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There will be a plethora of "Deepfake" apps for your pocket computer tomorrow. People will learn quickly not to trust video. They will have no choice because th

by lolc 9y ago

There will be a plethora of "Deepfake" apps for your pocket computer tomorrow. People will learn quickly not to trust video. They will have no choice because they don't want to fall for pranks. Humanity will stand through this.

rossdavidh 9y ago
My thought is that it is much like what to do about any new technological threat, for example too many calories or too much information or too many distractions while driving. Bad things happen, and after about a generation coping mechanisms get developed, and some people adopt them more successfully than others. One is reminded of how populations adapt to new diseases. One valid question, though, is whether or not the pace of introducing new technological threats to society has increased, such that we see something less like the Old World adaptation to the Black Death or malaria, and something more like the New World indigenous populations failure to adapt to getting all the Old World diseases introduced one after the other in quick succession.
- lolc 9y ago
  We're able to distinguish entertainment "fake" video from "real" video in our minds. The separation is not clear-cut, and fictional movies affect our thinking about real events. So I understand the concern. But faking video is not a new invention. It's happened before and in a way I welcome the broad availability of faking-tools to inoculate against the fakes that have been with us since video existed. Now everybody will know that videos can be faked.
  - baq 9y ago
    Now everybody will be able to create convincing fakes. That's not continuous progress, that's a phase change.
    - lolc 9y ago
      I'm sure the same line of argument was made when desktop printers became abundant.
      - baq 9y ago
        there's a reason photoshop won't work with scans of currency.
  - eric_h 9y ago
    > fictional movies affect our thinking about real events A creative writing instructor of mine many years ago told a story about watching Saving Private Ryan with his grandfather, who was on the beach at Normandy for the invasion depicted in that movie. Watching the fictional movie had a profound emotional impact on him (driving him to tears) in a way that actual footage of the Normandy invasion never did. His point was that the power of fiction can be much greater than the power of fact. His take wasn't that this was a bad thing (it was a creative writing course, after all), but that fiction in service of the truth is a powerful tool and a useful one. Of course we didn't get into the power of fiction in service of misinformation, but this predated the current scourge of misinformation by about a decade and a half.
baq 9y ago
> Humanity will stand through this. Or not. What if the Great Filter isn't a nuclear war but collapse of ability to tell truth from falsehood? To tell reality from fake images and videos?
- lolc 9y ago
  We've managed so far! Try to follow the war in Syria for a little bit and you will find that people can fake video just fine even in a warzone. They don't need "Deepfake". Even presidents of nation-states want to believe those fakes. Nothing new under the sun. We had verification problems since video existed: - When was that video taken? - Where was that video taken? - Are the objects in the video what they seem to be? - Is the people in the video the people we think they are? - Is the video grainy because it's a shit camera? - Which of the possibly conflicting interpretations is right? - Why is only this angle published when we know the event was filmed from another?
zuminator 9y ago
I think you overestimate people. We DO want to be pranked. We want to believe powdered rhino horn will cure impotence, we want to believe the Moon landings were faked, we want to believe in that Florida property we purchased sight unseen, we want to believe our grandparents are in the afterlife. And we will damn sure want to believe in videos of despised evil politicians biting the heads off fetuses they ripped out of the womb with their bare hands. In some respects lies are easier to believe than the truth because they don't rely on facts at all.

by lolc 9y ago

rossdavidh 9y ago

My thought is that it is much like what to do about any new technological threat, for example too many calories or too much information or too many distractions while driving. Bad things happen, and after about a generation coping mechanisms get developed, and some people adopt them more successfully than others. One is reminded of how populations adapt to new diseases. One valid question, though, is whether or not the pace of introducing new technological threats to society has increased, such that we see something less like the Old World adaptation to the Black Death or malaria, and something more like the New World indigenous populations failure to adapt to getting all the Old World diseases introduced one after the other in quick succession.

lolc 9y ago
We're able to distinguish entertainment "fake" video from "real" video in our minds. The separation is not clear-cut, and fictional movies affect our thinking about real events. So I understand the concern. But faking video is not a new invention. It's happened before and in a way I welcome the broad availability of faking-tools to inoculate against the fakes that have been with us since video existed. Now everybody will know that videos can be faked.
- baq 9y ago
  Now everybody will be able to create convincing fakes. That's not continuous progress, that's a phase change.
  - lolc 9y ago
    I'm sure the same line of argument was made when desktop printers became abundant.
    - baq 9y ago
      there's a reason photoshop won't work with scans of currency.
- eric_h 9y ago
  > fictional movies affect our thinking about real events A creative writing instructor of mine many years ago told a story about watching Saving Private Ryan with his grandfather, who was on the beach at Normandy for the invasion depicted in that movie. Watching the fictional movie had a profound emotional impact on him (driving him to tears) in a way that actual footage of the Normandy invasion never did. His point was that the power of fiction can be much greater than the power of fact. His take wasn't that this was a bad thing (it was a creative writing course, after all), but that fiction in service of the truth is a powerful tool and a useful one. Of course we didn't get into the power of fiction in service of misinformation, but this predated the current scourge of misinformation by about a decade and a half.

baq 9y ago

> Humanity will stand through this. Or not. What if the Great Filter isn't a nuclear war but collapse of ability to tell truth from falsehood? To tell reality from fake images and videos?

lolc 9y ago
We've managed so far! Try to follow the war in Syria for a little bit and you will find that people can fake video just fine even in a warzone. They don't need "Deepfake". Even presidents of nation-states want to believe those fakes. Nothing new under the sun. We had verification problems since video existed: - When was that video taken? - Where was that video taken? - Are the objects in the video what they seem to be? - Is the people in the video the people we think they are? - Is the video grainy because it's a shit camera? - Which of the possibly conflicting interpretations is right? - Why is only this angle published when we know the event was filmed from another?

zuminator 9y ago

I think you overestimate people. We DO want to be pranked. We want to believe powdered rhino horn will cure impotence, we want to believe the Moon landings were faked, we want to believe in that Florida property we purchased sight unseen, we want to believe our grandparents are in the afterlife. And we will damn sure want to believe in videos of despised evil politicians biting the heads off fetuses they ripped out of the womb with their bare hands. In some respects lies are easier to believe than the truth because they don't rely on facts at all.