7 ms·
DARPA to launch efforts that will bolster defenses against manipulated media
- iamacyborg 3y agoA good place to start might be in mandating some level of media literacy in the national curriculum. Media Studies tends to be a bit of a meme but it’s becoming increasingly important.
- consumer451 3y agoThe issue is that it will be seen as "political" if one political side's media happens to be cited more often in examples of misinformation, and one will.
- iamacyborg 3y agoI don't think there'd be an issue in finding sufficient material for any political side.
- ethanbond 3y agoSelecting from a biased population into an “unbiased” sample is itself also political. Like having one fringe scientist on stage with one mainstream scientist, giving the illusion that their ideas have equal acceptance among their peers.
- leereeves 3y agoSometimes that fringe scientist turns out to be right. Ideas should be judged on their own merit, not based on the resistance of those who've built their careers on the currently accepted ideas.
- ethanbond 3y agoThat’s a nice maxim and all but in actual reality, the vast majority of people on the vast majority of topics have to use heuristics to build (and disconfirm) their beliefs. The people who are actually close enough to a topic to even be able to judge an idea “on the merits” are few and far between. If you want people to have an accurate model of reality, you have to care about maintaining heuristics that at least somewhat track with the consensus (or the lack thereof) of the underlying group of people who actually have a chance of knowing things from first principles and direct experience. Deliberately sampling an “unbiased” subset of an actually biased underlying population is not just allowing the heuristic to stray from reality, it’s deliberately destroying that heuristic and deliberately misleading people. In imaginary “everyone can/should judge on own merits”-land, that’s perfectly fine. In reality, where almost no one can actually judge almost anything of substance on its merits, you are actively sabotaging truth-seeking. The way that fringe scientist gets to declare s/he is right is by convincing their peers of it, not by convincing the public in a format that violates the heuristics the public has to rely on. Of course everyone should always be open to this possibility, most of all their peers (and to your point they often aren’t!)
- squigz 3y agoI wish more people understood this - that most (all?) people are missing the required years of knowledge and understanding of nuance to be able to judge an idea "on its merits", particularly scientific/technological ideas. Trusting expert consensus - while certainly not perfect - is the only logical (and relatively safe) way forward. What's of even more concern to me is the prevalence of this in the HN crowd - ostensibly a bunch of very intelligent people with expert knowledge in their respective fields and who thus understand what goes into actually understanding something...
- Der_Einzige 3y agoGell-mann amnesia effect is a powerful drug.
- squigz 3y ago
- consumer451 3y agoNow that you mention it, I wasn't even thinking this through in my original comment. Even if you found a perfect balance, I can imagine little Bobby coming home from school to see his parents invested in their favorite TV news program and saying: "Mr. Forrester told us that's a type of misinformation, mom." I would not want to be Mr. Forrester in that scenario. Just imagine the school board meetings.
- ptero 3y agoThat is a solvable issue -- give examples of manipulation and misinformation for both sides in roughly equal quantities. There is no shortage of examples for any argument. Nothing helps making people manipulation resistant like seeing manipulation from the side of the argument they support.
- WhoAmThing 3y agoThat still doesn't solve the issue, manipulation and misinformation are entirely personal and highly emotional. See the current status on inflation and words from the white house. Or the situation between Palestine / Israel. You are always being manipulated and lied to by both sides because it is in their best interests to have you aligned.
- ptero 3y agoThis is exactly what I am suggesting to address. We currently have separate narratives of "<side 1> engages in manipulation, here is their misinformation" which polarizes and causes highly emotional reactions against the evil supporters of that side. This also means that people, due to that emotional response, are unwilling to consider opposite views and we get the polarized society we have today. If instead we are teaching with examples of manipulation of both sides of the same argument, people see the value of debating on merits, instead of emotions, cross checking references and correcting for the speaker's viewpoint. They also get less affected by misinformation, since they have seen it, many times, including coming from the side near and dear to their hearts. This last thing is critical. One would not get too riled up about messaging if they see both sides doing that. My 2c.
- WhoAmThing 3y agoI was taught that multiple times under sections on political cartoons/propaganda, at least when I went to school. The issue is not that people are not well educated, its that there is not enough reason for individuals at a large scale to invest time deep-diving into a topic when they can use other things like social cues and popularity to more or less decide where they fit on the spectrum. The issue is not that manipulation is invisible to the untrained eye, on the contrary I'd argue a lot more people are aware of political manipulation than you realize. It doesn't take much logic to see politicians only start caring about you once elections come around, regardless of where you fall on the political slider. People are optimizing for social harmony and the security of their livelihood. This means that more or less whatever the opinions of those in my community / work / place of worship are, I will reciprocate those signals to some degree or another unless there is an issue that resonates strongly enough. Insert mass-scale reach with social media and the law of large numbers in human population and I hope you can see why there is no non-technological solution to this problem. We have created a dopamine machine in our pocket capable of satisfying the natural urges of every permutation of the mind. Your bigger picture and moral appeal is given a moment of consideration by an ever-shrinking percentage.
- jonnyone 3y agoMedia (and corresponding manipulation) could be created specifically for teaching purposes, aiming to keep the material as apolitical as possible while still retaining the techniques of manipulation.
- consumer451 3y agoThat actually sounds like a great idea.
- mark_l_watson 3y agoRight on. Also just having the same high quality US civics classes, like I had when I was a kid, would help young people develop scepticism, learn the value of reading good books, often classic books, instead of hours on social media. While I think the Patriot Act was a horror show for the health of our country, and I am suspicious of the very broad reach of the proposed ban TicToc legislation, the military system also does a lot of good work that benefits our society in non-military ways.
- 542458 3y agoAgreed. This is a social problem and no amount of technical solutioneering will solve it. A significant chunk of the US believes Obama is a Muslim and/or Kenyan on the weight of approximately no evidence. Large numbers of people treat images of people with glossy skin and mangled hands on Facebook and Instagram as photographic fact. VFX videos that would be lambasted as amateurish and unconvincing in a film are treated as undeniable evidence by many commenters on YouTube and TikTok. These are not highly sophisticated lies, and yet many people accept them uncritically because they haven’t learned any better.
- jfengel 3y agoThey have in fact learned the opposite. We've spent decades carefully separating ourselves from even the most obvious critical thinking skills that a child would employ. Long before sophisticated disinformation tools people readily slurped up the most obvious lies. I'm really at a loss.
- 93po 3y ago> yet many people accept them uncritically because they haven’t learned any better. The political establishment doesn't necessarily want critical thinking - they just want you to believe their version of lies. People uncritically accept anything negative about Trump all the time and people who own media channels don't want that to change.
- greg_V 3y agoJust mandate all media to be in latin, and maintain a class of experts versed in the language to interpret it to the masses.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tjpnz 3y agoThrow in some basic statistics too? Many of the graphs cookers throw into their Instagram posts are from real studies but have been manipulated to push misinformation.
- MyFedora 3y agoHow useful is it to teach media literacy when nobody applies it? I'd argue it's the opposite of useful: Harmful. People who learned media literacy feel more resilient against disinformation, but they likely don't care enough about any single news piece to apply the frameworks to verify whether anything is indeed correct. So, quite ironically, the fact that they feel more resilient against disinformation makes them more susceptible to disinformation than the average uneducated person in terms of media literacy. Figure out how to teach media literacy correctly before spreading the current, rather flawed media literacy teachings, so we don't end up with more wannabe media literate people who are actually more susceptible to disinformation than the average person.
- iamacyborg 3y ago> How useful is it to teach media literacy when nobody applies it? How can people apply something they've not been taught?
- netbioserror 3y ago"Media literacy". Aka, "How to interpret everything through the horse blinders and funhouse lens of the dominant neoliberal ideology of the US ruling class."
- iamacyborg 3y agoI'm British and thinking about this in that context, not an American one, for what it's worth.
- lettergram 3y ago[flagged]
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoAt least DARPA has some success stories in terms of delivering useful technology. Still, I feel what you are saying. If I am hesitant, it is because I think I saw actual AI video in the wild yesterday and it was convincing. And it will get worse. What does surprise me is that old media don't lean into it more, because it would reinforce their status as gatekeepers IF they play it right.
- lettergram 3y agoWhat makes you think they haven’t been leaning into it for years? lol they don’t even have reporters any more for most news outlets, they just buy content. You can catch media using photos from other events all the time for news articles.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoApologies. I may have not expressed my thoughts clearly. What I meant was that if legacy media managed to position itself as 'organic only' source, it could benefit from renewed trust as people will try to seek out 'non-ai' content. Now, that would require humans ( and money ). The natural question is whether, as a species, we would rather fool ourselves with.. w/e we want generated in our search, or read a verified account. << What makes you think they haven’t been leaning into it for years? I think.. to answer the original question, I think that because, if that is true, they have failed hard.
- tmaly 3y agoMurthy v. Missouri is being heard before SCOTUS this week
- zmgsabst 3y agoRemember when Facebook censored true stories about COVID vaccine injuries because it was “malinformation” — at the request of federal agencies? This will enhance that.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[flagged]
- SubiculumCode 3y agoSLR photo chip -> Cryptographically Signed Image -> Blockchain or Other Trust System Documents Production of Image and with key system thar matches image to record, all alterations to image are documented on said blockchain/other trust system. Verifiable system for chain of custody.
- vasco 3y agoTake the SLR camera, hook it up to a computer with a custom driver, every time you generate a new picture through AI, invoke the camera keying process programmatically. Most likely don't even need the camera when an exploit is found for the hardware.
- SubiculumCode 3y agoTPM is that broken?
- zmgsabst 3y agoCut the sensor out and wire it to USB. Or get a premade Chinese device that will do it for you, just like they happily broke HDMI encryption to make splitters work.
- 542458 3y agoI don’t think you even need that level of sophistication. You can probably get “good enough” results just pointing the camera at a high-res screen displaying the manipulated image and putting it slightly out of focus.
- ovalite 3y agoPossibly a new use case for light field cameras which is able to capture depth information from their sensors.
- mikewarot 3y agoMy one claim to fame gets this done years ago.[1] [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6757828B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6757828B1/en
- falsandtru 3y agoThe original title is "Deepfake Defense Tech Ready for Commercialization, Transition" but has been changed to "DARPA to launch efforts that will bolster defenses against manipulated media". The changed title is unnecessarily unsettling and misleading. I don't want to see the title changed to a clickbait title like a lowbrow gossip magazine would give it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pvg 3y agoI don't want to see the title changed to a clickbait title like a lowbrow gossip magazine would give it. The title is taken from the subheading which is might be unnecessary in this case but is usually fine. The poster hasn't made up some clickbait title.
- falsandtru 3y agoIt means that it is malicious to replace the title with what would have been the subheading because it looks like a clickbait title. Subheadings do not mean that anything can be changed into a title if it is a subheading. The fact is that this thread is now occupied by a discussion of bike yards that has nothing to do with technology.
- pvg 3y agoIt's not 'malicious', its relatively standard HN title practice. If you think the submitter got it wrong just email hn@ycombinator.com and they'll take a look at it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20subheading&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- falsandtru 3y agoThat's not what I mean. Well, it probably was not translated well.
- tohnjitor 3y agoSeems like a cover for publishing false evidence of crimes that will be used to justify military invasions.
- dartos 3y agoIs there a difference
- webdoodle 3y agoYes. After Obama failed to renew the Smith-Mundt Act, now they can feed propaganda intended for a foreign audience, directly to your smartphone.
- bhaney 3y agoWhy would they need to publicly announce a new program to continue doing that?
- BirAdam 3y agoTo get more public buy in and quiet dissent. The current climate is somewhat hostile to even supporting war much less directly engaging in it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tempodox 3y agoThey didn‘t need any such cover for the Iraq war.
- Yasuraka 3y agoThey may not have needed it, but it happened nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony There are recent parallels, but this time by Biden who was fed false information. Though this time, the white house retracted that statement immediately instead of waiting for things to blow over[1]. I suppose the difference was that this time, the US government had nothing planned to capitalize on the lie. [1] https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/biden-ive-seen-pictures-of-terrorists-beheading-children-in-israel/ https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/biden-ive-seen-pictures-of-ter...
- bilsbie 3y agoAs an adult can I opt out of this and decide for myself what media to consume?
- dizlexic 3y agoWeirdly enough, according to the fine print of the internet no no you can't.
- chrisan 3y agoWhat is the opting in or mandatory part of this?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pksebben 3y agoTake it you didn't read the article. The "Media" in "Media Manipulation", in this case, is like "a picture" or "a video", not "The Media" (as I also initially thought.) This is a set of tech meant to ID deepfakes, not to restrict access or to disseminate messaging generally. It's not a bad thing to exist, if it can actually be done. I'd prefer to know if a picture is bunkum.
- kelipso 3y agoThe end goal is "The Media" manipulation. Idea being you automate the identification of disinformation, automate alerting social media websites of disinformation. The website themselves will of course be incentivized to automatically remove disinformation based on the alerts. Practically speaking, it will allow mass manipulation of public opinion for pretty much any topic by identifying opposing opinions as disinformation and automating the process nationwide or worldwide.
- BirAdam 3y agoI would hope that this is made open source tho. I don’t really trust any government and/or megacorp contractor to tell me honestly whether or not something is fake/real.
- dizlexic 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- declan_roberts 3y agoI can't wait for an official government arbiter (or better yet a "partner" not bound by the constitution or FOIA disclosure laws) deciding what is and what is not foreign manipulated media. Hopefully they get this going before the election before Americans start electing the wrong candidates. Rest assured it's for our safety. Those pesky Russians are always trying to destroy us!
- squigz 3y agoChina also makes a good BBEG.
- skhunted 3y agoEspecially since it genuinely is. I’m not claiming the U.S. is better in an objective sense but clearly the two countries are in opposition to each other. China clearly would love a divided U.S.
- squigz 3y agoThe US loves a divided US, too
- tmaly 3y agoIt is in the citizens interest that the do gooders be divided so they get nothing done.
- skhunted 3y agoConsider the possibility that this due to influence by foreign controlled bots and targeted information warfare against American citizens.
- dr_kiszonka 3y agoIt could be both a) foreign influence and b) the media and politicians benefiting from polarisation.
- ReptileMan 3y agoDamn, I always thought that this was Ministry of Truth's job ...
- hx8 3y ago> AI Forensics Open Research Challenge Evaluation (AI FORCE) You expect good acronyms on a .mil website, but in my mind this one is worthy of praise.
- egberts1 3y agoDoes that include checking against the intelligence community for touting false information? Askin' for a friend.
- MR4D 3y agoTime for an anti-memetic division.
- ajkdhcb2 3y agoThe Ministry of Truth.