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Anyone have any good ideas for how we're going to do politics now? Today a big ML model can do this and it's somewhat regulate-able, tomorrow people can do thi

Anyone have any good ideas for how we're going to do politics now? Today a big ML model can do this and it's somewhat regulate-able, tomorrow people can do this on their contact-lens supercomputers and anyone can generate a video of anything. Is going back to personally knowing your local representative the only way? How will we vote for national candidates if nobody knows what they think or say?

qup 3y ago
People in my circles have been saying this for a few years now, and we've yet to see it happen. I've got my popcorn ready. But you can rest easy. Everyone just votes for the candidate their party picked, anyway.
- FredPret 3y ago
  It'll happen - deepfakes aren't good enough yet. But when they become ubiquitous and hard to spot, it'll be chaos until the average person is mentally inoculated against believing any video / anything on the internet. I wonder if it's possible to digitally sign footage as it's captured? It'd be nice to have some share-able demonstrably true media. Edit: I'm a centrist and I definitely would lean one way or the other based on who the options are (or who I think they are).
T-A 3y ago
> Today a big ML model can do this Not that big: https://github.com/Zejun-Yang/AniPortrait https://github.com/Zejun-Yang/AniPortrait https://huggingface.co/ZJYang/AniPortrait/tree/main https://huggingface.co/ZJYang/AniPortrait/tree/main
- cchance 3y ago
  Didn't see that one pretty cool, not as good as Emo or Vasa but pretty good
hx8 3y ago
Hyper targeted placement of generated content designed to entice you to donate to political campaigns and to vote. Perhaps leading to a point where entire video clips are generated for a single viewer. Politicians and political commentators will lease their likeness and voice out for targeted messaging to be generated using their likeness. Less reputable platforms will allow disinformation campaigns to spread.
4ndrewl 3y ago
DNS? Might be that we need a radical (for some) change of viewpoint. Just as there's no privacy on the internet, how about 'theres very little trust on the internet'. Assume everything not securely signed by a trusted party is false.
- fennecfoxy 3y ago
  A large number of people don't really care about verifying what they've heard is true or not before repeating it, eventually making it fact amongst themselves. Hell I've been guilty of spouting BS before, just because I've heard something from so many people. Then find that when I look it up, it's not true. It's not really a tech problem, it's more of a human problem imo, like so many others. But there is literally nothing we can do about it.
kmlx 3y ago
> How will we vote for national candidates if nobody knows what they think or say? i’m going to burst your bubble here, but most voters have no idea about policies or candidates. most voters vote based on inertia or minimal cues, not on policies or candidates. i suggest you look up “The American Voter”, “The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know?” and “American National Election Studies”.
dwb 3y ago
We already rely on chains of trust going back to the original source, and will still. I find these alarmist posts a bit mystifying – before photography, anyone could fake a quote of anyone, and human civilisation got quite far. We had a bit over a hundred years where phographic-quality images were possible and very hard to fake (which did and still does vary with technology), but clearly now we’re past that. We’ll manage!
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  Yeah I mean tabloids have been fooling people with doctored photos for decades. Potentially we'll need slightly tighter regulations on formal press (so that people that care for accurate information have a place they can get it) and definitely we'll want to steer the culture back towards holding them accountable for misinformation, but credulous people have always had easy access to bad information. I'm much more worried at the potential abuse cases that involve ordinary people that aren't public figures, and have much less ability to defend themselves. Heck, even celebrities are a more vulnerable targets than politicians.
- marcusverus 3y ago
  Presidential elections are frequently pretty close. Taking the electoral college into account (not the popular vote, which doesn't matter) Donald Trump won the 2016 election by a grand total of ~80,000 votes in three states[0]. Knowing that retractions rarely get viral exposure, it's not difficult to imagine that a few sufficiently-viral videos could swing enough votes to impact a presidential election. Especially when considering that the average person is not up to speed on the current state of the tech, and so has not been prompted to build up the mindset that's required to fend off this new threat. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...
  - dwb 3y ago
    Plausible. I was thinking over the longer-term.
- 3y ago
hooverd 3y ago
People already believe any quote you slap on a JPEG.
TimedToasts 3y ago
> Anyone have any good ideas for how we're going to do politics now? If a business is showing a demo of this you can be assured that the Government already has this tech and has for a period of time. > How will we vote for national candidates if nobody knows what they think or say? You don't know what they think or say now - hopefully this disabuses people of this notion.
- _djo_ 3y ago
  > If a business is showing a demo of this you can be assured that the Government already has this tech and has for a period of time. That may have been true once upon a time, but it no longer is. And even in the areas it was true it was mostly for niche areas like cryptanalysis. Governments simply cannot attract or keep the level of talent required to have been far ahead of industry on LLMs and similar tech, especially not with the huge difference in salaries and working conditions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
fennecfoxy 3y ago
Same way we've always done it; largely ignorant and apathetic masses that only care about waving their team's flag and don't give a damn about most of their teams' policies as long as they can still say X,Y and Z things at the Christmas dinner table. Democracy is already an illusion of choice anyway; just look at democratic candidates. It's gonna be Biden V Trump _again_. For London mayoral elections Sadiq is pretty much guaranteed to get in _again_. For UK main election it's gonna be the typical Tories V Labour BS _again_, with no new fresh young candidates with new ideas. Democracy is rotting everywhere it exists thanks to the idea of parties, party politics and the human need to pick a tribe and attack every other tribe.

qup 3y ago

People in my circles have been saying this for a few years now, and we've yet to see it happen. I've got my popcorn ready. But you can rest easy. Everyone just votes for the candidate their party picked, anyway.

FredPret 3y ago
It'll happen - deepfakes aren't good enough yet. But when they become ubiquitous and hard to spot, it'll be chaos until the average person is mentally inoculated against believing any video / anything on the internet. I wonder if it's possible to digitally sign footage as it's captured? It'd be nice to have some share-able demonstrably true media. Edit: I'm a centrist and I definitely would lean one way or the other based on who the options are (or who I think they are).

T-A 3y ago

> Today a big ML model can do this Not that big: https://github.com/Zejun-Yang/AniPortrait https://github.com/Zejun-Yang/AniPortrait https://huggingface.co/ZJYang/AniPortrait/tree/main https://huggingface.co/ZJYang/AniPortrait/tree/main

cchance 3y ago
Didn't see that one pretty cool, not as good as Emo or Vasa but pretty good

hx8 3y ago

Hyper targeted placement of generated content designed to entice you to donate to political campaigns and to vote. Perhaps leading to a point where entire video clips are generated for a single viewer. Politicians and political commentators will lease their likeness and voice out for targeted messaging to be generated using their likeness. Less reputable platforms will allow disinformation campaigns to spread.

4ndrewl 3y ago

DNS? Might be that we need a radical (for some) change of viewpoint. Just as there's no privacy on the internet, how about 'theres very little trust on the internet'. Assume everything not securely signed by a trusted party is false.

fennecfoxy 3y ago
A large number of people don't really care about verifying what they've heard is true or not before repeating it, eventually making it fact amongst themselves. Hell I've been guilty of spouting BS before, just because I've heard something from so many people. Then find that when I look it up, it's not true. It's not really a tech problem, it's more of a human problem imo, like so many others. But there is literally nothing we can do about it.

kmlx 3y ago

> How will we vote for national candidates if nobody knows what they think or say? i’m going to burst your bubble here, but most voters have no idea about policies or candidates. most voters vote based on inertia or minimal cues, not on policies or candidates. i suggest you look up “The American Voter”, “The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know?” and “American National Election Studies”.

dwb 3y ago

We already rely on chains of trust going back to the original source, and will still. I find these alarmist posts a bit mystifying – before photography, anyone could fake a quote of anyone, and human civilisation got quite far. We had a bit over a hundred years where phographic-quality images were possible and very hard to fake (which did and still does vary with technology), but clearly now we’re past that. We’ll manage!

BobaFloutist 3y ago
Yeah I mean tabloids have been fooling people with doctored photos for decades. Potentially we'll need slightly tighter regulations on formal press (so that people that care for accurate information have a place they can get it) and definitely we'll want to steer the culture back towards holding them accountable for misinformation, but credulous people have always had easy access to bad information. I'm much more worried at the potential abuse cases that involve ordinary people that aren't public figures, and have much less ability to defend themselves. Heck, even celebrities are a more vulnerable targets than politicians.
marcusverus 3y ago
Presidential elections are frequently pretty close. Taking the electoral college into account (not the popular vote, which doesn't matter) Donald Trump won the 2016 election by a grand total of ~80,000 votes in three states[0]. Knowing that retractions rarely get viral exposure, it's not difficult to imagine that a few sufficiently-viral videos could swing enough votes to impact a presidential election. Especially when considering that the average person is not up to speed on the current state of the tech, and so has not been prompted to build up the mindset that's required to fend off this new threat. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...
- dwb 3y ago
  Plausible. I was thinking over the longer-term.
3y ago

hooverd 3y ago

People already believe any quote you slap on a JPEG.

TimedToasts 3y ago

> Anyone have any good ideas for how we're going to do politics now? If a business is showing a demo of this you can be assured that the Government already has this tech and has for a period of time. > How will we vote for national candidates if nobody knows what they think or say? You don't know what they think or say now - hopefully this disabuses people of this notion.

_djo_ 3y ago
> If a business is showing a demo of this you can be assured that the Government already has this tech and has for a period of time. That may have been true once upon a time, but it no longer is. And even in the areas it was true it was mostly for niche areas like cryptanalysis. Governments simply cannot attract or keep the level of talent required to have been far ahead of industry on LLMs and similar tech, especially not with the huge difference in salaries and working conditions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

fennecfoxy 3y ago

Same way we've always done it; largely ignorant and apathetic masses that only care about waving their team's flag and don't give a damn about most of their teams' policies as long as they can still say X,Y and Z things at the Christmas dinner table. Democracy is already an illusion of choice anyway; just look at democratic candidates. It's gonna be Biden V Trump _again_. For London mayoral elections Sadiq is pretty much guaranteed to get in _again_. For UK main election it's gonna be the typical Tories V Labour BS _again_, with no new fresh young candidates with new ideas. Democracy is rotting everywhere it exists thanks to the idea of parties, party politics and the human need to pick a tribe and attack every other tribe.