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What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

behavioralscientist.org

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Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#61

Post by keiferski »

lnrd wrote: post #58
keiferski wrote: post #51

Can someone tell me why this idea isn’t workable and wouldn’t solve most deepfake issues? All camera and phone manufacturers embed a code in each photo / video they produce. All social media channels prioritize content that has these codes, and either block or de-prioritize content without them. Result: the internet is filled with a vast amount of AI generated nonsense, but it’s mostly not treated as anything but ent…

So all I would have to do to make a "legitimate" fake picture is to generate it, print it, take a signed picture of the print with a camera and then upload it on the web? With the right setup I could probably just take a picture of the screen directly, making it even easier (and enabling it for videos too).

Presumably the camera would have to incorporate GPS or other systems to ensure that you aren’t just taking a photo of a screen.

But yes that does add a wrinkle.

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#63

Post by JimDabell »

The good news is that AI has been shown to be effective at debunking things too:

> Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI

> Conspiracy theory beliefs are notoriously persistent. Influential hypotheses propose that they fulfill important psychological needs, thus resisting counterevidence. Yet previous failures in correcting conspiracy beliefs may be due to counterevidence being insufficiently compelling and tailored. To evaluate this possibility, we leveraged developments in generative artificial intelligence and engaged 2190 conspiracy believers in personalized evidence-based dialogues with GPT-4 Turbo. The intervention reduced conspiracy belief by ~20%. The effect remained 2 months later, generalized across a wide range of conspiracy theories, and occurred even among participants with deeply entrenched beliefs. Although the dialogues focused on a single conspiracy, they nonetheless diminished belief in unrelated conspiracies and shifted conspiracy-related behavioral intentions. These findings suggest that many conspiracy theory believers can revise their views if presented with sufficiently compelling evidence.

— https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39264999/

A huge part of the problem with disinformation on the Internet is that it takes far more work to debunk a lie than it does to spread one. AI seems to be an opportunity to at least level the playing field. It’s always been easy to spread lies online. Now maybe it will be easy to catch and correct them.

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#64

Post by _Algernon_ »

brookst wrote: post #47
SupremumLimit wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment follows two persistent HN tropes: (1) ignoring the article, which deals precisely with why the cost of production matters, and (2) steadfastly refusing to recognise that quantity has a quality of its own - in this case a monumental reduction in production cost clearly leads to a tectonic reshaping of the information landscape.

…but enough about the printing press.

Funny that you mention the printing press. One of the first books published using it was about how to identify witches which led to "witch" burnings in Europe. At some point society adapted to the misinformation (and we are better off for it), but a lot of innocent people suffered in the meantime.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/europ...

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#65

Post by hoseyor »

neepi wrote: post #27
HPsquared wrote: post #2

There was a brief window where photography and videos became widespread so events could be documented and evidenced. Generative AI is drawing that period to an end, and we're returning to "who said / posted this" and having to trust the source rather than the image/message itself. It's a big regression.

I await cryptographically signed photos coming out of cameras. Actually I’ve said that should be the case for the last 20 years. You should be able to follow a chain of evidence towards an unprocessed raw image potentially.

I will assume you simply mean cryptographically signed as evidence of having been taken by a camera?

You do realize that would still not provide perfect proof that what was recorded by the camera was real, right? It does seem like an obsolete idea you may not have fully reconsidered in a while.

But considering that same old idea that dates from prior to the current state, I would also not be surprised if you imagined clandestinely including all kind of other things in this cryptographic signature like location, time and day, etc.; all of which can also be spoofed and is a tyrannical system’s wet dream.

You don’t think that would be immediately abused, as it was in other similar ways like through all the on device image scanning that was injected as counter-CSAM appeals to save the children…of course?

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#66

Post by Elaris »

This got me thinking. Sometimes it feels like a story doesn’t have to be true as long as it feels right, people believe it. And if it spreads fast and sounds good, it becomes “truth” for many. That’s kind of scary. Now that anyone can easily make something look real and convincing, it’s harder to tell what’s real anymore. Maybe the best thing we can do is slow down a bit, ask more questions, and not trust something just because it fits what we already believe.

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#67

Post by grues-dinner »

neepi wrote: post #27
HPsquared wrote: post #2

There was a brief window where photography and videos became widespread so events could be documented and evidenced. Generative AI is drawing that period to an end, and we're returning to "who said / posted this" and having to trust the source rather than the image/message itself. It's a big regression.

I await cryptographically signed photos coming out of cameras. Actually I’ve said that should be the case for the last 20 years. You should be able to follow a chain of evidence towards an unprocessed raw image potentially.

That fixes the problem of content being manipulated and then the original being discounted as fake when challenged.

It doesn't do a whole lot for something entirely fictional, unless it becomes so ubiquitous that anything unsigned is assumed to be fake rather than just made on a "normal" device. And even if you did manage to sign every photo, who's managing those keys? It's the difference between TLS telling you what you see is what the server sent and trusting the server to send the truth in the first place.

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#68

Post by lnrd »

neepi wrote: post #27
HPsquared wrote: post #2

There was a brief window where photography and videos became widespread so events could be documented and evidenced. Generative AI is drawing that period to an end, and we're returning to "who said / posted this" and having to trust the source rather than the image/message itself. It's a big regression.

I await cryptographically signed photos coming out of cameras. Actually I’ve said that should be the case for the last 20 years. You should be able to follow a chain of evidence towards an unprocessed raw image potentially.

What prevents anyone to take a signed picture by photographing a generated/altered picture? You just need to frame it perfectly and make sure there are no reflections that could tell it's a picture of a picture and not a picture of the real world, very doable with a professional camera. All details that could give it out would disappear just lowering the resolution, which can be done in any camera.

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#69

Post by ThinkBeat »

HPsquared wrote: post #2

There was a brief window where photography and videos became widespread so events could be documented and evidenced. Generative AI is drawing that period to an end, and we're returning to "who said / posted this" and having to trust the source rather than the image/message itself. It's a big regression.

It is more that it is becoming available to the masses. Doctoring photos in all manner of ways has been going on for decades.

What is happening now will raise awareness of it and of course make it a several magnitudes bigger problem.

I am sure there are large efforts ongoing to train AI to spot AI photo, video, written production.

A system like printer tracking dots¹ may already be in widespread use. Who would take the enormous amount of time to figure out if somesuch is hiding somewhere in an llm, or related code.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

Re: What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than the Truth?

#70

Post by dinfinity »

perching_aix wrote: post #54
neepi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I await cryptographically signed photos coming out of cameras. Actually I’ve said that should be the case for the last 20 years. You should be able to follow a chain of evidence towards an unprocessed raw image potentially.

Unfortunately that doesn't prove too much. It all hinges on the cameras, which are just computers, operating in a verifiable fashion. Which they don't, as no consumer available computer currently does, and I don't see this changing in the near future, both for technological and political reasons. I put a lot of effort into thinking about what could be proper trustable on photos and videos [0], but short of performing…

Things should simply be signed by people and institutions. People who were there or did extensive research vouching for authenticity and accuracy of representation.

Signing in hardware is nice, but you then still need to trust the company making the hardware to make it tamper proof and not tampered with by them. Additionally, such devices would have to be locked down to disallow things like manual setting of the time and date. It's a rabbit hole with more and more inconveniences and fewer benefits as you go down it.

Better to just go for reputation, and webs and chains of trust in people based approaches.

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