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Great satire, but sadly too late. The people who worked on deep-fakes, DALL-E and the likes of it won't stop and delete their products. Instead, evidence will b

by tgv 4y ago

Great satire, but sadly too late. The people who worked on deep-fakes, DALL-E and the likes of it won't stop and delete their products. Instead, evidence will be harder and harder to trust, until we've got a zero-trust society, in which the most manipulative party wins. In today's world, that would be Putin. Isn't it wonderful when AI developers have no sense of ethics?

viknesh 4y ago
That's not how technology works. Unless you want the world to hide & censor the information on how to make similar models, the data exists for anybody with sufficiently powerful computer resources to make similar models. The only thing that hiding away this tech would do is restrict access to well-funded attackers, which seems worse than the current situation.
317070 4y ago
As I am accused of having no sense of ethics. Evidence has always been hard to trust, we should have had a zero-trust society for a lot longer. But because of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect and our trust in the unreasonable effectiveness of journalism, we find the USA fighting wars disheveling millions over weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Nothing has really changed, it only became easier to automate what was already there before.
- williamtrask 4y ago
  A “zero-trust society” seems like a dangerous phrase to advocate. Society exists because of trust in institutions.
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Actually its a spectrum, there are high trust and low trust societies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404IeUzGNZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404IeUzGNZ4
    - williamtrask 4y ago
      I agree with you, but no society functions at the “0” end of that spectrum. That’s anarchy. Even Mad Max / Book of Eli level dystopia still had nonzero trust in local warlords as institutions.
    - ciphol 4y ago
      The example given of a high trust society is Finland. The example given of a low trust society is Afghanistan. [1] Which would you rather live in? https://theconversation.com/trusting-societies-are-overall-happier-a-happiness-expert-explains-why-177803 https://theconversation.com/trusting-societies-are-overall-h...
      - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
        Finland is not one high trust society. Its two. They almost had a civil war back then when the sovjets nearly invaded and society split in two high trust societies (left - stalin collaborateurs) and right (finland patriots). There are still towns were the sides do not shop in the same super market.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > A "zero-trust society" seems like a dangerous phrase to advocate. Thatcher and Reagan were a long way ahead there. They trusted institutions so little, particularly government, that they declared society doesn't exist. We've been trying to rebuild "society" since the 1980s. Sadly the restoration our very human institutions, if it can be done at all, may only occur after all the painful lessons have been learned from thinking we can install crypto-cybernetic overlords as our servants.
- tgv 4y ago
  > ... we find the USA fighting wars disheveling millions over weapons of mass destruction that never existed. This violates all forms of acceptable reasoning. > Nothing has really changed, it only became easier to automate what was already there before. But even if we would accept that kind of reasoning, your excuse is that it will cause the same problems, but faster? I don't get your position. I really don't get it.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Isn't it wonderful when AI developers have no sense of ethics? I'm not sure that's true. It's a subject I am curiously investigating, along with what really constitutes ethics in our technological milieu. Look at it like this; if a technology exists, people having exposure to it, thus adapting their world-view, would be better than a powerful few having secret access to it. Proliferation versus strategic limitation of technologies is a hard problem. Think about gun control. Don't forget, computers and the internet were developed primarily by the military. What did we expect to happen when we put the fruits of billion dollar defence budget into the hands of every man, woman and child on Earth? Perhaps the outcome is a levelled playing field that massively subtracts from the power and importance of mass and social media. A "zero trust" world may restore focus to human relationships and attachment needs, and ultimately cause a total cultural rejection of "AI" in all its manifest forms.
Joeri 4y ago
To a large degree we can solve this with a data provenance infrastructure. It should be possible to have every step in the chain cryptographically sign images, video, audio and documents in a way that it can be proven no AI meddling has occurred. For an iphone it would not be a big leap to have the hardware sign video directly through the secure enclave. How you combine that with data privacy though, I have no clue.

by tgv 4y ago

viknesh 4y ago

That's not how technology works. Unless you want the world to hide & censor the information on how to make similar models, the data exists for anybody with sufficiently powerful computer resources to make similar models. The only thing that hiding away this tech would do is restrict access to well-funded attackers, which seems worse than the current situation.

317070 4y ago

As I am accused of having no sense of ethics. Evidence has always been hard to trust, we should have had a zero-trust society for a lot longer. But because of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect and our trust in the unreasonable effectiveness of journalism, we find the USA fighting wars disheveling millions over weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Nothing has really changed, it only became easier to automate what was already there before.

williamtrask 4y ago
A “zero-trust society” seems like a dangerous phrase to advocate. Society exists because of trust in institutions.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Actually its a spectrum, there are high trust and low trust societies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404IeUzGNZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=404IeUzGNZ4
  - williamtrask 4y ago
    I agree with you, but no society functions at the “0” end of that spectrum. That’s anarchy. Even Mad Max / Book of Eli level dystopia still had nonzero trust in local warlords as institutions.
  - ciphol 4y ago
    The example given of a high trust society is Finland. The example given of a low trust society is Afghanistan. [1] Which would you rather live in? https://theconversation.com/trusting-societies-are-overall-happier-a-happiness-expert-explains-why-177803 https://theconversation.com/trusting-societies-are-overall-h...
    - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
      Finland is not one high trust society. Its two. They almost had a civil war back then when the sovjets nearly invaded and society split in two high trust societies (left - stalin collaborateurs) and right (finland patriots). There are still towns were the sides do not shop in the same super market.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > A "zero-trust society" seems like a dangerous phrase to advocate. Thatcher and Reagan were a long way ahead there. They trusted institutions so little, particularly government, that they declared society doesn't exist. We've been trying to rebuild "society" since the 1980s. Sadly the restoration our very human institutions, if it can be done at all, may only occur after all the painful lessons have been learned from thinking we can install crypto-cybernetic overlords as our servants.
tgv 4y ago
> ... we find the USA fighting wars disheveling millions over weapons of mass destruction that never existed. This violates all forms of acceptable reasoning. > Nothing has really changed, it only became easier to automate what was already there before. But even if we would accept that kind of reasoning, your excuse is that it will cause the same problems, but faster? I don't get your position. I really don't get it.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

> Isn't it wonderful when AI developers have no sense of ethics? I'm not sure that's true. It's a subject I am curiously investigating, along with what really constitutes ethics in our technological milieu. Look at it like this; if a technology exists, people having exposure to it, thus adapting their world-view, would be better than a powerful few having secret access to it. Proliferation versus strategic limitation of technologies is a hard problem. Think about gun control. Don't forget, computers and the internet were developed primarily by the military. What did we expect to happen when we put the fruits of billion dollar defence budget into the hands of every man, woman and child on Earth? Perhaps the outcome is a levelled playing field that massively subtracts from the power and importance of mass and social media. A "zero trust" world may restore focus to human relationships and attachment needs, and ultimately cause a total cultural rejection of "AI" in all its manifest forms.

Joeri 4y ago

To a large degree we can solve this with a data provenance infrastructure. It should be possible to have every step in the chain cryptographically sign images, video, audio and documents in a way that it can be proven no AI meddling has occurred. For an iphone it would not be a big leap to have the hardware sign video directly through the secure enclave. How you combine that with data privacy though, I have no clue.