Deep Fake

Friday, November 1, 2019, is Day One after the Impeachment Inquiry Vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.  I always recommend Just Above Sunset.  This morning’s, “Shuffleboard in Florida“, is one I specifically recommend for weekend reading.    (The ‘hook’ for me was the first four paragraphs, which aren’t directly relevant to the following – see postnote if interested.)  The ‘meat’ starts with paragraph five.  Whether you like it or not, you’re part of the history of our future as a nation.

We are in a very dangerous time period in the history of our country, specifically the danger presented by intentionally dishonest political communications.  This is a time without precedent, yet far too many people accept routine political lies as a new normal. The truth will out.  In the end, we will all pay a heavy price for diminishing democracy in favor of tribalism.

So…why “Deep Fake” as the title of this post?

I first heard the word used at the Human Rights Forum on Monday of this week.  (My note, as I listened, is above.)  The speaker was Andrew Zolli, a name worth getting to know.  Among other affiliations, he works with Planet.com .  Andrew’s expertise seems to be understanding and articulating technology.   His brief narrative on Deep Fake, in essence (as I heard it): technology AI (artificial intelligence) has reached a point where “fake” can effectively be created to create the appearance of reality.  On the internet, the term is one word, “deepfake”.  Take a deep dive if you wish.  This one, from Fortune Magazine, is just one example: it merges Jennifer Lawrence/Steve Buscemi, into one and the same.  I don’t know either, but apparently both are well known as actress/actor.  The intent is to show how seamless Deepfakes can be.

Normally, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to “Deep Fake”, but seven days earlier I was at breakfast with a long time friend, who out of the blue said she’d heard from a source she trusts that some Democrat named Cortez said at a meeting somewhere they’d have to eat the babies, or words directly to that effect.  I reacted immediately…

…and said I was going to check that out, which I did immediately on returning home.  (My friend is unabashedly ‘conservative’, as I am ‘liberal’, but it makes no difference.)  It was easy to find the “Babies” allegation just by internet search.  It fixed on a rally of AOC (Cong. Alexandria Octavio-Cortez).  According to Newsweek.com, the first source I felt I could trust, in fact some woman in the audience had blurted out the statement, and that a far right organization, LaRouche, later claimed responsibility.  I didn’t go further.  The fact is, my friend had in fact heard the allegation from some news source; misattributed it to the Democrat; the woman making the actual statement quite likely was a plant in the audience whose sole intention was to disrupt and confuse people like ourselves.  This is one of the oldest propaganda techniques, made far more effective with contemporary media manipulation which can be spread instantly through radio and video clips and deceive the unsuspecting….

My friend and I back and forthed in a friendly manner, and that was that until Monday, at the conference, when suddenly this craziness started to make sense.

Thursday, at coffee, I was looking through another exchange with an internet critic back on July 24, 2019, when I’d done a post entitled “Fools”, and he posted a comment (which you can read in its entirety, there, if you wish).  Towards the end of his commentary he said this “…And now the dems want to kill babies after birth….”  and immediately the above exchanges began to make more and more sense.  The responder lives walking distance from the Reagan Presidential Library in California; my Twin Cities friend lives in the south suburbs of Minneapolis.

During this same time period, another “friend”, who seems addicted to those awful “forwards” and seems to truly hate people like me has been escalating his ‘gifts’ via e-mail.  I’ll never block him, nor do I watch the never-ending videos, which began in 2016.  I only  want to see his headline, which is always outrageous.  I’ll probably get five or so of these today from my ‘friend’, who quite likely will read this post.

What has evolved in Artificial Intelligence and the acceptability of political lies in general is very dangerous to us all, in this time when we rely on snippets of knowledge through instant and fragmentary communication.

Caveat Emptor.  Pay attention and do the hard work of learning the issues and the implications.

I’ll leave the last word on this to Chuck, who posted this comment to my 9/17/2019 post on Drones: “Technology is not the problem…not yet. Every technology has multiple uses entirely dependent upon the heart and mind of the user. Banning or outlawing them will be expensive and ultimately futile as people resist the Nazi like privacy intrusions that will be needed to enforce them. When AI gains consciousness its a whole new ball game.”

COMMENT:

from Terrence: Old Lawyer’s Adage: “If the facts are on your side, argue the facts.  If the facts are against your side, pound on the table.”  Dick:  We are seeing this in abundance, already.

from Jeff: Very good post.  (if you have Netflix and want to see a hip comedy on technology, try “Silicon Valley”  from HBO… its silly but very sharp and satirical). Facts : I think the saying is “if the law is against you, argue the facts; if the facts are against you, argue the law; if both the law and the facts are against you, pound your fists on the table.”   Dick: who am I to argue?  Terrence is a retired lawyer.  Jeff is no slouch himself!  Actually, both versions fit.

from JoAnn:   Good morning, Dick.  Thank you for this post.  I was curious so checked another source (NYT and others also commented).  I found this interesting and helpful.

from Jim: Thanks, Dick.  Keep the posts coming.  Thanks again!

from Carol: Did you see this from today’s New York Times? It goes right along with your post.  Do you remember back when “Pictures don’t lie?”  Now anything can lie.  And we have a “president” who is taking full advantage of people’s gullibility for his own purposes, or is too stupid to know the difference (I STILL haven’t quite decided which – maybe both).

More from Carol:  Your post, and the NYT article, have been stirring around in my head – and I have some more comments.  This kind of thing drives me nuts, and it’s not new.  What’s new is the ease of proliferation of these conspiracy theories and hatred.  I think back to my mom, who passed away nearly 30 years ago.  She lived like a little church mouse on her meager Social Security.  But I would go to her apartment and find literature from who knows where, warning her that if she didn’t send money right away, the country was doomed.  (I still remember her “tract” saying that mosquitoes spread AIDS.  Back then, a lot of this disinformation came in those tracts – do you know what they were?  A little sheet of paper that you were encouraged to buy a ton of, and then share them everywhere…  The “original” internet.)  So she would write out her tiny checks, that she couldn’t afford, in order to do her part.  (And of course once you get on a “suckers’ list,” they just proliferate.)

*

POSTNOTE, (to the first four paragraphs of the Just Above Sunset, unrelated to the above):

My family tree (I have been historian of that tree for over 40 years) has me as half-French-Canadian (father), and half-German (mother).  My French-Canadians were around as early as 1618 in what is now Quebec; the German side arrived in the 1840s in the U.S.

23andMe has me as 99.7% European, of which 51.9% is French & German; 23.9% British & Irish.  The analysis fits my understanding of the family history, though the heavy British and Irish influence was a surprise.

Quite certainly, all my early male ancestors in Quebec had some direct familiarity with the military of the day (first one in Canada in 1618).  It was a main reason they came to what is now Quebec.  My last French ancestor arrived in Quebec a couple of years before the English defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham (1759); 17 years later the upstart Americans declared their independence from England (1776).  In the American Revolution  the French-Canadians supported the English (an interesting story in itself); and the French allied with the Americans  ‘south of the border’ (1776 and beyond).

When you do a deeper dive into the history, it becomes ever more complicated, but explains, at least a little, why even today there is still  bitterness of some French-Canadians against the French who, having lost Canada, went back to France, leaving behind a society that had been developing for 150 years.

I won’t try to expand that discussion.  Just look it up.  The history is quite interesting, as were the first four paragraphs of Just Above Sunset!