Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

behavioralscientist.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 111 posts

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

#101

Post by jdiff »

rightbyte wrote: post #89
jdiff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Somewhat" is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. Fakery has gone from handcrafted in small batches (or at worst, produced through much effort in sweatshops) to fully automated and mass produced.

Ye well "alot" might have been a better wording. However, the real breaking point in my view was when shills and semi-automated bots become so prevalent that they could fool people into believing some consensus had changed. Faking photos doesn't add much to that in my view.

Why do you believe that is the case? Aren't standard, naturally-occurring social media echo chambers far more likely?

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

#102

Post by const_cast »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #69
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 t…

Everything is a function of scale. IMO saying "this always happened" means nothing.

Lying on a small scale is no big deal. Lying on a big scale burns the world down. Me pirating Super Mario 64 means nothing. Everyone pirating everything burns the economy down. Me shooting a glass coke bottle is not note worthy. Nuclear warheads threaten humanity's existence.

Yes, AI fabrication is a huge problem that we have never experienced before, precisely because of how it can scale.

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

#103

Post by const_cast »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #34
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.

Remember the fairy photo hoax that fooled Lewis Carrol? There was never a time when authenticated photo and video could be trusted without knowing the source and circumstances.

Sure, but scale matters. 99% of images being fake is a different situation than 1% being fake. We can't just ignore that in favor of a "this always happened" argument.

Everything has always happened, so who cares? We need to go deeper than that. Many things that are perfectly a-okay today are only so because we do it on a small enough scale. Many perfectly fine things, if we scale them up, destroy the world. Literally.

Even something as simple as pirating, which I support, would melt all world economies if everyone did it with everything.

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

#104

Post by loudmax »

keiferski wrote: post #100
loudmax wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think placing trust in technology is misguided. Bad actors will always figure out a way to abuse the machines. What we can do is place trust in particular institutions, and use technology to verify authenticity. Not verify that what the institution is saying is true, but verify that they really are standing by this claim. This is challenging because no institution is going to be 100% trustworthy all of the time in…

Sure, but I don't see how that could be implemented in the world in a way other than how I outlined, considering that photos/videos can be created by anyone. There is no central media institution that can control all sharing of content. It would seem to me that the institution to place your trust in would be the one that implements and verifies the coding system I discussed.

When a news organization hires a journalist to file a report, they put their reputation on the line in the hands of the journalist.

As a consumer of news, you put your trust in the institution to have a reasonable vetting process, and also a process to retract a story if it's later shown to be false.

None of this is completely foolproof. It relies on institutions taking a long term view, and people working out which individuals and institutions are worthy of their trust. This isn't like the the blockchain where you have mathematical proof of veracity that's as strong as your encryption algorithm. I don't see how that level of proof is achievable in the real world.

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

#105

Post by keiferski »

loudmax wrote: post #104
keiferski wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I don't see how that could be implemented in the world in a way other than how I outlined, considering that photos/videos can be created by anyone. There is no central media institution that can control all sharing of content. It would seem to me that the institution to place your trust in would be the one that implements and verifies the coding system I discussed.

When a news organization hires a journalist to file a report, they put their reputation on the line in the hands of the journalist. As a consumer of news, you put your trust in the institution to have a reasonable vetting process, and also a process to retract a story if it's later shown to be false. None of this is completely foolproof. It relies on institutions taking a long term view, and people working out which…

But that still doesn't factor in social media at all, which is ultimately where the majority of people are getting their information. I just don't see what institution you're relying on in the case of real people sharing videos that may or may not be fake.

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

#106

Post by heresie-dabord »

altcognito wrote: post #40
heresie-dabord wrote: post #39

From TFA: Mythmaking, more than truth seeking, is what seems likely to define the future of media and of the public square. The reason extraordinarily strange conspiracy theories have spread so widely in recent years may have less to do with the nature of credulity than with the nature of faith. The reason why strange and even outright deranged notions have spread so widely is that they have been monetised . It is a…

Capitalism found the least amount of energy to produce a viable product.

"Minimally viable utterance."

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

#107

Post by HPsquared »

perching_aix wrote: post #97
ThinkBeat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

A mate of mine told me that ChatGPT started injecting zero width spaces into its output. Never fact checked this, but even if it's not done now, I'm sure it's bound to happen. Same for other types of watermarks.

Quite easy to remove something like that. Although ChatGPT has a writing style that's quite recognisable.

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

#108

Post by [deleted] »

dinfinity wrote: post #70
perching_aix wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#109

Post by brookst »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #81
brookst wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it can be detected, it can be removed. Asking that false things carry claims of falseness is a dead end.

Let's say you want to release a deepfake image. Your AI image, as generated, is not watermarked or hashed. Difficulty: Story-mode. You can release your image in two minutes flat. Let's now let's say your AI deepfake image is watermarked/hashed upon generation. Difficulty: Intermediate to hard. You might be able to get it done, but not without real effort, and removing all traces of the watermark without leaving artef…

Good thing the detection and removal can’t be automated and zero effort, eh?

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

#110

Post by rightbyte »

jdiff wrote: post #101
rightbyte wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ye well "alot" might have been a better wording. However, the real breaking point in my view was when shills and semi-automated bots become so prevalent that they could fool people into believing some consensus had changed. Faking photos doesn't add much to that in my view.

Why do you believe that is the case? Aren't standard, naturally-occurring social media echo chambers far more likely?

My gut says manipulation. I have no proofs what so ever.
Post reply on HN