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A Nixon Deepfake, a 'Moon Disaster' Speech and an Information Ecosystem at Risk
What can former U.S. president Richard Nixon possibly teach us about artificial intelligence today and the future of misinformation online? Nothing. The real Nixon died 26 years ago.
But an AI-generated likeness of him shines new light on a quickly evolving technology with sizable implications, both creative and destructive, for our current digital information ecosystem. Starting in 2019, media artists Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up with two AI companies, Canny AI and Respeecher, to create a posthumous deepfake. The synthetic video shows Nixon giving a speech he never intended to deliver—half a century after the subject it addresses.
Here's the (real) backstory: In July 1969, as the Apollo 11 astronauts glided through space on their trajectory toward the moon, William Safire, then one of Nixon's speechwriters, wrote "In Event of Moon Disaster" as a contingency. The speech is a beautiful homage to Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, the two astronauts who descended to the lunar surface—never to return in this version of history. It ends by saying, "For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."
The full deepfake speech can be viewed at https://moondisaster.org.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Tuesday July 21 2020, @05:26PM (4 children)
This stuff that we see on youtube and social media is already rewriting our collective history.
Whereas not to long ago we would discuss and remember what happened in the past and have a collective memory for things, now the internet is our collective memory.
Having junk memories in our records is already creating a divide in the world that few have seen before. 9/11 wasn't planes. Moon landing was faked. Earth is flat. The list goes on, and the people that believe that there is at least a hint of truth in these things is growing daily. I won't be surprised that as I get older and continue to be bombarded with falsities like this that at some point I'll begin to slip up and remember things slightly different.
Our brains were not built to constantly fend off so many statements delivered as facts daily. With so many untruths delivered with precision and accuracy to the entire population of planet earth, we are just at the beginning of watching what this technology is going to do to us. My guess is that political division is simply the first rip in the fabric of the human collective that we are witnessing. The worst part is that almost any attempt to clean it up will end up being biased.
We are in for a long ride with all of this new technology. When I was young, my dream for the internet was for unlimited access to the best library in the world. The reality is that the library is about 80% emotional garbage with so much fakery that its hard to tell, especially for those that have no perspective from outside of it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2020, @05:39PM (1 child)
The solution is to give power to a small group of elites and technocrats who can govern without the interference of the ignorant masses.
Oh wait, that already happened. Teehee.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 21 2020, @07:10PM
The real solution is to give power to a small group of idiots and technophobes who can govern without the interference of the informed masses.
Oh wait, that is what we're doing now.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday July 21 2020, @06:41PM (1 child)
I hate to break it to you, but our collective memory has *always* been deeply flawed.
Before the existence of records, collective memory relied on individual memories - and individual memories are deeply flawed: I believe I've heard that something like 80% of what you think you remember about an event is actually filler "imagined in" to fill out a much sparser real memory - in essence you're remembering what you expect to have happened, rather than what really happened. Essentially our brain is using extremely lossy compression to store memories. That was compensated for by storing information in epic poems and the like, which used alliteration and other such memory aids to make it easier to notice when you had forgotten something, but long-term retention was still imperfect.
Once records started being made our collective memory was further corrupted by the agenda of those making the records. For a long time that was primarily government and (quasi-)religious officials - those entrusted by society to store knowledge for the future, and study the wisdom of the past, rather than doing "real" work that put food on the table. e.g. for much of European history, being able to read and write was a pretty strong indicator that you were a member of the clergy - nobody else had the time to master such esoteric skills.
As we entered the realm where recorded media began being used for entertainment, censors began heavily shaping the narrative - consider the "wholesome 50s" that many want to get back to - they never existed. We remember them that way because there was extensive censorship of movies, etc. that basically forbid anything remotely controversial or morally questionable, including anything that challenged government policy. Look at books from the same era, which weren't subjected to the same level of censorship, and you'll see a much more tumultuous era rife with controversy and moral degeneracy.
Heck, even today you've got plenty of people who think "it can't happen here" because they never learned of the multiple times it *did* happen here - genocide, concentration camps, etc., all relegated to the dust-bin of history, or maybe a couple sentences in the middle of a chapter focused on other things, because it doesn't fit the "America is inherently Good" narrative that serves those in power.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Tuesday July 21 2020, @09:01PM
True. I guess my point is that now its all written down now by anyone with a "device" and plays out within hours instead of years or decades. If it wasn't good then, it's all the more confusing now that everyone is a player.