Deepfakes Are Going To Wreak Havoc On Society. We Are Not Prepared.

Rob Toews
Forbes.com
Originally posted 25 May 20

Here is an excerpt:

A handful of websites dedicated specifically to deepfake pornography have emerged, collectively garnering hundreds of millions of views over the past two years. Deepfake pornography is almost always non-consensual, involving the artificial synthesis of explicit videos that feature famous celebrities or personal contacts.

From these dark corners of the web, the use of deepfakes has begun to spread to the political sphere, where the potential for mayhem is even greater.

It does not require much imagination to grasp the harm that could be done if entire populations can be shown fabricated videos that they believe are real. Imagine deepfake footage of a politician engaging in bribery or sexual assault right before an election; or of U.S. soldiers committing atrocities against civilians overseas; or of President Trump declaring the launch of nuclear weapons against North Korea. In a world where even some uncertainty exists as to whether such clips are authentic, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Because of the technology’s widespread accessibility, such footage could be created by anyone: state-sponsored actors, political groups, lone individuals.

In a recent report, The Brookings Institution grimly summed up the range of political and social dangers that deepfakes pose: “distorting democratic discourse; manipulating elections; eroding trust in institutions; weakening journalism; exacerbating social divisions; undermining public safety; and inflicting hard-to-repair damage on the reputation of prominent individuals, including elected officials and candidates for office.”

The info is here.

In 2020, let’s stop AI ethics-washing and actually do something

Karen Hao

technologyreview.com

Originally published 27 Dec 19

Here is an excerpt:

Meanwhile, the need for greater ethical responsibility has only grown more urgent. The same advancements made in GANs in 2018 have led to the proliferation of hyper-realistic deepfakes, which are now being used to target women and erode people’s belief in documentation and evidence. New findings have shed light on the massive climate impact of deep learning, but organizations have continued to train ever larger and more energy-guzzling models. Scholars and journalists have also revealed just how many humans are behind the algorithmic curtain. The AI industry is creating an entirely new class of hidden laborers—content moderators, data labelers, transcribers—who toil away in often brutal conditions.

But not all is dark and gloomy: 2019 was the year of the greatest grassroots pushback against harmful AI from community groups, policymakers, and tech employees themselves. Several cities—including San Francisco and Oakland, California, and Somerville, Massachusetts—banned public use of face recognition, and proposed federal legislation could soon ban it from US public housing as well. Employees of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce also grew increasingly vocal against their companies’ use of AI for tracking migrants and for drone surveillance.

Within the AI community, researchers also doubled down on mitigating AI bias and reexamined the incentives that lead to the field’s runaway energy consumption. Companies invested more resources in protecting user privacy and combating deepfakes and disinformation. Experts and policymakers worked in tandem to propose thoughtful new legislation meant to rein in unintended consequences without dampening innovation.

The info is here.

Conference warned of dangers of facial recognition technology

Colm Keena
The Irish Times
Originally posted 13 Nov 19

Here is an excerpt:

The potential of facial recognition technology to be used by oppressive governments and manipulative corporations was such that some observers have called for it to be banned. The suggestion should be taken seriously, Dr Danaher said.

The technology is “like a fingerprint of your face”, is cheap, and “normalises blanket surveillance”. This makes it “perfect” for oppressive governments and for manipulative corporations.

While the EU’s GDPR laws on the use of data applied here, Dr Danaher said Ireland should also introduce domestic law “to save us from the depredations of facial recognition technology”.

As well as facial recognition technology, he also addressed the conference about “deepfake” technology, which allows for the creation of highly convincing fake video content, and algorithms that assess risk, as other technologies that are creating challenges for the law.

In the US, the use of algorithms to predict a person’s likelihood of re-offending has raised significant concerns.

The info is here.