Hilke Shellmann
The Wall Street Journal
October 15, 2018
Seeing isn’t believing anymore. Deep-learning computer
applications can now generate fake video and audio recordings that look
strikingly real.
In a recent video published by researchers to show how the
technology works, an actor sits in front of a camera moving his face. The
computer then generates the same expressions in real time on an existing video
of Barack Obama. When the actor shakes his head, the former president shakes
his head as well. When he speaks, Mr. Obama speaks as well.
“This is a big deal,” Hany Farid, computer science professor
at Dartmouth College, told The Wall Street Journal. “You can literally put into
a person’s mouth anything you want.”
Prof. Christian Theobalt, part of a team working on the
technology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics in Germany, said he is
motivated by the creative possibilities that it holds for the future.
He said researchers have developed forensic methods to
detect fakes.
But Prof. Farid says researchers who push computer-generated
technology need to think about the consequences these computer-generated fakes
could have for society. He believes forensic experts are being outpaced by the
development of fakes and that there is no method yet that can detect them all.
“How are we going to believe anything anymore that we see?
And so to me that’s a real threat to our democracy,” Mr. Farid said.
In the video above, WSJ’s Jason Bellini explores this world
of realistic video fakes. He gets deepfaked himself, and thanks to a
deep-learning application, he can now dance like Bruno Mars. He also learns of
the dark side of this technology, through one victim whose life has been deeply
affected by deepfakes, and why others believe they could even lead to war.
Video
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I am grateful to a friend for drawing my attention to the above report and
video. It’s not the tech that should concern us. It’s the owners of the tech and
the moral and ethical truth they control with it that we should be very
concerned about.
Truth, especially truth
telling or truthfulness, used to be a moral matter parents taught children
without much difficulty, and truthful was something politicians made an effort at being. Or, truth was something philosophers esoterically debated.
I know, perjury, fraud, white lies happened, still do and always have. But, it was not too long ago that most everyone pretty much knew what truth was, whether they were adhering to it or not.
I know, perjury, fraud, white lies happened, still do and always have. But, it was not too long ago that most everyone pretty much knew what truth was, whether they were adhering to it or not.
Not anymore. Massaging
or disguising the truth is now more valued in US society than being genuinely
truthful. No surprise. It’s follows from the mainstream view of the American
economy, especially those favoring consumer crony capitalism – whatever the market
will bear; let the buyer beware! One could say that what has happened to
truth is an example of morality following the money. Let’s put it this way: You
want to know what happened to the truth in America? Follow the money!
In this postmodern, deconstructed world we Americans now live in, truth is nothing but another commodity to be parsed, adulterated, packaged, marketed and consumed. In this process it goes from something reasonably, objectively genuine to something hollow, pliable, and serviceable.
In this postmodern, deconstructed world we Americans now live in, truth is nothing but another commodity to be parsed, adulterated, packaged, marketed and consumed. In this process it goes from something reasonably, objectively genuine to something hollow, pliable, and serviceable.
Socially, truth is now regarded
as nothing but part of the larger language game we play. That is, a serious,
thinly disguised game-playing for determining winners and losers in greater and
lesser struggles for the accumulation of wealth and the amassing of evermore power.
It no longer has a consensual moral standing in the larger society. It is among
the tools to be used. The winners, they say, write the histories, not the
losers. The winners also define and control the tool of truth.
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its
way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that
democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” – Isaac Asimov
(1980)
Truth, every increasingly so, is what the wealthy and powerful in the world
proclaim it to be. They do so by repeating their commodified version of truth often
enough and loud enough so it will be magnified by the media and accepted as
genuine truth by the public. Add to this a false but widespread belief in truth
equivalence - my ignorance equals your knowledge, moral relativism –
no-one’s values and beliefs are objectively right or wrong; then open up a communication
medium such as the Internet where every genius and nitwit has an equal voice,
what do you get?
You get only a memory of
a society where most of its members respected and valued truth, humility,
practicality, science and other higher education-based knowledge, and made
reasonable efforts to think for themselves.
In place of that we now
have a barely literate, proudful mob of blowhard, show-off debtors engaged in a
free for all. You have a roiling carnival freak show of a society of pseudo-free
individuals who are manipulated from without by the educated, powerful and wealthy
working in posh, secured office buildings and living in gated and guarded
residential communities.
Most politicians and most religious leaders claim they can manage or fix US society. They can’t. They don’t
want to. Doing so doesn’t fill their pockets and offering plates. Selfish
consuming mobs are more easily controlled, sated and pacified by consumer goods
and religious fervor than are genuinely moral, organized, skeptical, practical
citizens.
How did this happen?
Who’s to blame?
Here’s how it happened.
In the first half of the 20th Century a largely rural, financially frugal, modest
population was offered a new view of themselves as individuals, and was
provided a wide range of affordable consumer goods. With these items they were told they could
validate the new “freedom” they were being offered by the wealthy manufacturing
class and their pitch men. Most politicians, not all, quickly jumped into the
wealthy’s front coat pockets where they had a great view, passed laws good for
business, and got wealthy, too.
Here’s who’s to blame - the people themselves. Not the widget makers and their
barkers. Individuals traded in their modesty, frugality and practicality for a
new, better, more “free” version of themselves. They were repeatedly told via new
dazzling media technology - glossy print media, roadside billboards, radio, TV
- that they were very special and were now free to become better, more wealthy
persons than their fellow citizens. And that they could become this new,
improved, enviable version of themselves by ... buying and showing off stuff!
Black Friday Shoppers
The people, rural and
urban, acquiesced and went shopping, mostly on credit.
Everyone – financiers, venture
capitalists, stock traders, manufacturers, sellers, buyers - was happy, for the
time being. The public was happy but only until the media began gushing about next
year’s must-have fashions, new and improved soap suds, ever more efficient, labor-saving home
appliances, and next year’s shinier, higher horsepower, more luxurious car models. And the beat went on, and continues to go
on and on and on.
Deepfakes are just the
latest assault on truth and another tool for manipulating targeted audiences
for profit or power.
We need a Green New Deal, you
say? Yes, that and a new secular yet pluralistic leadership that will take us
toward a future of genuine truth, humility and brother/sisterhood. And no, we
can’t take our fashionable clothes, luxury cars, jewelry, makeup, and McMansion
into that future. Under such leadership genuine truth and humility will emerge
as a modest, sustainable lifeway, as an option of our choosing or as dictated
by capitalism’s collapse. And, hopefully, truth, humility and fraternity will no
longer be commodities to be manipulated or faked.
Hopefully, deepfakes
will not need to be outlawed. Creating them will become unconscionable. One can
only hope and dream of such a future. Or one can take up a quixotic lance and
charge the gaping windmill maw of consumer crony capitalism, politically or by
any means necessary.
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