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The US Military is Funding an Effort To Catch Deepfakes and Other AI Trickery (technologyreview.com)
The Department of Defense is funding a project that will try to determine whether the increasingly real-looking fake video and audio generated by artificial intelligence might soon be impossible to distinguish from the real thing -- even for another AI system. From a report: This summer, under a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the world's leading digital forensics experts will gather for an AI fakery contest. They will compete to generate the most convincing AI-generated fake video, imagery, and audio -- and they will also try to develop tools that can catch these counterfeits automatically. The contest will include so-called "deepfakes," videos in which one person's face is stitched onto another person's body.
Rather predictably, the technology has already been used to generate a number of counterfeit celebrity porn videos. But the method could also be used to create a clip of a politician saying or doing something outrageous. DARPA's technologists are especially concerned about a relatively new AI technique that could make AI fakery almost impossible to spot automatically. Using what are known as generative adversarial networks, or GANs, it is possible to generate stunningly realistic artificial imagery.
Rather predictably, the technology has already been used to generate a number of counterfeit celebrity porn videos. But the method could also be used to create a clip of a politician saying or doing something outrageous. DARPA's technologists are especially concerned about a relatively new AI technique that could make AI fakery almost impossible to spot automatically. Using what are known as generative adversarial networks, or GANs, it is possible to generate stunningly realistic artificial imagery.
it's nearly impossible for anyone to be well-informed when every valid piece of information is competing with a cloud of equally-plausible forgeries, and even people operating in good faith can no longer discern what is or isn't real.
You seem to be describing our current state, not the future.
The solution is simple: A well-informed electorate.
That means you actually have to, you know, work at knowledge, rather than drooling and giggling and clapping like a moron at the 24/7 "news" cycle.
The solution is simple: A well-informed electorate.
Okay, but that's begging the question -- how do you gain (or maintain) a well-informed electorate when the forgeries have become so realistic that distinguishing between a forgery and an authentic piece of information takes more skill than most people possess? Simply demanding that people become exponentially smarter isn't going to make them so, no matter how severely we chastise them.
Usually when people realize they don't have the skill to make a reliable determination about something for themselves, they look to a knowledgeable expert (or at least, a trustworthy authority figure) to help them make the right determination... but here again we now run into the same problem -- who is actually a valid expert or a trustworthy authority figure, and who is faking it? And even if the person in question is valid and trustworthy, how does the average person verify that what they are hearing that person say are things that person actually said, and not clever forgeries designed to mislead people?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.