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I am sincerely confused by how often this rationale is presented in so few words. Obviously AI has made it much easier - much, much easier - for many more peopl

I am sincerely confused by how often this rationale is presented in so few words. Obviously AI has made it much easier - much, much easier - for many more people to make dramatic edits or fabricate whole images. I understand the point that photo tampering has always been an issue, but by itself that point can't really mean anything without at all addressing the tremendous difference between traditional editing and AI editing. We can say things like, "you should never trust X format of information anyway", but it's unrealistic for essentially any given X. A sentient human being can't function without trust heuristics. It's always been that way, for all of time - there is no such thing as 100% trust nor 0% trust in any human-to-human communication domain. That squishiness is why things like "how easy/hard is it to fabricate" matters pragmatically. And we can't rely entirely on sources either, since a ton of information is not readily sourceable, and often that's just kicking the can (is the source true?), and we often don't even notice the source. We see photos constantly, and we make assumptions about how likely they are to be real subconsciously and consciously based on a ton of variables. This is just basic human stuff. It's why new ways to more easily/broadly poison information have real consequences.

SirMaster 2y ago
Why can't it be? I have always completely not trusted photos for several years now. Like I can look at them and believe them, but as soon as they contain something of importance that would actually matter in a great way, I simply already "checked out" of trusting them for that purpose years ago already. This will only make more people trust photos even less, which is a good thing, because they already shouldn't be as trusting of them as they are.
tavavex 2y ago
But the thing is that this isn't even the first jump in terms of making photo tampering easier - this has already happened in the past. Both naturally as these processes matured, but also when manual editing has been superseded by digital editing. The introduction of digital photo editing (and especially making it accessible to everyone) also brought the skill floor down by several orders of magnitude. To my knowledge, people back then were also saying things akin to "you can't trust anything now". Before that point, you needed skills in working with physical photographs, and had to be a visual artist to some extent. It was a pretty niche skill set. Now, any random user can fire up some software and start doing things that used to be impossible or unthinkably hard, after just some hours of training. And that was just the beginning - photo editing became easier and more accessible over the decades to come. So why didn't this "data collapse" happen then? I'm not saying it's impossible, but people in this comment thread are acting like there's some hard barrier in technological accessibility, before which everything is good and trustworthy, and after which there's apocalyptic consequences, permanent decay of trust, erasure of history, etc. Is it a barrier or a sliding scale? What makes people so confident that it's this exact development that will finally tip the scales for good? And if this was always bound to happen with our technology evolving, should we even fight back?
- tivert 2y ago
  > So why didn't this "data collapse" happen then? I'm not saying it's impossible, but people in this comment thread are acting like there's some hard barrier in technological accessibility, before which everything is good and trustworthy, and after which there's apocalyptic consequences, permanent decay of trust, erasure of history, etc. Is it a barrier or a sliding scale? What makes people so confident that it's this exact development that will finally tip the scales for good? I think people tend to get too focused on one narrow thing (e.g. this technology) and loose sight of the context. Some things going on now: 1. AI fakes will take the skill floor down "several orders of magnitude" more. 2. Trust in all kinds of institutions is declining, including the government and media (precisely the ones that were relied on to debunk and discredit fakes in the past). 3. More and more people are getting their information from social media. tl;dr: "data collapse" hasn't happened yet because, previously we had the institutional capacity to manage airbrushed fakes/photoshops/etc. As the technology gets cheaper, and the institutions get weaker, eventually they won't be able to keep up.
randomdata 2y ago
Before the photograph we had no trouble not trusting photos. Why have we needed to trust them since?
lupusreal 2y ago
Arthur Conan Doyale was duped by a couple of young girls with a camera and paper cutouts of faeries. Has there ever been a time when it wasn't trivial to trick at least some people with low effort fakes? People who want to believe what you're showing them will believe even the lamest fabrication, while people who don't want to believe will doubt even authentic photographs with reputable provenance.
inquirerGeneral 2y ago
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SirMaster 2y ago

Why can't it be? I have always completely not trusted photos for several years now. Like I can look at them and believe them, but as soon as they contain something of importance that would actually matter in a great way, I simply already "checked out" of trusting them for that purpose years ago already. This will only make more people trust photos even less, which is a good thing, because they already shouldn't be as trusting of them as they are.

tavavex 2y ago

But the thing is that this isn't even the first jump in terms of making photo tampering easier - this has already happened in the past. Both naturally as these processes matured, but also when manual editing has been superseded by digital editing. The introduction of digital photo editing (and especially making it accessible to everyone) also brought the skill floor down by several orders of magnitude. To my knowledge, people back then were also saying things akin to "you can't trust anything now". Before that point, you needed skills in working with physical photographs, and had to be a visual artist to some extent. It was a pretty niche skill set. Now, any random user can fire up some software and start doing things that used to be impossible or unthinkably hard, after just some hours of training. And that was just the beginning - photo editing became easier and more accessible over the decades to come. So why didn't this "data collapse" happen then? I'm not saying it's impossible, but people in this comment thread are acting like there's some hard barrier in technological accessibility, before which everything is good and trustworthy, and after which there's apocalyptic consequences, permanent decay of trust, erasure of history, etc. Is it a barrier or a sliding scale? What makes people so confident that it's this exact development that will finally tip the scales for good? And if this was always bound to happen with our technology evolving, should we even fight back?

tivert 2y ago
> So why didn't this "data collapse" happen then? I'm not saying it's impossible, but people in this comment thread are acting like there's some hard barrier in technological accessibility, before which everything is good and trustworthy, and after which there's apocalyptic consequences, permanent decay of trust, erasure of history, etc. Is it a barrier or a sliding scale? What makes people so confident that it's this exact development that will finally tip the scales for good? I think people tend to get too focused on one narrow thing (e.g. this technology) and loose sight of the context. Some things going on now: 1. AI fakes will take the skill floor down "several orders of magnitude" more. 2. Trust in all kinds of institutions is declining, including the government and media (precisely the ones that were relied on to debunk and discredit fakes in the past). 3. More and more people are getting their information from social media. tl;dr: "data collapse" hasn't happened yet because, previously we had the institutional capacity to manage airbrushed fakes/photoshops/etc. As the technology gets cheaper, and the institutions get weaker, eventually they won't be able to keep up.

randomdata 2y ago

Before the photograph we had no trouble not trusting photos. Why have we needed to trust them since?

lupusreal 2y ago

Arthur Conan Doyale was duped by a couple of young girls with a camera and paper cutouts of faeries. Has there ever been a time when it wasn't trivial to trick at least some people with low effort fakes? People who want to believe what you're showing them will believe even the lamest fabrication, while people who don't want to believe will doubt even authentic photographs with reputable provenance.

inquirerGeneral 2y ago

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