I can't speak for OP, but consider: the very strong scientific consensus is that the earth is warming and that warming is caused by human activity; the best-case study I've seen showed 75% consensus among Americans and that's sharply up over previous years.
The gap between scientific consensus and common belief has been driven by "regular" misinformation campaigns: promotions of conspiracy theories, manufactured doubt, cherry-picking of claims.
Why worry about the novel when the basics are still working?
What would you think about a deep fake depicting secret video footage (from a cell phone) of real climate scientists at at a real conference discussing how they are manipulating the data to convince the public and the lawmakers that climate change is a real phenomena. This deep fake would contain real people who really are climate scientists who really did attend a conference together. Its just that this discussion never took place. It was created by deep fake technology.
This type of scenario seems like a very real concern to me. You can extend this example into practically any hot button issue.
Can you give me a single example of deepfakes being used to stage a real news event?
Meanwhile, most of the population isn't even trained to recognize when videos are trimmed to start and stop at a conspicuously convenient moments, which is the most commonly used technique for creating fake narratives.
Actual media literacy is at near zero, especially among the people who arrogantly consider themselves "informed".
This suggests you may not have done the research to support your viewpoint with such self assurance.
The increasing sophistication of Deepfakes as a technology concept applied over time is what people are rightly afraid of today.
But even now :
(based on some search notes I have from 6 months ago)
[1] Video of Gabon’s long-unseen president Ali Bongo, who was believed in poor health or already dead, was decried as a deepfake by his political opponents and cited as the trigger, a week later, for an unsuccessful coup by the Gabonese military.
[2] Malaysia: Is the political aide viral sex video confession real or a Deepfake?
[3] ISIS 'preparing clip of al-Baghdadi ALIVE' using deepfake propaganda.
"An important goal may be to try and rally the ISIS supporters and 'show' that the US is lying"
The concern is over what will happen in the first few instances, assuming it hasn’t happened yet. We don’t need deepfakes when Colin Powell can just say that something untrue is true and we go to a long and expensive war. A deepfake video in a tweet at the 11th hour could tilt an election. At an earlier time, could be a more convincing swift-boating. A spear-phished deepfake could be really valuable in the ransom industry. Deepfake police vest-camera recordings could be very pernicious. Suppose there was plausibly a camera on in Jeffery Epstein’s cell?
I’d say it’s something to be highly concerned about, but like an earthquake you don’t know where and when to actually be concerned about it.
Just to clarify, I'm not really picking a side but just was curious on your thoughts being explained further. Only thing I have to add is just because it's not a problem right this instant doesn't necessarily mean it can't be a problem in the future, right?
It's a lot easier to fool people than generating fake video. Fake video detection is not far behind generation, if at all, and if any official person/department gets caught showing a fake video, they won't be trusted again. To my knowledge, this hasn't happened yet, thought I'm sure it will eventually.
One example I could give right now is the US where mask-wearing has become a partisan issue.
You don't need a deepfake video of some scientists claiming masks are useless/evil/deadly. You just need to label masks as some kind of "liberal" hoax and half the country now hates mask-wearing.
If that's all it takes to influence the population why are deepfakes a large concern?
It doesn’t help that leading Health organizations have changed their point of view over time. It also doesn’t help that mask manufacturers place a disclaimer regarding effectiveness of the masks. That and very few people wear them right —which decreases their effectiveness such that they might as well be a good luck charm.
Hygiene, distancing, minimizing contact time as well as wearing a mask and goggles help. But a mask by itself is of limited effectiveness though not useless.
That worked in the US, but the US is... having a bit of a moment right now. Most democratic countries just don't have a single figure who can do no wrong in the eyes of half (well, 40%, really) of the country; if nothing else, they're not executive presidencies. And even in the US this wasn't historically normal.
You could of course describe it the other way around.
The population starts out hating mask wearing - don't see many people volunteering for that in America before 2020. And then it was labelled as "caring" and "protecting others" and despite vast piles of evidence indicating it achieves nothing, half the country is immediately influenced into hating non-mask-wearing.
owenmarshall|5 years ago
The gap between scientific consensus and common belief has been driven by "regular" misinformation campaigns: promotions of conspiracy theories, manufactured doubt, cherry-picking of claims.
Why worry about the novel when the basics are still working?
mudsnail|5 years ago
This type of scenario seems like a very real concern to me. You can extend this example into practically any hot button issue.
chrisco255|5 years ago
throwanem|5 years ago
gambler|5 years ago
Meanwhile, most of the population isn't even trained to recognize when videos are trimmed to start and stop at a conspicuously convenient moments, which is the most commonly used technique for creating fake narratives.
Actual media literacy is at near zero, especially among the people who arrogantly consider themselves "informed".
jimmySixDOF|5 years ago
This suggests you may not have done the research to support your viewpoint with such self assurance.
The increasing sophistication of Deepfakes as a technology concept applied over time is what people are rightly afraid of today.
But even now : (based on some search notes I have from 6 months ago)
[1] Video of Gabon’s long-unseen president Ali Bongo, who was believed in poor health or already dead, was decried as a deepfake by his political opponents and cited as the trigger, a week later, for an unsuccessful coup by the Gabonese military.
[2] Malaysia: Is the political aide viral sex video confession real or a Deepfake?
[3] ISIS 'preparing clip of al-Baghdadi ALIVE' using deepfake propaganda. "An important goal may be to try and rally the ISIS supporters and 'show' that the US is lying"
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/12/top-ai-... [2] https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/06/12/is-the-po...
[3] https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/al-baghdadi-stil...
quantified|5 years ago
I’d say it’s something to be highly concerned about, but like an earthquake you don’t know where and when to actually be concerned about it.
nsnow70|5 years ago
hnuser123456|5 years ago
mc32|5 years ago
Goronmon|5 years ago
You don't need a deepfake video of some scientists claiming masks are useless/evil/deadly. You just need to label masks as some kind of "liberal" hoax and half the country now hates mask-wearing.
If that's all it takes to influence the population why are deepfakes a large concern?
mc32|5 years ago
It doesn’t help that leading Health organizations have changed their point of view over time. It also doesn’t help that mask manufacturers place a disclaimer regarding effectiveness of the masks. That and very few people wear them right —which decreases their effectiveness such that they might as well be a good luck charm.
Hygiene, distancing, minimizing contact time as well as wearing a mask and goggles help. But a mask by itself is of limited effectiveness though not useless.
rsynnott|5 years ago
thu2111|5 years ago
The population starts out hating mask wearing - don't see many people volunteering for that in America before 2020. And then it was labelled as "caring" and "protecting others" and despite vast piles of evidence indicating it achieves nothing, half the country is immediately influenced into hating non-mask-wearing.