity of the software handling these transformations, but it fundamentally can't make solid claims about reality that's supposedly being captured. You can't put crypto between reality and a sensor. At best, crypto can give you a statement like "something possessing the particular secret X claims to have sensed this data at this point of time" combined with "there's a device with secret X that has it's software/firmware integrity verified and signed by entity Y". Crypto can't ensure that the secrets on the device aren't actually leaked by the manufacturer to enable "verifying" of arbitrary data outside of that device, and there's always the option to simply ensure that the sensor "sees" what you want; a camera and all the crypto on it can't tell whether it's pointed at a real event, at a staged event, or at a sophisticated optical device projecting arbitrary photoshopped data.

rm_-rf_slash 9y ago

Your comment reminds me of a silly little graph I saw posted to reddit once, basically stating that the prevalence of things like miracles and witchcraft was high throughout human history until the development of the camera, where it stayed low until the development of Photoshop.

emiliobumachar 9y ago
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1235/ https://xkcd.com/1235/ "In the last few years, with very little fanfare, we've conclusively settled the questions of flying saucers, lake monsters, ghosts, and Bigfoot."
lawlessone 9y ago
You would think the existence of Photoshop would make people even more skeptical.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y ago
  Depends on the community. People are gullible enough on Facebook. I think seeing friends and family like or share a thing tends towards herd behavior. Whereas on, say, 4Chan, where users are generally anonymous and usually have no repercussions for their posts, everything remotely worthy of skepticism is “shopped”.

Santosh83 9y ago

> I'm saddened that there are actual "smart" people who waste their days to work on these malicious forms of AI, be it Google's almost entire arsenal, or anything. However, i'm not surprised they do, but it is still sad. Am sure the usual justification to apply salve to your conscience for this sort of activity is the trope that the 'bad guys' will do it anyway, so we need to do it before them to counter them and be the torch-bearer of liberty. The atom bomb was developed upon that fear and pretext. Compared to that AI is a fairly mild thing.

merpnderp 9y ago
Trope about bad guys? Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan worked hard to get the atom bomb. If the 'bad guys' had created it first, would the world be a better place?
- nukeop 9y ago
  The bad guys _did_ get it first. If Germany or Japan developed it first, they would be sure to go down as the "good guys" in the history textbooks, and you'd be on hackernews wondering how awful it would be if the demonic United States of America developed it first.
  - merpnderp 9y ago
    This comment shows either an incredible ignorance of history or a pathological view of right and wrong. Nazi Germany was exterminating whole races in the millions. Imperial Japan was doing the same, averaging 100,000 dead Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese PER MONTH for over 8 years. Tokyo newspapers regularly published head counts for officers who were in head chopping contests of villagers in areas where the population needed to be suppressed. They would roll into a village and just start lining up people to cut off their heads. The Rape of Nanking by itself stands out as one of the most brutal events of the war. The US isn't perfect but to say it was the "bad guy" in the war isn't an argument supported by anyone's facts.
edanm 9y ago
Calling it a trope or a justification doesn't make it wrong.