4 ms·

Personally I think the whole reaction to deepfakes is overblown, and makes luddites out of otherwise reasonable people. If it were to become common, society wo

by donatj 7y ago

Personally I think the whole reaction to deepfakes is overblown, and makes luddites out of otherwise reasonable people. If it were to become common, society would quickly learn to take all video with a grain of salt. We already question suspicious images. If the exact line of how a photo got to you from the camera is unknown people quickly exclaim things to be Photoshopped. I don’t think expanding our questioning to video is that far of a societal jump.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
Wasn't there an issue recently of the POTUS tweeting an obviously fake and doctored photo to his followers? I don't think that group responded with skepticism. Making a more convincing fake would be even more psychologically satisfying for people. As it gets better it's harder and harder to disprove it as being fake and people will be more willing to take the easy path and accept it. After all, people still accept incriminating photos as evidence.
- Bakary 7y ago
  It doesn't really matter at this point since the underlying problem is absolute loyalty to a particular cause or person.
  - Retra 7y ago
    That loyalty is built on the back of misinformation, and is strengthened by presenting your opponents in compromising positions. Deepfakes would reinforce this, so they are not an orthogonal issue.
    - Bakary 7y ago
      There's a two way feedback at hand. Disinformation does affect people greatly but those it affects were already receptive to its message and looking for more. The neo-liberal, "humanist", The Economist-style view assumes it's just temporary/fixable insanity and that they would come back to the "rational" view of the world if they were better educated. In reality, the people who follow populist movements are both firmly in the grasp of illusory ideas and hold a very lucid understanding of their place in the world. They are riled up by fiery rhetoric but they are also well aware, whether consciously or not, that they have little to gain from a return to the neo-liberal order in which they have no useful economic role, no community (whether real or imaginary) to come back to, no access to the wonders of a globalization, and no real cause or culture to believe in other than competing against their neighbors for a slightly better place in the rat race. In San Francisco you can see the end logic of this trajectory. An elite with highly paid and satisfying jobs served by a pauperized underclass of Uber drivers and mini-job holders who only have a crumbling public infrastructure to support them and no prospect of being a socially engaged citizenry.
      - Retra 7y ago
        >Disinformation does affect people greatly but those it affects were already receptive to its message and looking for more. My point is that its effects are more pronounced, more reliable, and significantly harder to correct in the presence deepfake style media. People who are trying harder to make honest evaluations of the world will be making more committed arguments for dishonest points if they fail to identify the inauthenticity of a deepfake message, a problem which is purposefully more likely due to the inherent design of a deepfake message. We don't need to talk about people who are intending to be manipulated, we need to talk about the people who are not intending to be manipulated who will nevertheless be disarmed by new technology.
      - someguydave 7y ago
        A cynic might say that the very same SF elite desire more brown third-world immigrants in order to ensure that their pauperized underclass doesn't look like them. People don't like to be reminded of the downward mobility of people who look like themselves.
- the_gastropod 7y ago
  There have been at least two cases where the president has tweeted altered videos: 1. Showing Jim Acosta "karate chop" a Whitehouse intern (a few frames removed from the video to turn the lowering of an arm into a violent "chop" 2. A slowed down video of Nancy Pelosi speaking, to make her sound drunk / mentally incapacitated. Deep Fakes or not, I think people are largely already comfortable with questioning the authenticity of videos.
- otakucode 7y ago
  The solution was already known decades ago. Rene Magritte illustrated it well with his painting 'The Treachery of Images.' You've probably seen it. It's the one with the image of a pipe with the phrase, in French, below it saying "This is not a pipe." Images are not reality, and society has yet to grasp that distinction despite the pervasiveness of images and how long they've been around. No amount of effort will ever make images into reality, nor reality as harmless as images. People do wish for, and maybe not unreasonably so, the ability to trust their eyes and initial perceptions. They want the picture they see on a screen and perform significant acts of interpretation upon to reach some belief that it represents something that happened in reality to be proven correct. But it almost never is. The difficulty of communicating with images is just as large as communication with language, it's just not acknowledged when images are involved.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    That's not a solution though. That's something that would work if it could be used, but it won't, like saying the solution to having a cough being "well, just stop breathing". That's not how people are. Fake photos have been around since the Cottingley Fairies and we haven't adjusted at all, I don't think society will.
    - otakucode 7y ago
      I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "That's not a solution." I didn't really propose a solution, except perhaps implying that people generally accepting that they can't trust images without hesitation would improve things. I mentioned that communication via images is as difficult as communication via language, and we will always have to deal with the problem that sometimes the attempted communication is deceptive. The Magritte painting that I refer to isn't photorealistic, so what he was getting at wasn't really a prompt to doubt the reality of images, but a maybe subtler point that images and reality, even undoctored photographs or videos of reality, are fundamentally and profoundly different things. The 'treachery' of images is that our intuition tells us the exact opposite. We have a long history of putting our intuition to the side when it's really necessary, so I do think there's a possibility that people could come to see images and reality as more distinct than they currently do. I didn't mean to suggest that we should totally dismiss every image, that really wouldn't be any kind of solution, but simply change how much inherent weight we believe they carry. The language people use when they talk about imagery, constantly conflating images with the things they represent, tricks an awful lot of people in an awful lot of circumstances.
bliblah 7y ago
>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/23/faked-pelosi-videos-slowed-make-her-appear-drunk-spread-across-social-media/?utm_term=.df92eb124cc2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/23/faked-p... This just happened a few days ago and it was basic alterations and despite being authenticated as an altered video there are still those who: -Deny it was altered -Spread it for the sole purpose of misinformation People will weaponize this technology like they do all others and gladly welcome it with open arms. We simply need to develop ways to identify and prevent abuse of powers.

by donatj 7y ago

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

Wasn't there an issue recently of the POTUS tweeting an obviously fake and doctored photo to his followers? I don't think that group responded with skepticism. Making a more convincing fake would be even more psychologically satisfying for people. As it gets better it's harder and harder to disprove it as being fake and people will be more willing to take the easy path and accept it. After all, people still accept incriminating photos as evidence.

Bakary 7y ago
It doesn't really matter at this point since the underlying problem is absolute loyalty to a particular cause or person.
- Retra 7y ago
  That loyalty is built on the back of misinformation, and is strengthened by presenting your opponents in compromising positions. Deepfakes would reinforce this, so they are not an orthogonal issue.
  - Bakary 7y ago
    There's a two way feedback at hand. Disinformation does affect people greatly but those it affects were already receptive to its message and looking for more. The neo-liberal, "humanist", The Economist-style view assumes it's just temporary/fixable insanity and that they would come back to the "rational" view of the world if they were better educated. In reality, the people who follow populist movements are both firmly in the grasp of illusory ideas and hold a very lucid understanding of their place in the world. They are riled up by fiery rhetoric but they are also well aware, whether consciously or not, that they have little to gain from a return to the neo-liberal order in which they have no useful economic role, no community (whether real or imaginary) to come back to, no access to the wonders of a globalization, and no real cause or culture to believe in other than competing against their neighbors for a slightly better place in the rat race. In San Francisco you can see the end logic of this trajectory. An elite with highly paid and satisfying jobs served by a pauperized underclass of Uber drivers and mini-job holders who only have a crumbling public infrastructure to support them and no prospect of being a socially engaged citizenry.
    - Retra 7y ago
      >Disinformation does affect people greatly but those it affects were already receptive to its message and looking for more. My point is that its effects are more pronounced, more reliable, and significantly harder to correct in the presence deepfake style media. People who are trying harder to make honest evaluations of the world will be making more committed arguments for dishonest points if they fail to identify the inauthenticity of a deepfake message, a problem which is purposefully more likely due to the inherent design of a deepfake message. We don't need to talk about people who are intending to be manipulated, we need to talk about the people who are not intending to be manipulated who will nevertheless be disarmed by new technology.
    - someguydave 7y ago
      A cynic might say that the very same SF elite desire more brown third-world immigrants in order to ensure that their pauperized underclass doesn't look like them. People don't like to be reminded of the downward mobility of people who look like themselves.
the_gastropod 7y ago
There have been at least two cases where the president has tweeted altered videos: 1. Showing Jim Acosta "karate chop" a Whitehouse intern (a few frames removed from the video to turn the lowering of an arm into a violent "chop" 2. A slowed down video of Nancy Pelosi speaking, to make her sound drunk / mentally incapacitated. Deep Fakes or not, I think people are largely already comfortable with questioning the authenticity of videos.
otakucode 7y ago
The solution was already known decades ago. Rene Magritte illustrated it well with his painting 'The Treachery of Images.' You've probably seen it. It's the one with the image of a pipe with the phrase, in French, below it saying "This is not a pipe." Images are not reality, and society has yet to grasp that distinction despite the pervasiveness of images and how long they've been around. No amount of effort will ever make images into reality, nor reality as harmless as images. People do wish for, and maybe not unreasonably so, the ability to trust their eyes and initial perceptions. They want the picture they see on a screen and perform significant acts of interpretation upon to reach some belief that it represents something that happened in reality to be proven correct. But it almost never is. The difficulty of communicating with images is just as large as communication with language, it's just not acknowledged when images are involved.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  That's not a solution though. That's something that would work if it could be used, but it won't, like saying the solution to having a cough being "well, just stop breathing". That's not how people are. Fake photos have been around since the Cottingley Fairies and we haven't adjusted at all, I don't think society will.
  - otakucode 7y ago
    I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "That's not a solution." I didn't really propose a solution, except perhaps implying that people generally accepting that they can't trust images without hesitation would improve things. I mentioned that communication via images is as difficult as communication via language, and we will always have to deal with the problem that sometimes the attempted communication is deceptive. The Magritte painting that I refer to isn't photorealistic, so what he was getting at wasn't really a prompt to doubt the reality of images, but a maybe subtler point that images and reality, even undoctored photographs or videos of reality, are fundamentally and profoundly different things. The 'treachery' of images is that our intuition tells us the exact opposite. We have a long history of putting our intuition to the side when it's really necessary, so I do think there's a possibility that people could come to see images and reality as more distinct than they currently do. I didn't mean to suggest that we should totally dismiss every image, that really wouldn't be any kind of solution, but simply change how much inherent weight we believe they carry. The language people use when they talk about imagery, constantly conflating images with the things they represent, tricks an awful lot of people in an awful lot of circumstances.

bliblah 7y ago

>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/23/faked-pelosi-videos-slowed-make-her-appear-drunk-spread-across-social-media/?utm_term=.df92eb124cc2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/23/faked-p... This just happened a few days ago and it was basic alterations and despite being authenticated as an altered video there are still those who: -Deny it was altered -Spread it for the sole purpose of misinformation People will weaponize this technology like they do all others and gladly welcome it with open arms. We simply need to develop ways to identify and prevent abuse of powers.