3 ms·

We will adjust. And guess what, before photography, people managed somehow. People gossiped all sorts of stuff, spread malicious runors and you had to guess wha

We will adjust. And guess what, before photography, people managed somehow. People gossiped all sorts of stuff, spread malicious runors and you had to guess what's a lie and what's not. The way people dealt with it was witness testimony and physical evidence.

sofixa 1y ago
> The way people dealt with it was witness testimony and physical evidence. Which are inapplicable today. > We will adjust Will we? Maybe years later... per event. It's finally now dawning on the majority of Britons that Brexit was a mistake they were lied about.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  That has nothing to do with GenAI.
  - sofixa 1y ago
    Yep, it's only made worse by it.
- schnable 1y ago
  > Maybe years later... It is a concern... it took a few centuries for the printing press to spur the Catholic/Protestant wars and then finally resolve them.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  > Which are inapplicable today. No, they are not.
- wongarsu 1y ago
  Brexit is a great example how you can just lie by writing stuff on the side of a bus, no fake photos or videos required
  - sofixa 1y ago
    Exactly, it proves how easy it is to influence people. Which would be even easier with fake photos and videos.
- hn_throw2025 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - afavour 1y ago
    > Oh, do shut up OP is speaking the truth here. > It's finally now dawning on the majority of Britons that Brexit was a mistake As of June 2025, 56 percent of people in Great Britain thought that it was wrong to leave the European Union, compared with 31 percent who thought it was the right decision. https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/?srsltid=AfmBOopmeS8ew9mdQa714Faj0z-C5C05TBtnye03fm5D5h4_S67ntSdM https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...
    - hn_throw2025 1y ago
      When the Remainer Establishment refuse to use new freedoms and possibilities, and spend the intervening nine years telling people it was a bad idea, then I’d be surprised if it didn’t have an impact on public opinion. Let’s see what a change of government can do.
  - mcphage 1y ago
    > you would prefer to believe that Cambridge Analytica achieved mind control over 17.2M people I'm not sure "motivated to make a bad decision" is the same thing as "achieved mind control".
    - hn_throw2025 1y ago
      I’d say the bad decisions were made by Heath in ‘72 and Major in ‘93. Neither offered a referendum. You may consider this a correction.
Teever 1y ago
Of course we will adjust. That is a truism that is besides the point. What matters is how many people will suffer during this adjustment period. How many Rwandan genocides will happen because of this technology? How many lynchings or witch burnings?
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  It's not beside the point.you can lie with words, you can lie with cartoons and drawings and paintings. You can lie with movies. We will collectively understand that pixels on a screen are like cartoons or Photoshop on steroid.
  - Teever 1y ago
    Marconi demonstrated radio in 1895 and the first broadcast radio station started in 1920. By the 1930s Adolf Hitler was routinely using the medium to broadcast vile propaganda about Jews and others which lead to the holocaust in the 1940s. About 40 years later the Rwandan genocide took place and many scholars attribute a preceding radio-based propaganda campaign as playing a key role in increasing ethnic violence in the aware. Since then the link between radio and genocide seems to have decreased over time but it's likely that this isn't so much because humans have a better understanding of the medium but more so because propaganda has moved to more effective mediums like the internet. Given that we didn't actually solve the problems with radio before moving onto the next medium it isn't likely that we'll figure out the problems with these new mediums before millions die.
    - bonoboTP 1y ago
      It was easy to spread lies through print and through good old fashioned word of mouth too. No radio needed. And apropos radio, the War of the Worlds radio drama in 1938 is know to have made quite some afraid that it's real. And plenty of people collected money in communist Hungary for the sake of the enslaved Isaura (protagonist of a Brazilian soap opera). But most people adjusted and understand that radio dramas are a thing, movies are a thing, and will adjust to the fact that pixels on a screen are just that.
mola 1y ago
Yes, that adjustment could well be monarchy. I can't see how functioning democracy can survive without truth as shared grounds of discussion.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  I don't think the US was a monarchy for its first hundred years.
  - JadeNB 1y ago
    > > I can't see how functioning democracy can survive without truth as shared grounds of discussion. > I don't think the US was a monarchy for its first hundred years. Did the US not have truth as shared grounds of discussion for its first hundred years?
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism has been a thing for a very long time.
      - JadeNB 1y ago
        Right, by which standard truth has never been a shared grounds of discussion. I think that there's a big difference between "some people lie" and "there's no agreement on shared truth."
        bonoboTP 1y ago
        That has nothing to do with generated videos though.
- safety1st 1y ago
  The media's been lying to us for as long as it has existed. Prior to the Internet the range of opinions which you could gain access to was far more limited. If the media were all in agreement on something it was really hard to find a counter-argument. We're so far down the rabbit hole already of bots and astroturfing online, I doubt that AI deepfake videos are going to be the nail in the coffin for democracy. The majority of the bot, deepfake and AI lies are going to be created by the people who have the most capital. Just like they owned the traditional media and created the lies there.
afavour 1y ago
We'll have to adjust, certainly. But that doesn't mean nothing bad will happen. > People gossiped all sorts of stuff, spread malicious runors and you had to guess what's a lie and what's not. And there were things like witch trials where people were burnt at the stake! The resolution was a shared faith in central authority. Witness testimony and physical evidence don't scale to populations of millions, you have to trust in the person getting that evidence. And that trust is what's rapidly eroding these days. In politics, in police, in the courts.

sofixa 1y ago

> The way people dealt with it was witness testimony and physical evidence. Which are inapplicable today. > We will adjust Will we? Maybe years later... per event. It's finally now dawning on the majority of Britons that Brexit was a mistake they were lied about.

bonoboTP 1y ago
That has nothing to do with GenAI.
- sofixa 1y ago
  Yep, it's only made worse by it.
schnable 1y ago
> Maybe years later... It is a concern... it took a few centuries for the printing press to spur the Catholic/Protestant wars and then finally resolve them.
pessimizer 1y ago
> Which are inapplicable today. No, they are not.
wongarsu 1y ago
Brexit is a great example how you can just lie by writing stuff on the side of a bus, no fake photos or videos required
- sofixa 1y ago
  Exactly, it proves how easy it is to influence people. Which would be even easier with fake photos and videos.
hn_throw2025 1y ago
[flagged]
- afavour 1y ago
  > Oh, do shut up OP is speaking the truth here. > It's finally now dawning on the majority of Britons that Brexit was a mistake As of June 2025, 56 percent of people in Great Britain thought that it was wrong to leave the European Union, compared with 31 percent who thought it was the right decision. https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/?srsltid=AfmBOopmeS8ew9mdQa714Faj0z-C5C05TBtnye03fm5D5h4_S67ntSdM https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...
  - hn_throw2025 1y ago
    When the Remainer Establishment refuse to use new freedoms and possibilities, and spend the intervening nine years telling people it was a bad idea, then I’d be surprised if it didn’t have an impact on public opinion. Let’s see what a change of government can do.
- mcphage 1y ago
  > you would prefer to believe that Cambridge Analytica achieved mind control over 17.2M people I'm not sure "motivated to make a bad decision" is the same thing as "achieved mind control".
  - hn_throw2025 1y ago
    I’d say the bad decisions were made by Heath in ‘72 and Major in ‘93. Neither offered a referendum. You may consider this a correction.

Teever 1y ago

Of course we will adjust. That is a truism that is besides the point. What matters is how many people will suffer during this adjustment period. How many Rwandan genocides will happen because of this technology? How many lynchings or witch burnings?

bonoboTP 1y ago
It's not beside the point.you can lie with words, you can lie with cartoons and drawings and paintings. You can lie with movies. We will collectively understand that pixels on a screen are like cartoons or Photoshop on steroid.
- Teever 1y ago
  Marconi demonstrated radio in 1895 and the first broadcast radio station started in 1920. By the 1930s Adolf Hitler was routinely using the medium to broadcast vile propaganda about Jews and others which lead to the holocaust in the 1940s. About 40 years later the Rwandan genocide took place and many scholars attribute a preceding radio-based propaganda campaign as playing a key role in increasing ethnic violence in the aware. Since then the link between radio and genocide seems to have decreased over time but it's likely that this isn't so much because humans have a better understanding of the medium but more so because propaganda has moved to more effective mediums like the internet. Given that we didn't actually solve the problems with radio before moving onto the next medium it isn't likely that we'll figure out the problems with these new mediums before millions die.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    It was easy to spread lies through print and through good old fashioned word of mouth too. No radio needed. And apropos radio, the War of the Worlds radio drama in 1938 is know to have made quite some afraid that it's real. And plenty of people collected money in communist Hungary for the sake of the enslaved Isaura (protagonist of a Brazilian soap opera). But most people adjusted and understand that radio dramas are a thing, movies are a thing, and will adjust to the fact that pixels on a screen are just that.

mola 1y ago

Yes, that adjustment could well be monarchy. I can't see how functioning democracy can survive without truth as shared grounds of discussion.

bonoboTP 1y ago
I don't think the US was a monarchy for its first hundred years.
- JadeNB 1y ago
  > > I can't see how functioning democracy can survive without truth as shared grounds of discussion. > I don't think the US was a monarchy for its first hundred years. Did the US not have truth as shared grounds of discussion for its first hundred years?
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism has been a thing for a very long time.
    - JadeNB 1y ago
      Right, by which standard truth has never been a shared grounds of discussion. I think that there's a big difference between "some people lie" and "there's no agreement on shared truth."
      - bonoboTP 1y ago
        That has nothing to do with generated videos though.
safety1st 1y ago
The media's been lying to us for as long as it has existed. Prior to the Internet the range of opinions which you could gain access to was far more limited. If the media were all in agreement on something it was really hard to find a counter-argument. We're so far down the rabbit hole already of bots and astroturfing online, I doubt that AI deepfake videos are going to be the nail in the coffin for democracy. The majority of the bot, deepfake and AI lies are going to be created by the people who have the most capital. Just like they owned the traditional media and created the lies there.

afavour 1y ago

We'll have to adjust, certainly. But that doesn't mean nothing bad will happen. > People gossiped all sorts of stuff, spread malicious runors and you had to guess what's a lie and what's not. And there were things like witch trials where people were burnt at the stake! The resolution was a shared faith in central authority. Witness testimony and physical evidence don't scale to populations of millions, you have to trust in the person getting that evidence. And that trust is what's rapidly eroding these days. In politics, in police, in the courts.