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Again and again I am astonished that people without ethics exist, that they are confident in what they are doing and that they appear to be completely unable to

Again and again I am astonished that people without ethics exist, that they are confident in what they are doing and that they appear to be completely unable to reflect upon their actions. They just don't care and appear to be proud of it. If this is used to scam old people out of their belongings then you really have to question your actions and imho bear some responsibility. Was it worth it? Do the positive uses outweigh their negatives? They use examples of misuse of technology as if that would free them of any guilt. As if previous errors would allow them to do anything because greater mistakes were made. You are not, of course, completely responsible for the actions others take but if you create something you have to keep in mind bad actors exist. You can't just close your eyes if your actions lead to a strictly worse world. Old people scammed out of their savings are real people and it is real pain. I can't imagine the desperation and the helplessness following that. It really makes me angry how someone can ignore so much pain and not even engage in an argument whether it's the right thing to do.

junofan 4y ago
I can already fire off emails and text messages claiming to be whomever I want. I can even hire impersonators and lookalikes. I don’t get the big push against these newer technologies.
- fps_doug 4y ago
  You're exactly proving the point GP makes, good job.
  - pc86 4y ago
    No they're not and this flippant dismissal is so intellectually lazy. The ability to scam people exists and isn't going away. People went town to town in covered wagons selling bullshit. People scammed others out of money centuries before that. The answer isn't pearl-clutching nonsense about how this technology is so different and so morally reprehensible compared to everything else. The answer is education. If someone shows up at your door and sells you a bottle of water that will cure all your ills for $100 then skips town, most people would see it as your fault for being so gullible. Someday there will be some technological or social way to easily differentiate deep fakes from real video the same way you can with photoshopped images today.
    - _djo_ 4y ago
      We're steadily breaking down all mechanisms that ordinary people can use to trust information they're getting, such as getting a video call from a member of their family and recognising the face and voice. All previous scams relied on con artists using various means to pretend to either be trustworthy in their own right despite being strangers or as representing some trustworthy institution. But having people being able to act as your family members is a whole other issue. You can't claim that this is no different from other scams.
      - elondaits 4y ago
        In Argentina they’ve been scamming people by pretending to be a relative for years now! No AI required. Somebody calls you in the middle of night, distraught, and crying says “mom?” or “dad?”. Then someone interrupts, claims your son or daughter has been abducted (by now you probably have given them their name when responding to the initial plea) and requests money to be dropped at some location where a motorcycle picks it up. They make you stay on the line so you can’t call the cops nor the allegedly abducted person. These calls usually are made from prison, with an outside accomplice. They are rarely caught. People are sleepy, and concerned, and swear the voice they heard was the one of their child. Another no-ai popular scam is done by stealing a WhatsApp account (e.g. by cloning the sim), and then contacting a friend or relative asking for a quick cash transfer for something urgent, to be returned the next day. Deepfakes might make these scams more believable, but the core causes of the issue and the solutions have not changed.
        _djo_ 4y ago
        That sort of scam has been possible, sure, but it depends on both the person being phoned being startled and half asleep, and unable to reach the person or someone else near them in subsequent calls. You're right that I shouldn't have been so absolutist in saying 'all' previous scams, but this is an edge case that doesn't equate to what's becoming possible with real time deep fakes. What this sort of tech is enabling is scamming where even someone who is fully awake and is probably quite aware and not normally prone to scamming can nonetheless be tricked by a video call. It's taking us to a point where the only safe way to trust that the person you're speaking to is definitely who they say they are, in all circumstances, is to do it in person. Something not possible for people living far from their other family members. Do you not see how fundamentally this breaks the trust models we have built over the past few decades?
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  I can already walk to work. I don't see how a car would make any difference.
- kderbyma 4y ago
  And you do and its just as effective??? wow you are a pretty aweful person.
- lm28469 4y ago
  "I'll die at some point so why don't you stab me now"
mihaic 4y ago
Agree, I've come to believe that social ethics is something that needs to be indoctrinated from an early age, otherwise it can't naturally be developed in many people.
- tremon 4y ago
  At one point we tried to teach "good citizenship" at schools (and in most of Europe, we still do). Then the unethical people started claiming that schools were brainwashing their children, and here we are.
- IdiocyInAction 4y ago
  A lot of nasty ideologues that caused massive suffering also believed that
  - mihaic 4y ago
    Sure, because it's such a powerful technique for shaping society. Are you saying we should stop using it because it can be abused for evil? :)
- tomjen3 4y ago
  If you need to indoctrinate somebody with a certain belief from an early age, then your belief must be so poor that it cannot be used to convince adults, so how can such an action be justified?
  - mihaic 4y ago
    Do you assume most adults are rational in their decision-making process and are convinced by arguments? I'm mostly seeing the opposite in practice, and that indoctrination seems merely necessary to balance things out.
    - tomjen3 4y ago
      I assume that anybody who needs to indoctrinate people into their believes has believes that they cannot justify rationally.
specialist 4y ago
> ...astonished that people without ethics exist "Moral intelligence" (or "MQ") and "moral cripples". ...are my provisional terms for talking about this.
Veen 4y ago
What's as worrying, judging by the comments here and in that GitHub thread, is that there is no correlation between technical ability and ethical understanding. Perhaps naively, I'd have thought someone intelligent enough to develop a technology like this would also be intelligent enough to understand the complex ethical issues it raises. It seems, unfortunately, that there is no such correlation. In fact, anecdotally, it seems the people with the technical ability are least likely to have a nuanced understanding of the ethical impact of their work (or, more optimistically, it's only people with the conjunction of technical ability and ethical idiocy who would work on this, and we're not seeing all the capable people who choose not to). Also, what's with all the people in this thread coming up with implausible edge cases in which deep fake tech could be used ethically to justify a technology that will very obviously be used unethically in the vast majority of cases? It's almost useless for anything except deception—it is intrinsically deceptive. All the 'yeah but cars kill people so should we ban all cars?' comments miss the obvious point that cars are extremely useful, so we accept the relatively small negatives. The ethical balance is the other way around for deep fake tech. It's almost entirely harmful, with some small use cases that might arguably be valuable to someone.
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Guided missiles, misguided men.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Perhaps naively, I'd have thought someone intelligent enough to develop a technology like this would also be intelligent enough to understand the complex ethical issues it raises. It seems, unfortunately, that there is no such correlation. Correct. There is a tendency to think that because a person is exceptionally intelligent or skilled in one area, they must also be intelligent in other areas. It's simply not the case. An expert is authoritative in the areas of their expertise, but outside of those, their opinions are no more likely to be correct than anyone else's. This error is often leveraged in persuasion campaigns -- thinking that, for instance, a brilliant physicist's opinions on social policies are more likely to be accurate than any random person on the street.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
I don't understand why you're astonished? Psychopaths are all around us, from corporate "leadership" to government lobbyists to fake reviewers on Amazon and the App Store. Confidence men (and women!) have existed since the dawn of time. From selling "snake oil," to 419 scams, to "Microsoft" computer support, technology has only ever aided the process of helping psychopaths find victims. Talent and technical ability are orthogonal to empathy. Always has been; always will be. This deepfake stuff is a difference in degree, not kind, and once these people figure out how to use AI to help them, everyone is going to have to level up their defenses all over again. You ain't seen nothing yet.
mansoon 4y ago
These people are successful.

junofan 4y ago

I can already fire off emails and text messages claiming to be whomever I want. I can even hire impersonators and lookalikes. I don’t get the big push against these newer technologies.

fps_doug 4y ago
You're exactly proving the point GP makes, good job.
- pc86 4y ago
  No they're not and this flippant dismissal is so intellectually lazy. The ability to scam people exists and isn't going away. People went town to town in covered wagons selling bullshit. People scammed others out of money centuries before that. The answer isn't pearl-clutching nonsense about how this technology is so different and so morally reprehensible compared to everything else. The answer is education. If someone shows up at your door and sells you a bottle of water that will cure all your ills for $100 then skips town, most people would see it as your fault for being so gullible. Someday there will be some technological or social way to easily differentiate deep fakes from real video the same way you can with photoshopped images today.
  - _djo_ 4y ago
    We're steadily breaking down all mechanisms that ordinary people can use to trust information they're getting, such as getting a video call from a member of their family and recognising the face and voice. All previous scams relied on con artists using various means to pretend to either be trustworthy in their own right despite being strangers or as representing some trustworthy institution. But having people being able to act as your family members is a whole other issue. You can't claim that this is no different from other scams.
    - elondaits 4y ago
      In Argentina they’ve been scamming people by pretending to be a relative for years now! No AI required. Somebody calls you in the middle of night, distraught, and crying says “mom?” or “dad?”. Then someone interrupts, claims your son or daughter has been abducted (by now you probably have given them their name when responding to the initial plea) and requests money to be dropped at some location where a motorcycle picks it up. They make you stay on the line so you can’t call the cops nor the allegedly abducted person. These calls usually are made from prison, with an outside accomplice. They are rarely caught. People are sleepy, and concerned, and swear the voice they heard was the one of their child. Another no-ai popular scam is done by stealing a WhatsApp account (e.g. by cloning the sim), and then contacting a friend or relative asking for a quick cash transfer for something urgent, to be returned the next day. Deepfakes might make these scams more believable, but the core causes of the issue and the solutions have not changed.
      - _djo_ 4y ago
        That sort of scam has been possible, sure, but it depends on both the person being phoned being startled and half asleep, and unable to reach the person or someone else near them in subsequent calls. You're right that I shouldn't have been so absolutist in saying 'all' previous scams, but this is an edge case that doesn't equate to what's becoming possible with real time deep fakes. What this sort of tech is enabling is scamming where even someone who is fully awake and is probably quite aware and not normally prone to scamming can nonetheless be tricked by a video call. It's taking us to a point where the only safe way to trust that the person you're speaking to is definitely who they say they are, in all circumstances, is to do it in person. Something not possible for people living far from their other family members. Do you not see how fundamentally this breaks the trust models we have built over the past few decades?
SantalBlush 4y ago
I can already walk to work. I don't see how a car would make any difference.
kderbyma 4y ago
And you do and its just as effective??? wow you are a pretty aweful person.
lm28469 4y ago
"I'll die at some point so why don't you stab me now"

mihaic 4y ago

Agree, I've come to believe that social ethics is something that needs to be indoctrinated from an early age, otherwise it can't naturally be developed in many people.

tremon 4y ago
At one point we tried to teach "good citizenship" at schools (and in most of Europe, we still do). Then the unethical people started claiming that schools were brainwashing their children, and here we are.
IdiocyInAction 4y ago
A lot of nasty ideologues that caused massive suffering also believed that
- mihaic 4y ago
  Sure, because it's such a powerful technique for shaping society. Are you saying we should stop using it because it can be abused for evil? :)
tomjen3 4y ago
If you need to indoctrinate somebody with a certain belief from an early age, then your belief must be so poor that it cannot be used to convince adults, so how can such an action be justified?
- mihaic 4y ago
  Do you assume most adults are rational in their decision-making process and are convinced by arguments? I'm mostly seeing the opposite in practice, and that indoctrination seems merely necessary to balance things out.
  - tomjen3 4y ago
    I assume that anybody who needs to indoctrinate people into their believes has believes that they cannot justify rationally.

specialist 4y ago

> ...astonished that people without ethics exist "Moral intelligence" (or "MQ") and "moral cripples". ...are my provisional terms for talking about this.

Veen 4y ago

What's as worrying, judging by the comments here and in that GitHub thread, is that there is no correlation between technical ability and ethical understanding. Perhaps naively, I'd have thought someone intelligent enough to develop a technology like this would also be intelligent enough to understand the complex ethical issues it raises. It seems, unfortunately, that there is no such correlation. In fact, anecdotally, it seems the people with the technical ability are least likely to have a nuanced understanding of the ethical impact of their work (or, more optimistically, it's only people with the conjunction of technical ability and ethical idiocy who would work on this, and we're not seeing all the capable people who choose not to). Also, what's with all the people in this thread coming up with implausible edge cases in which deep fake tech could be used ethically to justify a technology that will very obviously be used unethically in the vast majority of cases? It's almost useless for anything except deception—it is intrinsically deceptive. All the 'yeah but cars kill people so should we ban all cars?' comments miss the obvious point that cars are extremely useful, so we accept the relatively small negatives. The ethical balance is the other way around for deep fake tech. It's almost entirely harmful, with some small use cases that might arguably be valuable to someone.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Guided missiles, misguided men.
JohnFen 4y ago
> Perhaps naively, I'd have thought someone intelligent enough to develop a technology like this would also be intelligent enough to understand the complex ethical issues it raises. It seems, unfortunately, that there is no such correlation. Correct. There is a tendency to think that because a person is exceptionally intelligent or skilled in one area, they must also be intelligent in other areas. It's simply not the case. An expert is authoritative in the areas of their expertise, but outside of those, their opinions are no more likely to be correct than anyone else's. This error is often leveraged in persuasion campaigns -- thinking that, for instance, a brilliant physicist's opinions on social policies are more likely to be accurate than any random person on the street.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

I don't understand why you're astonished? Psychopaths are all around us, from corporate "leadership" to government lobbyists to fake reviewers on Amazon and the App Store. Confidence men (and women!) have existed since the dawn of time. From selling "snake oil," to 419 scams, to "Microsoft" computer support, technology has only ever aided the process of helping psychopaths find victims. Talent and technical ability are orthogonal to empathy. Always has been; always will be. This deepfake stuff is a difference in degree, not kind, and once these people figure out how to use AI to help them, everyone is going to have to level up their defenses all over again. You ain't seen nothing yet.

mansoon 4y ago

These people are successful.