Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I just watched a video clip of Sir Ken Robinson promoting a product to reduce your blood sugar. I’ve already shared ‘An AI Advertisement’ with a fictitious expert, and broke down the flaws with the ad. But now we have an actual (now deceased) celebrity figure doing the promotional plug. It looks and sounds like him, but he never said anything he says in this video advertisement. I know this, but how many people will recognize him and pay a little more attention to this advertising scam because it is delivered by someone famous?
This is just the beginning. We are moving into a ‘post truth era’, where nothing is inherently believable. A decade from now we’ll have multiple alternate identities to choose from… Was the real Al Gore the one warning us about global warming, or was the real one promoting fracking, or alternative medicine, or socialist communism over capitalism? Every video will seem equally real, every source seemingly legitimate. One real, all the others alternative histories indistinguishable from reality.
Will it only be famous people that will fall victim to these alternate identities or are we all going to be replicated? When I’m in my late 80’s will I be watching a video of 50 year old me oblivious to whether this recording actually happened or if it was invented with a perfect imitation of myself?
The implications for scams are immeasurable. Live video of a seemingly real son or daughter extracting banking data from a senior parent. A meticulously created alternative you moving all assets over to someone else. The scams are limited only by imagination, not by technology or capability.
Alternate identities indistinguishable from reality, all playing out as if real. Sir Ken Robinson plugging health suppliments is only just the beginning… We are in for some reality warping performances from AI alternatives to us, and the people we think we trust… This is only just the beginning!
Never mind the ridiculous videos of Mr. Rogers chatting with Tupac Shakur or Bigfoot vlogging, these AI videos seem real enough while fully intending us to know they are AI. What we are seeing now is an indistinguishable bending of real and fake with videos that are completely altering our ability to know what is real and what isn’t.
Voice mimicking was already almost perfect. I saw a video post today from a man whose dad called him to ask what their shared bank account password was. One problem: His dad died last year, he just hadn’t taken his name off of the account yet. He said it sounded so real that had his father been alive, he probably would have shared the password, thinking his dad forgot.
Now AI videos are just as good as AI audio and the combination of the two truly are steering us into a post truth era. People are sharing AI videos completely unaware that they are fake. Even news stations are getting it wrong.
Soon web sites will become bastions of truth. Want to know what someone actually said? Go to ‘their name’ .com or .org and see the actual video shared there. Anything else will be questionable. And wherever else the video is shared must be watched with skepticism. Subtle or overt, very important changes in a message will occur as a result of someone, ultimately anyone taking the original video and making an AI version that gives their message instead of the intended message.
Following specific domains, and maybe a handful of legitimate news channels, are the only suggestions I have. Legislation won’t keep up, and the fakes are just getting better. Essentially, find reliable sites and distrust everything else. Intuition and common sense won’t be enough.
The term ‘ground truthing’ was shared with me last night by a friend, Neil. I had never heard the term before so did a quick MS365 Copilot request to learn more.
Ground truthing is the process of collecting data on-site (in the real world) to validate and calibrate information obtained from remote sensing technologies, models, or other indirect methods… It’s essentially a reality check to ensure that what the data suggests matches what’s actually happening on the ground.
While it is primarily used in Geography & Remote Sensing, Environmental Science, Agriculture, and Machine Learning & AI, I think it’s a term (or at least a practice) we are going to see a lot more use of in the future. More and more, when I receive information I’m immediately questioning if it’s real. Anything remotely controversial, or surprising, easily falls into a category of doubt… ‘I wonder if this is real or AI?’ But more recently, almost every video and article I see seems to sit in an uncanny valley of almost true or almost real. Before I accept new information, I have to ask myself, ‘Where can I verify this?’ In other words, ‘How can I ground truth this?’
Here is a simple example, in that the information is obviously false, but the deep fake is impressively realistic.
I also saw a video of Physicist Brian Cox saying that comet ATLAS 3i was definitely a spaceship. I didn’t bother fact checking it, I new it was fake, but enough of his followers questioned these kinds of videos that Brain came out on social media to say this:
“I keep seeing AI shite of me popping up on YouTube. The general rule is that if I appear to say something that you agree with and you are a UFO nobber, flat earth bell end or think comet ATLAS 3i is a spaceship, it’s fake.”
Where it gets more complicated is where actual facts are taken and then exaggerated. On the same theme of science and space, I recently saw a video that was talking about the theory that our entire universe might be in a massive black hole. From Copilot:
Some physicists propose that our universe might exist inside a black hole. This idea stems from the observation that black holes warp space and time so intensely that they could create a new, self-contained universe within. The consistent spin direction of many galaxies could be a result of the angular momentum inherited from the parent black hole, influencing the structure and motion of matter in our universe.
This is indeed a theory that is being considered by some scientists and I find it very interesting. So when a video comes up on my social media stream about it, I watch it. But when 20 seconds in I hear the narrator say that this is now considered true, I can’t even get myself to watch to the end of the video. These kind of videos really piss me off. I am angered that someone would create a video based on factual, interesting and novel ideas, but exaggerate the information and outright lie about it for the sake of views, clicks, and likes.
All 3 of these examples are actually easy, because my BS detector goes off. Where I’m concerned now is where that detector does not go off. What happens when the lies are more subtle, when the information is more nuanced? For example, do I really understand the issues happening in one of the many global conflicts right now? What’s the bias of the news or broadcasting station sharing the information? Where do I get more authentic information? How do I go about ground truthing what I’ve heard? Can I even get access to information ‘from the ground’?
It’s getting to the point where I have to question almost everything I hear. Is it real, what is the source, and where can I verify this? I hadn’t heard the term ground truthing before last night, but I realize that I’ve already started doing it, and I’m going to be doing a whole lot more of it in the future.
Build it and they will Like, Follow, and Share… the newest craze to hit the internet is nothing more than a rehashing of old ideas in a new format. By now everyone has seen the Bigfoot videos where an AI Bigfoot is doing a selfie vlog and telling jokes as well as doing ridiculous antics. If you haven’t seen them, Google ‘Bigfoot Vlog’ and they will show up in droves. I’ve notice a few things. While a few of them are refreshingly funny, most of them rehash really old jokes, many of which are based on racism, sexism, or tropes that have all been done before. It’s literally just old jokes in a new format.
But they work. They get the click, likes, and shares. They are going viral. And they are creating copycats that are now doing the same thing, using AI, but with people rather than Bigfoot. Videos that are mostly 100% realistic and yet still sit somewhere in the uncanny valley of almost right, yet not fully. And again, just rehashing old content in a new format.
Expect a lot more of this. Also expect world crisis to be leveraged for the same attention. You’ll see bombing in the middle east that’s actually just AI video. You’ll hear government leaders and celebrities saying outlandish things, except it won’t really be them. You’ll see alien landings, meteor landings, and even plane crashes that didn’t happen but were rather prompted into video reality.
When we get tired of the jokes, we’ll just start to get fooled more and more by AI drama that is invented to draw our attention. But for now, the jokes will come. They will get more inappropriate and cross lines a person wouldn’t with a video of themselves. And as attention wanes they will get more extreme, more tasteless, and so abundant that we’ll just be tired of them… as I am already tiring of them.
I’d never heard of Eurasia Group before a good friend of mine, an investor, shared the infographic below with me yesterday. According to their website,
In 1998, Ian Bremmer founded Eurasia Group, the first firm devoted exclusively to helping investors and business decision-makers understand the impact of politics on the risks and opportunities in foreign markets. Ian’s idea—to bring political science to the investment community and to corporate decision-makers—launched an industry and positioned Eurasia Group to become the world leader in political risk analysis and consulting.
2024. Politically it’s the Voldemort of years. The annus horribilis. The year that must not be named.
Three wars will dominate world affairs: Russia vs. Ukraine, now in its third year; Israel vs. Hamas, now in its third month; and the United States vs. itself, ready to kick off at any moment.
Russia-Ukraine … is getting worse. Ukraine now stands to lose significant international interest and support. For the United States in particular, it’s become a distant second (and increasingly third or lower) policy priority. Despite hundreds of thousands of casualties, millions of displaced people, and a murderous hatred for the Russian regime shared by nearly every Ukrainian that will define the national identity of tens of millions for decades. Which is leading to more desperation on the part of the Ukrainian government, while Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains fully isolated from the West. The conflict is more likely to escalate, and Ukraine is on a path to being partitioned.
Israel-Hamas … is getting worse. There’s no obvious way to end the fighting, and whatever the military outcome, a dramatic increase in radicalization is guaranteed. Of Israeli Jews, feeling themselves globally isolated and even hated after facing the worst violence against them since the Holocaust. Of Palestinians, facing what they consider a genocide, with no opportunities for peace and no prospects of escape. Deep political divisions over the conflict run throughout the Middle East and across over one billion people in the broader Muslim world, not to mention in the United States and Europe.
And then there’s the biggest challenge in 2024 … the United States versus itself. Fully one-third of the global population will go to the polls this year, but an unprecedentedly dysfunctional US election will be by far the most consequential for the world’s security, stability, and economic outlook. The outcome will affect the fate of 8 billion people, and only 160 million Americans will have a say in it, with the winner to be decided by just tens of thousands of voters in a handful of swing states. The losing side—whether Democrats or Republicans—will consider the outcome illegitimate and be unprepared to accept it. The world’s most powerful country faces critical challenges to its core political institutions: free and fair elections, the peaceful transfer of power, and the checks and balances provided by the separation of powers. The political state of the union … is troubled indeed.
None of these three conflicts have adequate guardrails preventing them from getting worse. None have responsible leaders willing and able to fix, or at least clean up, the mess. Indeed, these leaders see their opponents (and their opponents’ supporters) as principal adversaries—“enemies of the people”—and are willing to use extralegal measures to ensure victory. Most problematically, none of the belligerents agree on what they’re fighting over.
Think about this, the Russia-Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas wars both take a back seat to the US election as the top risk of 2024. Both have no positive outcome in sight and they still don’t pose the same threat as a tight election result in the United States. I wish I could disagree, but I too see this as a genuine concern. What makes it worse is Risk #4 – Ungoverned AI, and specifically disinformation:
In a year when four billion people head to the polls, generative AI will be used by domestic and foreign actors—notably Russia—to influence electoral campaigns, stoke division, undermine trust in democracy, and sow political chaos on an unprecedented scale. Sharply divided Western societies, where voters increasingly access information from social media echo chambers, will be particularly vulnerable to manipulation. A crisis in global democracy is today more likely to be precipitated by AI-created and algorithm-driven disinformation than any other factor.
I want to explore the other risks as well, but by far my biggest concern for 2024 is the US election. My greatest fear is a close and contested election. The by-product of this would not just be tragic for the US, but for the entire world. I wish this was just hyperbole, but it’s not, and reading a report like this just magnifies concerns I already had. Buckle up, we are in for quite a ride in 2024.
It’s sad that fake news is spread so easily that this even has to exist! The Associated Press has started this report: “NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week“, to debunk fake and even harmful, made-up news reports that have gone viral on social media.
Here is an example:
“CLAIM: The new vaccine for COVID-19 will be the first of its kind ever. It will be an “MRna vaccine” which will literally alter your DNA. It will wrap itself into your system. You will essentially become a genetically modified human being.
THE FACTS: Experts say mRNA vaccines do not alter your DNA. As researchers work to test vaccines to stop the spread of COVID-19, social media posts are sharing misinformation to sow doubt even before they become available to the public. The posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram suggest that a new coronavirus mRNA vaccine will genetically modify humans…”— Beatrice Dupuy
This fake story feeds perfectly into the narrative of anti-vaxers and conspiracy theorists that believe Covid-19 is not serious and/or part of a plot to control the masses. It will be shared and re-shared, being passed off as facts and evidence on discussion boards, in Facebook groups and on Facebook timelines. It will be shared with hashtags on Twitter that will point this fake news to the right audience, who will believe it.
How did we get here? The sad thing is, the people that most need to see this Associated Press report are the people who would say that what’s written in this report is fake. They won’t do the research. They won’t check any sources. They won’t change their minds. They will spread the fake news and keep it alive long enough to fool more gullible people into believing what they want to believe, despite factual data and evidence to the contrary.
Worse yet, we are heading into the world of deep fakes, where video ‘evidence’ can be fabricated so well that it is indistinguishable from reality. Make no mistake, we need news websites like this to help us recognize viral fake news. We also need everyone to think twice before sharing controversial and click-bait like articles, unless we’ve done the work to ensure we aren’t perpetuating fake news.
