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US Lawmakers Say AI Deepfakes 'Have the Potential To Disrupt Every Facet of Our Society' (theverge.com)
Yesterday, several lawmakers sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, asking him to assess the threat posed to national security by deepfakes -- a new type of AI-assisted video editing that creates realistic results with minimal effort. The Verge reports: The letter says "hyper-realistic digital forgeries" showing "convincing depictions of individuals doing or saying things they never did" could be used for blackmail and misinformation. "As deep fake technology becomes more advanced and more accessible, it could pose a threat to United States public discourse and national security," say the letter's signatories, House representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA), Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL). The trio want the intelligence community to produce a report that includes descriptions of when "confirmed or suspected" deepfakes have been produced by foreign individuals (there are no current examples of this), and to suggest potential countermeasures. In a press statement, Curbelo said: "Deep fakes have the potential to disrupt every facet of our society and trigger dangerous international and domestic consequences [...] As with any threat, our Intelligence Community must be prepared to combat deep fakes, be vigilant against them, and stand ready to protect our nation and the American people."
This Congress? Nothing except verbally distance themselves from him (if they even do that) while lining their pockets with his policies. The next Congress though -- that's a whole different matter.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
They're obviously lying. Politicians are gonna love the proliferation of deepfakes. That way, the next time they say something stupid in an interview, they can say the clip is a deepfake. They're just starting to blame them as an upcoming problem now so they can start using it as an excuse ASAP.
Photos use to be considered "strong evidence", then Photoshop etc. came along to make doctoring cheap and common, and people stopped trusting photos. The same will happen to audio and video once they see enough fudged examples.
Table-ized A.I.
We're headed back to that horrible time a few decades ago without pervasive reliable audio and visual surveillance. Quick! Let's pass more laws curtailing freedom of expression and individual liberty!
Robert A. Heinlein imagined this problem, and in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land he described a new profession: "Fair Witness"
A Fair Witness is a person who is trained to observe and remember without jumping to any conclusions. A Fair Witness should be able to describe in court what he/she saw, and only that. As an example, a Fair Witness would say something like "I observed a house, and the side I saw appeared white" rather than "I observed a white house." It's possible that other sides of the house, not seen by the Fair Witness, could be a different color; and it's possible the house was repainted after the Fair Witness saw it... the Fair Witness keeps such things in mind.
Surprisingly, Wikipedia doesn't seem to think that the idea of "Fair Witness" is notable. I Google searched for a reference, and I found a reference that claims to be quoting Wikipedia, but I can't find it on Wikipedia now.
http://dlkphotography.com/fair-witness/stranger-in-a-strange-land
I found the "Fair Witness" idea to be one of the most interesting things in the book, and I have long wondered if we would one day see that profession in real life.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Simple solution: don't trust any one source. Even if they're supposedly impeccable. Look for corroboration from multiple independent sources (and make sure they're really independent and not all getting their information from the same source). For instance if you have a video of someone checking into a hotel with a compromising companion, look for corroboration from the hotel's records, hotel staff who should have interacted with them, and the person's credit-card records. This is what we used to do before people got lazy and started believing everything they were told without question.
are simply afraid of the competition.
The US ( and everyone else ) has been altering both modern and historical facts to suit their own agendas since the very beginning. :|
I'm curious why the sudden concern
Pot. . . meet kettle.
That's something that was said over and over again in my private investigator and security officer training.
You DON'T tell the client "yes I caught your spouse cheating on you with his ex". You write notes as its happening if possible saying "I observed a white sedan park near 124 Oak Street". It's possible that the car isn't the subject's car, it only looks similar. It's possible that the suspected companion doesn't currently live at that address. It's possible that the subject went there to meet with his ex-brother-in-law about a business deal. You report only what you directly observe.
What could be possible:
* Cryptographic signatures on raw data leaving a camera, or Cryptographic signatures on the default recording app as the videos/photos are taken
Probably won't help that much though, but might help to identify unedited footage.
* Give images/videos timestamps signed by a third party immediately as they are taken
This can prove that a piece of information existed no earlier than that time.
None of these can thwart recording a video screen playing back pre-edited video.
Way back when, when we first had cameras, that was the saying. Because it was really hard to make a convincing "wrong" photo. (Early: One, Two, Three, Four.
And then came along tape, and audio editing, and auto-tune and computerized voice editing. And Hatsune Miku, who not only doesn't exist, her VOICE doesn't even exist: She was created by taking vocal samples [which] all contain a single Japanese phonic that, when strung together, creates full lyrics and phrases. Video. The people with glowing green sticks, though, are real.
And now with movies have placed people's heads on other's bodies, never mind body-doubles. The trick is that's it's becoming better, cheaper and more widespread to create. (And I *SWEAR* that people are more gullible now-a-days than they used to be. Or maybe it's because things just move so much faster.) So we're back to a century or so ago: just because there's an audio/video of it, doesn't mean it's HAS to be true.
No worries though, since you're innocent until proven guilty, which has worked so well with MeToo and everything else in the last few years. We'll all just have to have a 2-way shoulder mounted camera that does a real-time blockchain video feed to verify where we are all of the time and that it's really is US in the video.
Now if blockchain would only run at Visa-level transaction speeds instead of a slow 8mm Movie Motion Picture Camera. Oh, and that's 7 BitCoin transactions system-wide and not just per camera. The limit for Litecoin is 56 TPS and the limit for Bitcoin is 7. Visa: 24,000 TPS (Link. And far be it your mounted camera loses WiFi/Cell connection or runs out of power.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Agreed. The problem is that with photos, video and voice all untrustable, what is left? How can someone come to an independent conclusion about anything?
The same way we did before the proliferation of movie/video cameras and audio recorders. These are only very recent inventions.
In fact, the entire legal system uses nothing but scientifically invalid "proof"... Our legal system doesn't even remotely adhere to that.
The threshold for legal conviction in the US (and a few other countries) is "beyond a reasonable doubt" and not "absolute proof" for good reason. If you demand 100% proof, you would almost never convict anyone, and that wouldn't serve justice either. The legal system has to carefully balance the ability to obtain a conviction when warranted versus protection against false accusations. Real life tends to be a bit messier than a peer-reviewed scientific paper, and rarely deals in absolutes.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
And what gives them power? Laws criminalizing things. There is no way in this universe they can stop this. But they can profit from it and they are certainly trying to.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
its usually because something has come out that they haven't figured out how to manipulate or abuse. when this technology has fallen out of the news, you will know that at least some political bodies are abusing it for their benefit.
People will currently believe absolutely anything provided you get the narrative right and appeal to their emotions. There's no need to even doctor videos anymore. You just have to tell them.
The cat is out of the bag, now learn to live this way.