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"I don't think anyone has reliable information about post-2021 language usage by humans." We've been past the tipping point when it comes to text for some time

"I don't think anyone has reliable information about post-2021 language usage by humans." We've been past the tipping point when it comes to text for some time, but for video I feel we are living through the watershed moment right now. Especially smaller children don't have a good intuition on what is real and what is not. When I get asked if the person in a video is real, I still feel pretty confident to answer but I get less and less confident every day. The technology is certainly there, but the majority of video content is still not affected by it. I expect this to change very soon.

olabyne 2y ago
I never thought about that. Humans losing their ability to detect AI content from reality ? It's frightening.
- wraptile 2y ago
  I find issue with this statement as content was never a clean representation of human actions or even thought. It was always driven by editorials, SEO, bot remixing and whatnot that heavily influences how we produce content. One might even argue that heightened content distrust is _good_ for our society.
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  It's worse because many humans don't know they are. I see a lot of outrage around fake posts already. People want to believe bad things from the other tribes. And we are going to feed them with it, endlessly.
  - PhunkyPhil 2y ago
    Did you think the same thing when photoshop came out? It's relatively trivial to photoshop misinformation in a really powerful and undetectable way- but I don't see (legitimate) instances of groundbreaking news over a fake photo of the president or a CEO etc doing something nefarious. Why is AI different just because it's audio/video?
    - chowells 2y ago
      "AI" is different because it's low-effort and easily automated, making it easy to absolutely flood public spaces. Quantity has a quality all its own.
    - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
      I did. And it's not the grounbreaking the problem, it's the little constant lies. Last week a photoshopped Musk tweet was going around, people getting all up in arms against it despite the fact it was very easy to spot as a fabricated one. People didn't care, they hate the guy, they just wanted to fuel their hate more. The whole planet run on fake content, magazin covers, food packaging, instagram pics of places that never looks that way... And now, with AI, you can automate it and scale it up. People are not ready. And in fact, they don't want to be.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  It's worse: they don't even care.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  This video's worth a watch if you want to get a sense of the current state of things. Despite the (deliberately) clickbait title, the video itself is pretty even-handed. It's by Language Jones, a YouTube linguist. Title: "The AI Apocalypse is Here" https://youtu.be/XeQ-y5QFdB4 https://youtu.be/XeQ-y5QFdB4
- jerf 2y ago
  It's even worse than that. Most people have no idea how far CGI has come, and how easily it is wielded even by a couple of dedicated teens on their home computer, let alone people with a vested interest in faking something for some financial reason. People think they know what a "special effect" looks like, and for the most part, people are wrong. They know what CGI being used to create something obviously impossible, like a dinosaur stomping through a city, looks like. They have no idea how easy a lot of stuff is to fake already. AI just adds to what is already there. Heck, to some extent it has caused scammers to overreach, with things like obviously fake Elon Musk videos on YouTube generated from (pure) AI and text-to-speech... when with just a little bit more learning, practice, and amounts of equipment completely reasonable for one person to obtain, they could have done a much better fake of Elon Musk using special effects techniques rather than shoveling text into an AI. The fact that "shoveling text into an AI" may in another few years itself generate immaculate videos is more a bonus than a fundamental change of capability. Even what's free & open source in the special effects community is astonishing lately.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Plus, movies continue (for some reason) to be made with very bad and obvious CGI, leading people to believe all CGI is easy to spot.
    - PhunkyPhil 2y ago
      This is a common survivorship bias fallacy since you only notice the bad CGI. I'm certain you'd be shocked to see the amount of CG that's in some of your favorite movies made in the last ~10-20 years that you didn't notice because it's undetectable
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        I won’t be, I’m aware that lots of movies are mostly CGI. But, yeah, I do think it is some kind of bias. Maybe not survivorship, though… maybe it is a generalized sort of Malmquist bias? Like the measurement is not skewed by the tendency of movies with good CGI to go away. It is skewed by the fact that bad CGI sticks out.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  I mean, it's already apparent to me that a lot of people don't have a basic process in place to detect fact from fiction. And it's definitely not always easy, but when I hear some of the dumbest conspiracy theories known to man actually get traction in our media, political figures, and society at large, I just have to shake my head and laugh to keep from crying. I'm constantly reminded of my favorite saying, "people who believe in conspiracy theories have never been a project manager."
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Oh they definitely are. A lot of people are now calling out real photos as fake. I frequently get into stupid Instagram political arguments and a lot of times they come back with "yeah nice profile with all your AI art haha". It's all real high quality photography. Honestly, I don't think the avg person can tell anymore.
  - ziml77 2y ago
    I've reached a point where even if my first reaction to a photo is to be impressed, I then quickly think "oh but what it this is AI?" and then immediately my excitement for the photo is ruined because it may not actually be a photo at all.
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      I don't get that perspective at all. Who cares what made it.
      - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
        You don't find a difference between things that exist and things that don't?
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Humans losing their ability to detect AI content from reality ? It's frightening. And it already happened, and no one pushed back while it was happening.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  It's a defense lawyer's dream.
frognumber 2y ago
There are a series of challenges like: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/09/technology/ai-video-deepfake-runway-kling-quiz.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/09/technology/ai... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-image-generators-faces-quiz.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/19/technology/ar... These are a little bit unfair, in that we're comparing handpicked examples, but I don't think many experts will pass a test like this. Technology only moves forward (and seemingly, at an accelerating pace). What's a little shocking to me is the speed of progress. Humanity is almost 3 million years old. Homosapiens are around 300,000 years old. Cities, agriculture, and civilization is around 10,000. Metal is around 4000. Industrial revolution is 500. Democracy? 200. Computation? 50-100. The revolutions shorten in time, seemingly exponentially. Comparing the world of today to that of my childhood.... One revolution I'm still coming to grips with is automated manufacturing. Going on aliexpress, so much stuff is basically free. I bought a 5-port 120W (total) charger for less than 2 minutes of my time. It literally took less time to find it than to earn the money to buy it. I'm not quite sure where this is all headed.
- knodi123 2y ago
  +100w chargers are one of the products I prefer to spend a little more on, so I get something from a company that knows it can be sued if they make a product that burns down your house or fries your phone. Flashlights? Sure, bring on aliexpress. USB cables with pop-off magnetically attached heads, no problem. But power supplies? Welp, to each their own!
  - fph 2y ago
    And then you plug your cheap pop-off USB cable into the expensive 100w charger?
    - knodi123 2y ago
      Yeah, sure, what could possibly go wrong? :-P But seriously, it's harder to accidentally make a USB cable that fries your equipment. The more common failure mode is it fails to work, or wears out too fast. Chargers on the other hand, handle a lot of voltage, generate a lot of heat, and output to sensitive equipment. More room to mess up, and more room for mistakes to cause damage.
bsder 2y ago
> When I get asked if the person in a video is real, I still feel pretty confident to answer I don't share your confidence in identifying real people anymore. I often flag as "false-ish" a lot of things from genuinely real people, but who have adopted the behaviors of the TikTok/Insta/YouTube creator. Hell, my beard is grey and even I poked fun at "YouTube Thumbnail Face" back in 2020 in a video talk I gave. AI twigs into these "semi-human" behavioral patterns super fast and super hard. There is a video floating around with pairs of young ladies with "This is real"/"This is not real" on signs. They could be completely lying about both, and I really can't tell the difference. All of them have behavioral patterns that seems a little "off" but are consistent with the small number of "influencer" videos I have exposure to.
apricot 2y ago
> When I get asked if the person in a video is real, I still feel pretty confident to answer I don't. I mean, I can identify the bad ones, sure, but how do I know I'm not getting fooled by the good ones?
- weinzierl 2y ago
  That is very true, but for now we have a baseline of videos that we either remember or that we remember key details of, like the persons in the video. I'm pretty sure if I watch The Primeagen or Tom Scott today, that they are real. Ask me in year, I might not be so sure anymore.

olabyne 2y ago

I never thought about that. Humans losing their ability to detect AI content from reality ? It's frightening.

wraptile 2y ago
I find issue with this statement as content was never a clean representation of human actions or even thought. It was always driven by editorials, SEO, bot remixing and whatnot that heavily influences how we produce content. One might even argue that heightened content distrust is _good_ for our society.
BiteCode_dev 2y ago
It's worse because many humans don't know they are. I see a lot of outrage around fake posts already. People want to believe bad things from the other tribes. And we are going to feed them with it, endlessly.
- PhunkyPhil 2y ago
  Did you think the same thing when photoshop came out? It's relatively trivial to photoshop misinformation in a really powerful and undetectable way- but I don't see (legitimate) instances of groundbreaking news over a fake photo of the president or a CEO etc doing something nefarious. Why is AI different just because it's audio/video?
  - chowells 2y ago
    "AI" is different because it's low-effort and easily automated, making it easy to absolutely flood public spaces. Quantity has a quality all its own.
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    I did. And it's not the grounbreaking the problem, it's the little constant lies. Last week a photoshopped Musk tweet was going around, people getting all up in arms against it despite the fact it was very easy to spot as a fabricated one. People didn't care, they hate the guy, they just wanted to fuel their hate more. The whole planet run on fake content, magazin covers, food packaging, instagram pics of places that never looks that way... And now, with AI, you can automate it and scale it up. People are not ready. And in fact, they don't want to be.
Sharlin 2y ago
It's worse: they don't even care.
bunderbunder 2y ago
This video's worth a watch if you want to get a sense of the current state of things. Despite the (deliberately) clickbait title, the video itself is pretty even-handed. It's by Language Jones, a YouTube linguist. Title: "The AI Apocalypse is Here" https://youtu.be/XeQ-y5QFdB4 https://youtu.be/XeQ-y5QFdB4
jerf 2y ago
It's even worse than that. Most people have no idea how far CGI has come, and how easily it is wielded even by a couple of dedicated teens on their home computer, let alone people with a vested interest in faking something for some financial reason. People think they know what a "special effect" looks like, and for the most part, people are wrong. They know what CGI being used to create something obviously impossible, like a dinosaur stomping through a city, looks like. They have no idea how easy a lot of stuff is to fake already. AI just adds to what is already there. Heck, to some extent it has caused scammers to overreach, with things like obviously fake Elon Musk videos on YouTube generated from (pure) AI and text-to-speech... when with just a little bit more learning, practice, and amounts of equipment completely reasonable for one person to obtain, they could have done a much better fake of Elon Musk using special effects techniques rather than shoveling text into an AI. The fact that "shoveling text into an AI" may in another few years itself generate immaculate videos is more a bonus than a fundamental change of capability. Even what's free & open source in the special effects community is astonishing lately.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Plus, movies continue (for some reason) to be made with very bad and obvious CGI, leading people to believe all CGI is easy to spot.
  - PhunkyPhil 2y ago
    This is a common survivorship bias fallacy since you only notice the bad CGI. I'm certain you'd be shocked to see the amount of CG that's in some of your favorite movies made in the last ~10-20 years that you didn't notice because it's undetectable
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      I won’t be, I’m aware that lots of movies are mostly CGI. But, yeah, I do think it is some kind of bias. Maybe not survivorship, though… maybe it is a generalized sort of Malmquist bias? Like the measurement is not skewed by the tendency of movies with good CGI to go away. It is skewed by the fact that bad CGI sticks out.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I mean, it's already apparent to me that a lot of people don't have a basic process in place to detect fact from fiction. And it's definitely not always easy, but when I hear some of the dumbest conspiracy theories known to man actually get traction in our media, political figures, and society at large, I just have to shake my head and laugh to keep from crying. I'm constantly reminded of my favorite saying, "people who believe in conspiracy theories have never been a project manager."
bongodongobob 2y ago
Oh they definitely are. A lot of people are now calling out real photos as fake. I frequently get into stupid Instagram political arguments and a lot of times they come back with "yeah nice profile with all your AI art haha". It's all real high quality photography. Honestly, I don't think the avg person can tell anymore.
- ziml77 2y ago
  I've reached a point where even if my first reaction to a photo is to be impressed, I then quickly think "oh but what it this is AI?" and then immediately my excitement for the photo is ruined because it may not actually be a photo at all.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    I don't get that perspective at all. Who cares what made it.
    - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
      You don't find a difference between things that exist and things that don't?
Suppafly 2y ago
>Humans losing their ability to detect AI content from reality ? It's frightening. And it already happened, and no one pushed back while it was happening.
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
It's a defense lawyer's dream.

frognumber 2y ago

There are a series of challenges like: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/09/technology/ai-video-deepfake-runway-kling-quiz.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/09/technology/ai... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-image-generators-faces-quiz.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/19/technology/ar... These are a little bit unfair, in that we're comparing handpicked examples, but I don't think many experts will pass a test like this. Technology only moves forward (and seemingly, at an accelerating pace). What's a little shocking to me is the speed of progress. Humanity is almost 3 million years old. Homosapiens are around 300,000 years old. Cities, agriculture, and civilization is around 10,000. Metal is around 4000. Industrial revolution is 500. Democracy? 200. Computation? 50-100. The revolutions shorten in time, seemingly exponentially. Comparing the world of today to that of my childhood.... One revolution I'm still coming to grips with is automated manufacturing. Going on aliexpress, so much stuff is basically free. I bought a 5-port 120W (total) charger for less than 2 minutes of my time. It literally took less time to find it than to earn the money to buy it. I'm not quite sure where this is all headed.

knodi123 2y ago
+100w chargers are one of the products I prefer to spend a little more on, so I get something from a company that knows it can be sued if they make a product that burns down your house or fries your phone. Flashlights? Sure, bring on aliexpress. USB cables with pop-off magnetically attached heads, no problem. But power supplies? Welp, to each their own!
- fph 2y ago
  And then you plug your cheap pop-off USB cable into the expensive 100w charger?
  - knodi123 2y ago
    Yeah, sure, what could possibly go wrong? :-P But seriously, it's harder to accidentally make a USB cable that fries your equipment. The more common failure mode is it fails to work, or wears out too fast. Chargers on the other hand, handle a lot of voltage, generate a lot of heat, and output to sensitive equipment. More room to mess up, and more room for mistakes to cause damage.

bsder 2y ago

> When I get asked if the person in a video is real, I still feel pretty confident to answer I don't share your confidence in identifying real people anymore. I often flag as "false-ish" a lot of things from genuinely real people, but who have adopted the behaviors of the TikTok/Insta/YouTube creator. Hell, my beard is grey and even I poked fun at "YouTube Thumbnail Face" back in 2020 in a video talk I gave. AI twigs into these "semi-human" behavioral patterns super fast and super hard. There is a video floating around with pairs of young ladies with "This is real"/"This is not real" on signs. They could be completely lying about both, and I really can't tell the difference. All of them have behavioral patterns that seems a little "off" but are consistent with the small number of "influencer" videos I have exposure to.

apricot 2y ago

> When I get asked if the person in a video is real, I still feel pretty confident to answer I don't. I mean, I can identify the bad ones, sure, but how do I know I'm not getting fooled by the good ones?

weinzierl 2y ago
That is very true, but for now we have a baseline of videos that we either remember or that we remember key details of, like the persons in the video. I'm pretty sure if I watch The Primeagen or Tom Scott today, that they are real. Ask me in year, I might not be so sure anymore.