The Race Against Deepfakes

GoblinCampFollower

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This is where the technology underlying Bitcoin - the blockchain - can be of service. Blocks in the blockchain are timestamped with a difficult to fake cryptographic checksum, and the blocks are linked in sequence, so that if one is altered, it is immediately evident it has been. Bitcoin happens to use this to secure financial transactions, but it works for any kind of data whatsoever, such as a video stream.
I think this technology will become mandatory for security cameras and the like. There will come a day when video and pictures lacking this blockchain extra won't be admissible in court. But blockchain has scalability issues and I doubt there will be a day in the near future when every cellphone camera is bothering with this instead of old fashioned jpg and other simple data types. ...also see how slow America was to adopt ICD-10 and the credit card chip readers...

There can also be problems where someone puts the deep fake in front of the secured camera to trick it. I'm not just talking about putting a literal monitor in front of a physical camera, there may be many obvious and non obvious ways to hack it.

Even if the secured cameras are all untouchable, there may be plenty of those old style images shot by amateurs on a cell phone that some people want to believe, and others don't even when they should.
 
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Innula Zenovka

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I've been wracking my brains, and trying to think of a case I can remember where the video evidence was the only evidence against the defendant, and simply can't.

I can think of some where certainly parts of it were important confirmatory evidence, but never one where there wasn't already more than sufficient evidence to convict the defendant anyway, so I don't think it will affect legal proceedings much if videos suddenly become unreliable.

I'm far more worried about the effect on public trust in news and about the consequent effects on politics and civil society. That scares me rather.
 

Brenda Archer

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I keep coming across people online who are more inclined to believe what they see on YouTube than conventional mainstream news. So you can’t cite a conventional press or academic source because they are considered to be liars. I also see uneducated people falling for YouTube nonsense because they don’t know enough of the world to know better. We’ve got to make sure people are educated about how to evaluate new information, or they’re just going to go with their gut, and become afraid of verifiable sources.
 

Sid

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Good deepfakes will go viral and do their harm. Lots of people don't give it a second thought because they literary can't.
Half of the worlds population has an IQ less then 100. The further away from the 100 mark logical thinking goes quickly down the drain.
"A friend send it, so it is true" is a common line of thinking for those people.
It is not their fault, they simply need other peoples judgement to rely on, to be able to get trough everyday life.
To easily forgotten by people on the plus side of the 100 mark, who make the decisions and easily abused by the ones who want to take advantage.
 

Kara Spengler

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danielravennest

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The problem with cryptocurrencies is they are a type of money, and therefore attract scammers and thieves. Given the combined market price of all cryptocurrencies at the moment is $288.5 billion, a *lot* of scammers and thieves. There isn't much incentive to hack a blockchain that verifies a security camera feed. The other problem with most cryptocurrencies is *anyone* can participate. The new applications of this technology which banks and stock exchanges are implementing are *permissioned* blockchains. If you are not on the list of authorized digital signatures, your transaction will be rejected. In the case of police bodycams, each camera would would generate a digital signature for the video stream, and nobody else would have a valid signature for their fake video.
 
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Argent Stonecutter

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I pre-ordered Karl Schroeder's new book, on the strength of his name, but I just read the PR and it's got blockchains as a major plot element and I don't know if I'm going to be able to read it.
 

Chin Rey

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Deepfake ... looks like a cool name for a sim.

Edit: On second thought, maybe bowdlerize it a bit. Call it Deeplake - a place where monsters lurk in putrid, sulphuric water.

Edit 2: On third thought, never mind, I'm being silly. Carry on talking.
 
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Kara Spengler

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I pre-ordered Karl Schroeder's new book, on the strength of his name, but I just read the PR and it's got blockchains as a major plot element and I don't know if I'm going to be able to read it.
Yii ..... even when it is relevant the word 'blockchain' is a major point against something right now.
 
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Chin Rey

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Yii ..... even when it is relevant the word 'blockchain' is a major point against something right now.
Yes and it doesn't even make a good name for a sim. But maybe we can make some anagram from it...
 

Aeon Jiminy

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I keep coming across people online who are more inclined to believe what they see on YouTube than conventional mainstream news. So you can’t cite a conventional press or academic source because they are considered to be liars. I also see uneducated people falling for YouTube nonsense because they don’t know enough of the world to know better. We’ve got to make sure people are educated about how to evaluate new information, or they’re just going to go with their gut, and become afraid of verifiable sources.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. YouTube is a format. I wouldn't broadly paint the diverse information as one thing or another any more than I would paint a library as nonsense. I don't know how you would "educate" Americans on evaluating information when something as basic as "fact" has been deemed a pariah by our most trusted media. If we can try to block out the screaming voices of "traitor" planted in our head by our most revered media sources, am I even allowed to mention the names of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange? When we whittle away the layers of muck that's been carefully painted on their credibility by trusted media sources, are we still able to see the undisputed cold hard black and white facts they put in front of our face? They gave us damning evidence of ghastly corruption and look at where our most "educated and verifiable" sources have put them...solitary confinement and torture chambers. So personally, I'd rather be a person who gets my information from a stew of morons than from a well-groomed millionaire who can validate "torture" with a perfectly veneered smile and a Comcast script in their hand.
 
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Brenda Archer

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I'm not sure how I feel about this. YouTube is a format. I wouldn't broadly paint the diverse information as one thing or another any more than I would paint a library as nonsense. I don't know how you would "educate" Americans on evaluating information when something as basic as "fact" has been deemed a pariah by our most trusted media. If we can try to block out the screaming voices of "traitor" planted in our head by our most revered media sources, am I even allowed to mention the names of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange? When we whittle away the layers of muck that's been carefully painted on their credibility by trusted media sources, are we still able to see the undisputed cold hard black and white facts they put in front of our face? They gave us damning evidence of ghastly corruption and look at where our most "educated and verifiable" sources have put them...solitary confinement and torture chambers. So personally, I'd rather be a person who gets my information from a stew of morons than from a well-groomed millionaire who can validate "torture" with a perfectly veneered smile and a Comcast script in their hand.
YouTube is not curated, and a library is. So there's automatically some checking going on. Not because the librarians are imposing their opinion on the curation (although they might be), but rather because there are basic professional standards that will keep them from spending valuable money and shelf space on egregious nonsense.

I'm not saying what I'm saying in this thread to state an opinion on the three people you mention.

My experience has shown me that people who prefer YouTube to properly edited and curated sources of information, tend to be making bad faith arguments, usually from the hard Right.

If you wish to make a controversial argument, you can still do so using conventional sources. This forum is full of well educated people and you will not be able to make a successful argument using unsourced, fringe materials.
 

Argent Stonecutter

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Yeh, you can use any AI scoring system to train an AI, including the AI that's detecting that you're a fake.

In Permutation City people had subsentient AIs filtering their email and spammers calling you with semisentient AI copies of your friends that you used your AI to filter them out, and so they trained them on AI models of you so they could fool your AI spam filter.

Edit: that was in 1994 so just after Cantor and Seigel the first big Usenet spammers.
 
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